Tag Archives: brick

Brick is just as useful as it is beautiful. You can use bricks for pretty much everything: exterior siding, interior decorating, and backyard landscaping, whether it is a recreational space or a garden. Plus, this material offers such a broad range of colours and it offers so many visual effects!

There’s the crude brick, used especially for exterior siding, but there is also the decorative brick used for interior decorating. The range of colours and shades is impressive. It also comes in many different shapes since brick is a material that can be carved.

You could paint brick. What makes it special is its texture. A white-painted brick wall has so much more to offer than a white-painted sleek wall. The white colour is not as white, but it stands out because of its rugged design. The same is true of a black-painted brick wall. It looks nothing like a black-painted sleek wall. It’s not as black, but it stands out more. Same goes for every other colour.

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There is a downside to this, however. If you paint a brick wall, you will shorten its lifetime because you’re preventing the brick and the mortar from breathing. You will have to check it regularly and make the necessary corrections if you want to avoid going through the whole process again. Otherwise, you could follow the guidelines of Écohabitation experts.

The brick doesn’t have to be perfectly smooth. A brick with jagged sides and overflowing mortar offers a different look. You could also distress the brick to make it imperfect. Some people even marble the brick to make it look more rugged.[……]

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Wine is suitable for all seasons, but during the rigours of fall and winter, it provides a warmth that is unique to it. During these times, it has the gift of reconciling us with life. Not surprising that lovers of good wine reserve a specific place for it.

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Some people store it in their closet. Sacrilegious? Not at all. Good bottles of wine can be stored anywhere, as long as it is cool, devoid of light, has an ambient temperature between 10 and 15 degrees and 55% to 80% humidity. Warning! All these conditions must be respected to the letter, all year long. Wine is delicate and sensitive to changes in temperature. It needs stability. The slightest change can alter it.

To ensure this stability, some wine enthusiasts resort to a mini-air conditioner, a humidifier, a wine cooler, and other devices after having consulted a wine specialist.

There are two other mandatory conditions: the wine must be free from any vibration and the air it breathes must be pure. Therefore, you should avoid storing it in the garage.[……]

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The cold sets in. The good old fireplace will soon find our feet, our hands, our faces and our best smiles. It will offer us warmth and the crackling of its logs as soon as we get close enough. The fireplace is very practical, but it can also be very beautiful if you take the time to refit it with a nice exterior when you’re doing renovations, decoration or construction work.

A fireplace can be a column of rough and massive stones or, on the contrary, a column with a finely sculpted mantel that evokes Greek or Roman esthetics, to the great pleasure of owners with a classical taste.

A fireplace can be monumental in size and its relief or built in for greater discretion. The contemporary look is ideal for a built-in fireplace, because it spreads softness and simplicity. This makes the contemporary look perfect for a suspended fireplace. Most fireplaces are made of metal. They are so slender that they appear to be mobile.[……]

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We tasted food cooked in a wood oven on the roof of a hotel at the Siwa Oasis in Egypt. We didn’t see what it was made of. We did notice the exquisite taste of the lavash (Egyptian bread that we call pita bread), Clepara pizza and oum mali (oriental pudding).

More and more people are building an outdoor oven in Quebec. These ovens are taking different shapes. One thing to keep in mind is that the materials have to support high temperatures for a long time. You think that brick would be the obvious choice. But wait! The quality of the brick or its finish are not always up to par.

You just can’t combine field rocks or bricks stuck together with mortar. Our cold temperatures require a good insulation system.

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