Showing posts with label belgium. Show all posts
Showing posts with label belgium. Show all posts

19 May 2014

My Toilet Preoccupation!

Did you think that you'd heard quite enough from me about bathrooms.  If so, don't read on...I'm telling you, I can go for hours about this stuff!

Toilets. 

I am ridiculously opinionated and have discovered that here in England I'm a bit of an oddity! Sales-staff look at me as if I have lost the plot whilst I question them in detail about their sanitary-ware.  I consider myself a true 'Northern European' now.



I like almost everything, except the extent of tiling.

I hate seeing and cleaning the visible waste pipes at the back of loos. 
I hate stupidly small flush buttons.
I hate loos that need to be flushed more than once.
I hate hard to clean angled-bowls. 

I'm collecting stories from friends and family about toilets; the seat hinges are corroded by boys peeing inaccurately, my nephews mechanically destroyed a brand new toilet seat within weeks - no one is quite sure how they did it..., toilets installed only a few years ago refusing to refill as the mechanism has broken.

26 Apr 2014

We love Belgium!


We have been visiting Belgium for the last few years as Dimitri's sister and her family live here.  As we were there for a short break over the Easter holidays I decided I would snap a few of the houses in their village and immediate surrounds.  I think we can say that it was partly as a result of visiting Belgium that we were determined to build a house and one of a contemporary design. Prepare yourselves for a bit of a rant... 








They live in a village on the outskirts of Brussels, this is proper commuter belt and a very interesting comparison to what you might find in similar areas in the UK.  Having driven around Belgium, I would say that contemporary or modern architecture is just a normal part of life.  It's not something that they are culturally predisposed to be frightened of...
Houses are not necessarily copies of a copy of a copy of a house which was once nice (I'm quoting Mr Luxton out of context here!). 

These first few are examples of houses which I like a lot.  






This is my favourite house, impossible to photograph.  It has two obliquely angled wings and you can see through the house to the garden behind.



Elegant and understated.