Healthy Low-Calorie Soups

Overview

Broth-based soups are low-energy-density foods that are usually high in water and fiber and low in fat. These types of soup will fill you up with fewer calories and are healthier alternatives than cream-based soups. Eating low-calorie soup is an effective way to drop weight, but the American Heart Association recommends keeping your diet well-rounded by also eating fruits, vegetables, lean proteins and complex carbohydrates.

A big pot of three bean chili. Photo Credit OlgaMiltsova/iStock/Getty Images

Three-Bean Chili

Many chili recipes call for ingredients that are high in fat and calories, such as beef. Using a few different types of beans and leaving out the meat can cut your calories from 500 to 300 per serving and still provide you with a hearty, high-protein meal. Make a three-bean chili by combining cannellini or red kidney beans, black beans and Anasazi beans with green, red and yellow bell pepper, onion, garlic and spices for a filling, warm, low-calorie soup.

Chicken Soup

Chicken soup is a broth-based favorite, but most canned chicken soups are high in sodium, fat and calories. Make a homemade chicken noodle with lentils and barley for a soup that is high in protein and fiber and low in sodium and calories but loaded with classic chicken soup flavor. This soup combines brown lentils, olive oil, leeks, green bell pepper, garlic, chicken, carrots, barley, tomato and spices for a low-calorie, filling soup.

Vegetable Soup

According to Pennsylvania State University, people who eat broth-based soups, such as vegetable soup, are more successful in losing weight than those who eat the same amount of calories in snack foods. Put a twist on traditional veggie soup with nontraditional ingredients such as asparagus, summer squash, peas, cannellini beans and mushroom stock.

www.livestrong.com

MULTIFAMILY RESIDENTIAL

Multifamily residential (also known as multidwelling unit or MDU) is a classification of housing where multiple separate housing units for residential inhabitants are contained within one building or several buildings within one complex. A common form is an apartment building. Sometimes units in a multifamily residential building are condominiums, where typically the units are owned individually rather than leased from a single apartment building owner. Many intentional communities, incorporate multifamily residences, such as in cohousing projects.

Types

• Two-flat - a building basically like a house, commonly built on a house lot, consisting of a flat (apartment) taking up the first floor, another flat taking up the second floor, usually a common basement, a common front entrance, foyer and stairs to the second floor, and often a similar back entrance, foyer, and stairs. In old buildings, the back entrance, foyer, and stairs may have been added on later. Sometimes there are front verandas for each of flats, one above the other. Typically the whole building is owned by the same party. A property of this type, must have external entrance for each unit, otherwise it can be considered a single unit since for Two-flat, the asset need to comply with the separated units guides created by HUD and regulated by the mortgage industry. '
• Three-flat - a building similar to a two-flat except there are three flats. Two-flat and possibly three-flat buildings are rather common in certain older neighborhoods in certain cities.
• Four-flat - a building similar to a three-flat except there are four flats. In some cases, the arrangement of apartments may be different and the lot size may be larger than that of a regular house.
• Duplex or semi-detached - One building consisting of two separate "houses", typically side by side, each with separate entrances and typically without common inside areas. Each of the two houses typically has separate owners.
• Townhouse - a house attached to any number of other townhouses each of which may have multiple floors, commonly side by side each with their own separate entrances. Each such house has its own owner.
• Apartment building - a building with multiple apartments. There can be multiple apartments on each floor and there are often multiple floors. Apartment buildings can range in many sizes, some with only a few apartments, other with hundreds of apartments on many floors, or any size in between. There are often inside hallways and inside entrances to each apartment, but outside entrances to each apartment are also possible. An apartment building can be owned by one party and each of the apartments rented to tenants or each of the apartments can be owned as a condominium by separate parties.
• Mixed use building - a building with space for both commercial, business, or office use, and space for residential use. Possible arrangements include the commercial/business use on the first or first couple floors and one or more apartments or residential spaces on the upper floors. Another possibility is to have the commercial/business area up front and the residential area in the back. Some or maybe all of the space may be used by the owner or some or all the business and residential units may be leased by the owner. Condominium ownership is also possible.
• Apartment Community - A collection of apartment buildings on adjoining pieces of land, generally owned by one entity. The buildings often share common grounds and amenities, such as pools, parking areas, and a community clubhouse, used as leasing offices for the community.

MDUs and the Internet

MDUs present a unique challenge to the distribution of the Internet, because many residents can be inexpensively connected at one time by an ISP. In some cases, the ISP and the MDU are creating an exclusive agreement, and this prevents many residents from selecting their service provider. 

References

1. ^ Ryan, Patrick S; Zwart, Breanna; Whitt, Richard S; Goldburg, Marc; Cerf, Vinton G (2015-08-04). "The Problem of Exclusive Arrangements in Multiple Dwelling Units: Unlocking Broadband Growth in Indonesia and the Global South". The 7th Indonesia International Conference on Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Small Business (IICIES 2015): 1–16.

- Wikipedia 

How to Lose Weight With Just Soup for Lunch

Eating just soup for lunch is a convenient way to cut calories for weight loss. A weight loss program should include a balanced diet and regular exercise -- and soup can provide a nutritious and potentially low-calorie lunch. Foods with low energy-density, meaning relatively few calories for the amount of food, help fill you up and promote weight loss, according to the Centers for Diseased Control and Prevention. Many soups are a low-energy density meal option for lunch -- and soup can help reduce your appetite.

A bowl of tomato soup and fresh herbs. Photo Credit FikMik/iStock/Getty Images

Step 1

Eat a nutritious breakfast that includes protein such as an egg-white vegetable omelet or oatmeal with plain low-fat yogurt and fresh fruit. Eating breakfast gives you energy and satisfies your appetite. Eat enough for breakfast so you can stick to your plan and eat just soup for lunch.

Step 2

Eat just soup for lunch instead of a higher-calorie meal. Choose broth or tomato-based soups, and soups featuring lean protein such as beans, chicken, fish or seafood with vegetables. Avoid soups made with fatty meats or cream. For example, if you usually eat 700 calories for lunch and you eat a 200-calorie bowl of soup instead, you save 500 calories.

Step 3

Set an eating cut-off time to avoid the risk of taking in unnecessary calories after dinner. Make it a habit to stop eating 2 to 3 hours before bedtime to support your weight loss success. This strategy helps avoid the risk of empty-calorie snacks -- and helps you wake up with an appetite for breakfast to get the next day of your just-soup-for-lunch diet off to a good start.

www.livestrong.com

SINGLE-FAMILY DETACHED HOME

A single-family detached home, also called a single-detached dwelling,single-family residence (SFR) or separate house is a free-standing residential building. It is defined in opposition to a multi-family residential dwelling.

A single-family home in Denmark.

Definitions

A single detached dwelling contains only one dwelling unit and is completely separated by open space on all sides from any other structure, except its own garage or shed.

—Statistics Canada.

The definition of this type of house may vary between legal jurisdictions or statistical agencies. The definition, however, generally includes two elements:

• a single-family (home, house, or dwelling) means that the building is usually occupied by just one household or family, and consists of just one dwelling unit or suite. In some jurisdictions allowances are made for basement suite or mother-in-law suite without changing the description from "single family". It does exclude, however, any short-term accommodation (hotel, motels, inns), large-scale rental accommodation (rooming or boarding houses, apartments) or condominia.

Single-family houses in Montreal.

Most single-family homes are built on lots larger than the structure itself, adding an area surrounding the house, which is commonly called a yard in North American English or a garden in British English. Garages can also be found on most lots. Houses with an attached front entry garage that is closer to the street than any other part of the house is often derisively called a snout house.

Regional Terminology

Terms corresponding to single-family detached home in common use are single-family home (in the U.S. and Canada), single-detached dwelling (in Canada), detached house (in the United Kingdom and Canada), and separate house (in New Zealand).

In the United Kingdom, the term single-family home is almost unknown, except through Internet exposure to U.S. media. Whereas in the U.S., housing is commonly divided into "single-family homes", "multi-family dwellings", "Condo/Townhouse", etc., the primary division of residential property in British terminology is between "houses" (including "detached", "semi-detached", and "terraced" houses and bungalows) and "flats" (i.e., "apartments" or "condominia" in American English).

Typical single-family home in Northern Germany.

History and Distribution

In pre-industrial societies most people live in multi-family dwelling for most of their lives. A child will live with their parents from birth until marriage, and then generally move in with the parents of the man (patrilocal) or the woman (matrilocal) so that the grandparents can help raise the young children and so the middle generation can care for their aging parents. This type of arrangement also saves on the effort and materials used for construction and, in colder climates, heating. If people had to move to a new place or were wealthy enough, they could build or buy a home for their own family, of course but this was not the norm.

Typical Finnish post-World War II single-family houses in Jyväskylä 

The idea of a nuclear family living separately from their relatives as the norm, is a relatively recent development related to rising living standards in North America and Europe during the early modern and modern eras. In the New World where land was plentiful settlement patterns were quite different from the close-knit villages of Europe, meaning many more people lived in large farms separated from their neighbours. This has produced a cultural preference in settler societies for privacy and space. A countervailing trend has been industrialization and urbanization, which as seen more and more people around the world move into multi-story apartment blocks. In the New World, this type of densification was halted and reversed following the Second World War when increased automobile ownership and cheaper building and heating costs produced suburbanization instead.

Single-family homes are now common in rural and suburban and even some urban areas across the New World and Europe, as well as wealthier enclaves within the Third World. They are most common in low-density, high-income regions. For example, in Canada according to the 2006 Census 55.3% of the population lived single-detached houses but this varied substantially by region. In the Ville (city) of Montreal Canada's second most populous municipality only 7.5% of the population lived in a single-detached house, while in the city of Calgary the third most populous, 57.8% did. Note that this includes the "city limits" populations only, not the wider region.

The term "single-family detached" describes how a house is built and who lives in it. It does not indicate size, shape, or location. Because they are not surrounded by other buildings, the potential size of a single-family house is limited only by the budget of the builder and local law. They can range from a tiny country cottage or cabin or a small suburban prefabricated home to a large mansion,  aristocratic estate or stately home. Sizes in real estate advertising are given in area (square feet or square metres), or by the number of bedrooms or bathrooms/toilets. The choice in materials used or the shape chosen will depend on what is common to the vernacular architecture of that region, or the lasted trends in professionally designed tract housing. A traditional log and plaster hut, a timber frame and drywall North American starter home, or a European-style concrete-and-slate house are all equally varieties of single-family detached housing.

Pros and Cons

Single-detached homes have both advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages are that the entire space around the building is private to the owner and family, and in most cases (depending on national/federal, state/provincial, and local laws), one can add onto the existing house if more room is needed, and they typically have no property management fees, such as the ones associated with condominia and townhomes.

Disadvantages are that all maintenance and repair costs — interior, exterior, and everything in between — are at the owner's expense. Amenities such as pools and playgrounds are usually absent, unless built at private expense, or if a municipal playground is available. Some single-detached homes do have these features within the lot or nearby, given that their owners pay a homeowners fee similar to those in condos or townhomes. Landscaping and lawn upkeep costs are at the owner's expense.

The Saitta House, Dyker Heights Brooklyn, New York, United States, North America, built in 1899 is a single-family detached home.

From an environmental point of view, single-family houses are likely to require much more energy to heat in cold weather than do buildings with shared walls, because of their very high surface-area-to-volume ratio. In rich countries, the people who live in single-family houses are much more likely to own and use a private automobile rather than walking, biking, or using public transit to commute. The low density of housing leads to less frequent bus service and longer distances to commute, thus leading to increased car use. This makes single-family houses part of a much more energy and carbon-intensive lifestyle. The low-density nature of this type of housing requires using more land which could otherwise be used for agriculture or as natural habitat.

Inner city neighborhoods of larger cities tend to be densely populated and without significant room for houses devoted to just a single family. By contrast, the outer districts of larger cities are usually transitional areas with equal shares of smaller apartment buildings and single-detached homes.

Culturally, single-family houses are associated with suburbanization in many parts of the world. Owning a home with a yard and a "white picket fence" is seen as a key component of the "American dream" (which also exists with variations in other parts of the world). Single-family homes can also be associated with gated communities, particularly in developing countries (e.g. Alphaville, São Paulo).

Separating Types of Homes

House types include:

• Cottage, a small house. In the US, a cottage typically has four main rooms, two either side of a central corridor. It is common to find a lean-to added to the back of the cottage which may accommodate the kitchen, laundry and bathroom. In Australia it is common for a cottage to have a verandah across its front. In the UK and Ireland any small, old (especially pre World War I) house in a rural or formerly rural location whether with one, two or (rarely) three storeys is a cottage.
• Bungalow, in American English this term describes a medium to large sized freestanding house on a generous block in the suburbs, with generally less formal floor plan than a villa. Some rooms in a bungalow typically have doors which link them together. Bungalows may feature a flat roof. In British English it refers to any single-storey house (much rarer in the UK than the US).
• Villa, a term originating from Roman times, when it was used to refer to a large house which one might retreat to in the country. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, villasuggested a freestanding comfortable sized house, on a large block, generally found in the suburbs. In Victorian terraced housing, a villa was a house larger than the average Byelaw terraced house,  often having double street frontage.
• Mansion a very large house, usually of more than one story, on a very large block of land or estate.

References

1. ^ http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/62-202-x/2007000/technote-notetech4-eng.htm.
2. ^ http://www12.statcan.ca/census-recensement/2006/dp-pd/prof/92-591/details/page.cfm?Lang=E&Geo1=CSD&Code1=4806016&Geo2=CSD&Code2=2466023&Data=Count&SearchText=Montreal&SearchType=Begins&SearchPR=01&B1=All&Custom=.
3. ^ “Saitta House – Report Part 1", DykerHeightsCivicAssociation.com

External Links

• "Australian Housing Types" (pdf). Your House teacher resource kit. Royal Australian Institute of Architects. Retrieved 15 January 2006.
• http://www.einfamilienhaus.org
• http://www.haus-xxl.de
• http://www.beispielhaus.de
• http://www.fertighaus.de
• http://www.massivhaus.de
• http://www.einfamilienhaus.de.

- Wikipedia 

How to Lose Belly Fat at Home

Carrying excess weight around your waistline is more than an aesthetic issue. Subcutaneous fat, or the fat you see around your belly, covers more dangerous visceral fat, which surrounds your organs. This type of belly fat affects your cardiovascular health, puts you at risk for various diseases and slows your metabolism. While you cannot target belly fat with exercise and diet, you can gradually decrease your percentage of body fat wherever you tend to store it. Follow a flexible, healthy fitness program and food plan at home to lose belly fat.

Burn fat and tone your abdomen with dynamic yoga moves. Photo Credit Jupiterimages/Pixland/Getty Images

Step 1

Swap sweets, junk food and foods high in trans fat and saturated fat for fresh, unprocessed foods. Removing tempting snack foods and processed foods from your kitchen makes it easier to stick to a healthy food plan. If you cut 500 daily calories from your consumption, you'll be on track to lose 4 pounds per month.

Step 2

Snack on citrus fruit, lightly dressed salads, berries, apples, pears, vegetables, legumes and unsweetened whole grains. These foods contain high amounts of insoluble and soluble fiber, which fill you and provide key nutrients without adding excess calories, fat and sugar to your diet. They also regulate digestion so you experience less belly bloating.

Step 4

Exercise vigorously daily. Elevate your heart rate for a prolonged period by doing aerobic workouts such as dancing to fast music, running up and down the stairs, jumping rope, doing dynamic yoga stretches, jogging on your treadmill or doing calisthenics. If you exercise vigorously 300 minutes per week, you can lose between 2 and 3 pounds of body fat per month.

Step 5

Perform muscle-building calisthenics and stretches that use your body weight as resistance. Pushups, pullups, sun salutations, squats, lunges and triceps dips add muscle tissue that replaces excess fat. This shift in your body composition raises your basal metabolism so you burn more calories even while resting.

Warnings

• Skip sweetened carbonated beverages, which add empty calories and contribute to belly bloat.

Tips

• Follow the Centers for Disease Control's guidelines for the amount of activity a healthy adult needs. These guideline give suggestions as to what kinds of exercise, the intensity and duration.

www.livestrong.com

Effects of Eating Breakfast as Your Only Meal

Breakfast might be the most important meal of the day, but it's only one of several that everyone needs to function at peak levels. Skipping most of the day's nutrition can and will have myriad adverse effects, not just on your health, but also on your job or school performance. If you're considering having breakfast as the sole meal of the day, keep in mind that the risks far outweigh whatever short-term benefits you might experience.

Spinach and egg on toast for breakfast. Photo Credit Lilechka75/iStock/Getty Images

Malnutrition

Your body needs calories to function, but it also needs the nutrients in food to keep you as healthy as possible. It's virtually impossible to pack all the day's nutrients into one meal. You might try to replace the lack of nutrients with supplements, but keep in mind that they are not as effective as the nutrients found in food. In addition, falling short on key nutrients such as protein, zinc, iron, magnesium, potassium and calcium dramatically increases your risk of conditions such as anemia, osteoporosis and even brain damage.

Damaged Metabolism

Breakfast is intended to kick-start your metabolism at the beginning of the day. Any snacks and meals later are intended to keep it humming and keep hunger at bay. If you stop eating after breakfast, your metabolism goes into "starvation mode," slowing dramatically and drawing on your body's stored energy. Moreover, leaving your metabolism idle for most of the day means that over time, it will slow permanently. When and if you decide to resume normal eating habits, you will gain weight quickly because your metabolism is unaccustomed to breaking down food on a regular basis.

Cognitive and Psychological Problems

Eating regular meals ensures that the brain receives enough glucose to function properly and support neural processes. When you leave your brain without glucose for most of the day, you will experience a range of negative side effects, such as memory loss and extreme difficulty concentrating. You might also experience dramatic mood swings and damage your brain's ability to tell the difference between hunger and satiety.

Blood Sugar Spikes

When you eat, your body breaks the food into two parts: fat and energy. The fat is stored, while the energy goes into the bloodstream in the form of sugar to service your organs and keep you going. You might give your body a jump-start in the morning, but skipping the rest of the day's nutrition will cause a serious drop in blood sugar. You will feel sluggish, tired, irritable and jittery, likely damaging your work or school performance. In addition, regular blood spikes and drops put you at serious risk of developing diabetes.

www.livestrong.com

SCROLL SAW

A scroll saw is a small electric or pedal-operated saw that is useful for cutting intricate curves in cases where a jigsaw or coping saw,is not appropriate. It is capable of creating curves with edges. It is named after its traditional use in making scrollwork, which are sculptural ornaments that feature scroll-head designs.

Dremel scroll saw

Comparisons

It is somewhat similar to a band saw, but unlike band saws, in which the saw blade is a continuous loop, scroll saws use saw blades similar to those of coping saws and operate through a quick reciprocating up and down motion.

A scroll saw has two main advantages when compared to a band saw; The first is that the blade can be removed and placed in situ, through a pre-drilled starting hole. This feature allows interior cutouts to be made without creating an entry slot for the blade through the edge of the workpiece. Second, a scroll saw can cut significantly more intricate curves.

Brands

Many different brands of scroll saws are on the market today. Hegner (Germany), Notable (made in Germany), Eclipse (made in the USA), and DeWalt (originally made in Canada, now in Taiwan), Excalibur (originally made in Canada, now in Taiwan).

There are also a number of less expensive scroll saws manufactured in Asia, including those from Delta, Dremel (Bosch), Craftsman, Ryobi and others.

Sizes

Scroll saws are classified according to the size of their throat, which is the distance from the blade to the rear frame of the saw. The throat depth determines how large a piece of wood can be cut. Smaller saws have a throat of as little as 12 inches (300 mm), while commercial saws can approach 30 inches (760 mm). Before the era of computer automation, industrial saws were sometimes used to make even larger objects by hanging the top mechanical linkage from the ceiling, thus providing an arbitrarily deep throat.

Scroll saws vary in price from under $100 to close to $2,000. The more costly saws are more accurate and easier to use, usually because they minimize vibration.

Uses

Scroll sawing is a popular hobby for many woodworkers. The tool allows a substantial amount of creativity and requires comparatively little space. In addition, many scroll saw projects require little more than the saw itself, reducing the investment in tools.

Scroll saws are often used to cut intricate curves and joints, a task they can complete quickly and with great accuracy. They can also be used to cut dovetail joints and are a common tool for thicker intarsia projects. When a fine blade is used, the kerf of a scroll saw is all but invisible.

Along with band saws, scroll saws are used with modern intarsia.

Scroll saws are comparatively safe. In particular, inadvertent contact between the blade and the operator's fingers are unlikely to result in serious injury.

Mode of Operation

There are several types of scroll saws. The most common design is the parallel arm, in which a motor is attached near the back of the arms and the two arms always remain parallel to each other. The C-arm variant uses a solid "C" shaped arm, with the blade being mounted between the two ends of the "C". The parallel link type, used by Hawk, Excalibur, and DeWalt, has rods in the upper and lower arms that are "pushed" by the motor to move short (about 4 inches – 100 millimetres– long) articulated arms which hold the blade.

The rigid arm scroll saw was popular until the 1970s but is no longer made. It has a single-piece cast iron frame. The blade is attached to a pitman arm on the bottom, which pulls the blade down. A spring in the upper arm pulls the blade back up again. This design has a significant weakness in that the tension on the blade changes with every stroke; modern scroll saws are all "constant tension" designs.

Blades

With the exception of blades made for very light duty saws, typical scroll saw blades are five inches long. The major types are:

• Skip tooth (or single skip tooth) which have a tooth, a gap, and then another tooth;
• Double skip tooth (two teeth, a gap, then two teeth);
• Crown or two-way, which have teeth facing both up and down so that the blade cuts on both the down-stroke (as with all other blades) and the up-stroke;
• Spiral blades, which are essentially regular flat blades with a twist, so that teeth project on all sides;
• Metal cutting blades made of hardened steel;
• Diamond blades (wires coated with diamond fragments), for cutting glass.

Blades come in many weights, ranging from #10/0 (for making jewelry - about the size of a coarse hair) to #12, which is similar to a small band saw blade.

Hand-operated scroll saw, around 1900.

Another variation is called a reverse tooth blade. On reverse tooth blades, the bottom 3/4" of the teeth are reversed (point up). This arrangement helps to reduce splintering on the bottom edges of the cut. However, it does not clear sawdust out of the cut as well as a regular blade, so cutting is slower and produces more heat. This heat reduces blade life and makes scorching of the workpiece more likely. Reverse tooth blades are especially useful when cutting softwood and plywood such as Baltic birch.

The latest variation is called "ultra-reverse". These blades are configured with 4-5 teeth down and then one up and is repeated through the length of the blade. The blade clears dust very well and leaves a much cleaner back (very few "fuzzies"). These blades sizes range from #1 through #9.

Further Reading

• Jensen, Laurits: Billedskærerbogen, 1986, ISBN ISBN 87-7490-263-6.

- Wikipedia

PARQUETRY

Parquetry is a geometric mosaic of wood pieces used for decorative effect.

The two main uses of parquetry are as wood veneer patterns on furniture and block patterns for flooring. Parquet patterns are entirely geometrical and angular—squares, triangles, lozenges. The most popular parquet flooring pattern is herringbone. The use of curved and natural shapes constitutes marquetry rather than parquetry.)

History

The word derives from the Old French parchet (the diminutive of parc), literally meaning "a small enclosed space". Large diagonal squares known as parquet de Versailles were introduced in 1684 as parquet de menuiserie ("woodwork parquet") to replace the marble flooring that required constant washing, which tended to rot the joists beneath the floors. Such parquets en lozangewere noted by the Swedish architect Daniel Cronström at Versailles and at the Grand Trianon in 1693.

Parquet Versailles.

Materials

Timber contrasting in color and grain, such as oak, walnut, cherry, lime, pine, maple etc. are sometimes employed, and in the more expensive kinds the richly coloured mahogany and sometimes other tropical hardwoods are also used. While not technically a wood, bamboo is also a popular material for modern floors.

Parquet floors were formerly usually adhered with hot bitumen. Today modern cold adhesives are usually used.

Cleaning

Wood floors may be brushed clean, and mopped when necessary. Upright vacuum cleaners can scratch and wear the surface, as grit particles become embedded in the spinning brushes.

Repair

Parquet floors are usually long lasting and require little or no maintenance. Unstuck blocks are re-glued. Bitumen-glued blocks require use of either hot bitumen or a cold bitumen emulsion, as other glue types do not adhere to bitumen.

Domestic use

Parquet floors are often found in bedrooms and hallways. They are considered better than regular floor tiles, since they feel warmer underfoot. However they do little to absorb sounds such as walking, vacuum cleaning and television, which can cause problems in multi-occupancy dwellings.

Basketball courts

The iconic parquet floor used by the Boston Celtics at TD Garden.

One of the most famous parquet floors is the one used by the Boston Celtics of the NBA. The original floor, which was installed at the Celtics' original home of Boston Arena in 1946, was moved intact to Boston Garden in 1952 and used there until the team moved to what was then known as FleetCenter in 1995, now known as TD Garden. The floor remained intact and in use until it was cut up and sold as souvenirs in 1999, after the 1998 demolition of Boston Garden. The Celtics today play on a parquet floor inside TD Garden that combines old and new sections.

Similar parquet-designed floors were made for the Orlando Magic, Minnesota Timberwolves,  Denver Nuggets, and New Jersey Nets. Of the four, only the Magic continue to use a parquet floor (The Magic transferred theirs to the Amway Center from the Amway Arena); the Nets were the first of those teams to switch to a regular hardwood court (although their old parquet floor continued to be used by the Seton Hall basketball team until 2007), with the Nuggets using their parquet from the 1990–91 to 1992–93 seasons and the Timberwolves installing a new floor at the Target Center for the 2008–09 season. The herringbone parquet was first used by the Toronto Raptors during their SkyDome years, and was revived by the renamed Brooklyn Nets upon moving to the Barclays Center in 2012.

While the Charlotte Hornets unveiled a parquet-like floor at the Time Warner Cable Arena for the 2014–15 season, it is not considered a true parquet floor. Instead, it simulated the pattern of the parquet by alternately painting light and dark trapezoid sections through the use of varnish, forming a beehive pattern that is synonymous with the franchise.

Notes and references

1. ^ Fiske Kimball, The Creation of the Rococo 1943, p 47, noting the original accounts.
2. ^ Great Floor Sanding (2015). "Parquet Floor Sanding".Retrieved 2015-03-26.
3. ^ "Boston Garden History". TD Garden. Retrieved March 8, 2007.

External Links

Australian Parquet Industries http://parquet.com.au/products-timber-flooring/technical-info/technical-catalog

• Artistic parquet inspired in Islamic Art.

- Wikipedia