On Wednesday 4/11/12, Hiromi and Joann Le of DAO Architecture will be giving a talk at an event hosted by The Asian Pacific American Chamber of Commerce of Oregon and SW Washington. The topic will be:
What Does It Mean to Be An Emerging, Minority, and Woman-Owned Business? – From the Perspectives of Two Asian Female Architects Practicing in the Pacific Northwest.
More information on the event can be found through this link. We hope to see you there!
The Novak Residence kitchen (it is called the 12th Street Kitchen on our Houzz page) has been featured (again!) on Houzz, in an article called “A Nook of One’s Own”. This is also the project that was recently a finalist in Dwell Magazine’s Caesarstone Challenge contest.
We are so honored by the outpouring of support for our projects, and these articles are proof that good design can resonate with many people. Thanks all!
Our Novak Residence kitchen design made the top 30 out of 323 entries for the Dwell Magazine Caesarstone Challenge! (Look for “Craftsman Kitchen Transformation” under the Kitchen & Bath category). Please vote here. The entry with the most votes wins two slabs of beautiful Caesarstone, which we will donate to a local non-profit. Leave a comment below, we will give YOU a special discount on our services if we win! Also, every voter is entered for a chance to win a HD Flip camera from Dwell. Voting ends at 11:59 p.m. PST this Thursday, 3/1/12, so don’t delay.
Be sure to peruse the other entries for inspiration, too.
Special thanks to Mike and Rachel Novak, the owners who made the magic happen; to Scene Construction for their excellent craftsmanship; and to Lincoln Barbour, for his beautiful photography.
The Novak Residence kitchen (it is called the 12th Street Kitchen on our Houzz page) has been featured (again!) on Houzz, in an article called “8 Cozy Tables for Two”. This is timely for me, since I was sitting with a friend at a bar counter in a coffee shop today and was noticing how much more intimate it is to sit next to each other, than to sit across the table. Pair it with a view and you’ll never want to leave!
We had the pleasure of working with Lincoln Barbour for the first time, in 2011. We are honored to be included in his year-in-review.
You can also check out our blog post about our experience with Lincoln. We look forward to more fun shoots with him this year!
Concrete slabs are poured at Lynn’s house!
Lynn was sorry her son wasn’t there to see the cement mixer truck.
This is the slab for the entry. Wood framing, subfloor, and flooring will go on top to become flush with the existing floor level.
This is the slab for the rear addition, which includes the new kitchen, dining room, and family room. A giant blue tarp “tent” was erected to keep the rain away.
More updates soon! (Thank you, John Fisher, for the site photographs.)
photo by Randy Rasmussen
Happy New Year everyone! We hope your year is off to a great start.
We just found out that the one of our projects, the Kovtunovich Residence, was mentioned in the Best of 2011 in the Homes and Gardens section of The Oregonian. You can find it in the “Trends of the Year” section, where they praise the owners, Ian and Tonia Kovtunovich, for “mixing it up” by building a very modern addition to their traditional bungalow. The original article for the project was published in January, but we are so flattered to be mentioned again at the end of the year.
Thanks again for all your support, and we look forward to another exciting year.
Two of our projects (the Samaras/Sorensen Residence dining room and Novak Residence kitchen) were chosen for a featured Ideabook on Houzz’s home page. Woot!
For more photos of both projects, feel free to peruse the albums on our Facebook page.
The Novak Residence project was featured as Kitchen of the Week on Houzz.com. Check it out!
Last week, we had the Novak Residence photographed by the very talented Lincoln Barbour. “Photo shoot” sounds glamorous and fun, and it is to a certain extent, but it’s also hard work for everyone involved. For starters, I arrived at the site at 8am, to go over the shots with the owner, talk to them about what props we brought, and how the rooms might be rearranged (but put back to its original condition after the shoot). The owners had done a marvelous job tidying up the rooms, and since they are both artists and collectors, styling for this shoot was going to be minimal. Still, there are things that we usually don’t notice, that might be captured in a photo. So for every shoot, I go through each room carefully, straightening, moving, or removing things as I go. Then I clean all the surfaces, including counters, cabinet doors, windows, doors, to make sure there are no spots. I start bringing the props back into the room, and that is usually around when the photographer and his assistant arrive. (And I should note that Lynn and I usually work on these shoots together, but I just happened to do this one on my own.)
This is my first time working with Lincoln. I had seen his work on Portland Spaces magazine and fell in love with the composition and quality of light. I thought, someday I will work with him. So it was nice to finally meet, and find out that we were a good fit. He and his assistant Justin were very friendly, and very efficient. As soon as they arrived, they started setting up and got to work.
For every shot, we were able to review the angle, lighting, props, colors, etc. through his laptop. Here, he’s reviewing the shot before he lets me take a look.
Lincoln used reflectors in many of the shots, to get light where he wanted it. The interior of a house can look dark, particularly when it’s sunny outside. I wanted to take more photos of “behind the scenes”, but I was constantly running around, reviewing the current shot with Lincoln, preparing for the next shot, and scrolling through my phone in between to check on other projects. It’s literally non-stop, but since I thrive on that kind of high energy, I loved every moment of it.
So after every shoot, the photographers pack up and leave, and I start moving everything back to its original location, and make sure everything is back in order. Then if I have some time left at the end, I take some photos of my own, particularly of things we didn’t capture in the formal photo shoot.
Here is a view of the kitchen from the interior, as you look out to the back yard. You can see the rich color of the wood pantry wall against the cooler textures of the quartz countertop and the rubber flooring, which I thought was nice. (But boy, I could have used some reflectors in this shot, huh?)
The original window above the sink had a sill and apron, but in the design we proposed that we remove them and make a new sill that acts as a task light and a termination point for the tile backsplash. So here is a shot of that transition.
The sill extends all the way across the kitchen, and here you see the other end. The owners have this magnificent wood figure, which you’ll see in many of Lincoln’s shots. I just liked him so much, both as a piece and also as a vertical composition in the photo.
As I check to make sure we haven’t left anything behind, I leave the owners a little gift and a note thanking them for letting us use their house.
In summary, we got some beautiful shots of a nice project for lovely clients, and I had a great time working with Lincoln. Thanks again to everyone who was involved! And I look forward to sharing photos from the shoot in our next post.
