For this last article of the season, we wanted to tell you all you’ve always wanted to know about Nami House’s concept and how to convert a classic family house into a hostel.
Our guests often ask us same questions about Nami House:
- Where does the name of my room come from ?
- I love my bedside table, but how come there is “Château la Dominique” written on it ???
- That furniture item looks nice, but it doesn’t look like bought in a shop?
One guideline: re-use !
Here are few answers:
First of all, as I’m sure you’ve already noticed (or as I’m sure you will, next time you’ll come to stay at our place), there is one thing in particular we don’t like at Nami House: waste.
And what is the best thing to do to avoid waste ? Simply not produce them ! What’s the second best thing coming after that ? Re-use !
We believe that nearly any object can have a second life: from wine boxes to beer packaging passing through wood pallets, we tried to make sure they all had a second use.
Hawaiian beers dorm names
Two years ago, we made this incredible trip to a little piece of heaven called Hawaii. As beer lovers, we found out about a local brewery (Kona Brewing Co.) making some really good beers.
Names of the beers were as follows: Fire Rock, Big Wave, Longboard & Castaway.
Since we really liked the packaging (and the content 😉 ), we decided to bring them back to France. This is how, two years later, you have the privilege of sleeping in those “hawaiian brewery dorms” !
Personal message to our fellow guests: the first one that brings a 6 pack of Longboard or Castaway beers will get a free night at Nami House !
Château La Dominique bedside tables
For those of you who noticed it, Nami House bedside tables are made of wine boxes.
In particular, the ones in Big Wave dormitory are made of Château La Dominique wine boxes, a really good wine with boxes kept in my family for generations – unfortunately as for bottles, boxes were empty 🙁 .
What can I do with wood pallets?
Even if it takes more time than it looks like, it is crazy what you can do with wood pallets:
Do you like painting?
Wanna repaint your house? Ask for Nami House crew !
Don’t know if you’ve ever tried to paint your toilet, bedroom or even the living room ?
Most of the time it goes the same:
First of all you go to the shop to choose which colour you’re gonna pick up… Then you quickly realize that when it comes to painting, this is not painting strictly speaking which takes time, but mostly preparing everything, protecting the furniture and putting back everything afterward.
Then think about doing that for a 160m2 house 😕 ? Well, that’s what we did ! Thanks to a couple of friends (special thanks to Jeje and Tut 🙂 ), we saved up at least one month !
So next time you want to paint your house, there’s no need of asking for a professional: just ask for Nami House crew – even for acrobatic painting 😉
The garden
Looks like all of you enjoy the garden: picnic table, chill corner, patio… Let me tell you something: when we got the house in the first place, it looked terrible !
That’s why we decided:
- To sow a lawn so that you can relax in the deck chairs: the 4 tons of earth we had to carry away to elevate the ground level was quite a challenge !
- To build a terrace so that you can enjoy the sunset and a glass of beer (hopefully a Hawaiian one 😉 )… pretty easy when you’ve got a friend who is able to build such a terrace within a day: thanks again Vincent !
A brand new bathroom
Converting classic family house into a hostel requires to get rid of this good old grandma style bathroom… And that’s a hell of a kind that we got !
Since a picture is worth a thousand words, here is a small time-lapse of the transformation:
Now you know all about Nami House’s concept and how we transformed a family house into an hostel 🙂
Don’t forget to share it if you like it !
CLement