Hois Ironworks Ltd.

The client wanted a unique railing for his pool house / spa - something that looked like waves and bubbles. Also, he didn't want to spend a small fortune for it, so I designed a picket railing, easy and inexpensive - then, at obvious spots, I made these "wavy panels", completely random pieces that I cut from 3 mm thick sheet iron. Inside them, I placed rings with custom-cut, colored glass pieces. The budget was cut in half, also, the effect was playful, and at the same time s...triking and entirely different than anything else! The project is located in Wallace, Nova Scotia, at the Fox Harb'r spa, so we had to make a big box with all our materials and tools in it, send it off by truck, then take a flight to Halifax, then drive to Wallace to install the job. When the installation was complete, we made the box smaller (for our tools only) and shipped it back to Toronto! See more

From original sketch to finished railing - all we had to start, was the client's instruction of "something with ovals, but heavy and serious"... The stairs kept curving up, from the basement to the second floor and into the landings - there are no corners to interrupt the flow and the carpenter's hand-made stringer had to be followed faithfully. To complicate things, the project was in Ottawa, a 4 hour drive from our shop in Toronto, so the measurements and templates had to b...e exact - a lot of work to waste if the railing didn't fit! Every element on this railing was hot-forged, except the horizontal bars, and every railing section required slightly different heights due to the stringer's imperfections. I remember driving to Ottawa with a trailer full of iron, what a long drive it was, contemplating the work ahead! In the end, the railing fit so well, it seemed like it was done first and then the stair was built under it! See more

An older project... all curved stair and landing railings. Measuring a curved railing requires a lot more time than measuring straight railings, you not only need distances and slopes but also templates of the curves. Furthermore, to measure a curved stair is nearly impossible - especially if that stair was done by the carpenter's hand, on site, and is not geometrically correct. This is why the only sure way to do it is to make approximate curved bar templates in the shop, t...hen go to the site, correct the templates on the stair itself, then weld verticals between the top and bottom bars - still on site - so that the slope is determined. Fine, if the client's house is in the same city, but how do you do it if the site is in another province, 3,000 kilometers away? The location of this project is Wallace, Nova Scotia - 3 hour flight from Toronto (or 3 day drive, by car), and when I got the job I still didn't exactly know the logistics of the operation, I just knew that I had to find a way to fly there by myself, take my measurements and return to Toronto without any doubts... And so I did, by inventing a curved-stair measuring system that I still use to this day - I just had to carry a one-meter long suitcase that contained all my iron templates and tools - and weighed about 50 kilos. We made the railings in Toronto, then built a big box which contained all our tools and materials, loaded it to a truck, and three days later we took a flight - my helper and I - opened the box on site and started working with a space of three days to finish the job. All the railings fit like gloves on hands, we did not do any site corrections whatsoever and the total installation took a day and a half. The other day and a half, to the time of the return flight, we spent sightseeing... Nova Scotia is truly beautiful! See more

These fireplace screens will always bring a smile to my face because of the story behind them... My father, Nicholas Hois and I delivered them to the client's condo once they were finally finished. The place was on the 51st floor of a prestigious tower in downtown Toronto, so we had to use a heavy-duty dolly - because of their weight - and hold the elevator for about 30 minutes. From the elevator to the fireplaces we had to carry them by hand, because the site was completely ...finished and wouldn't allow for dollies... in fact, the client's furniture had also just arrived, so we had to go around very exquisite, and very expensive, couches, chairs and tables. The last screen, the one with the roses and curved top was finally installed in the dining room, right behind a 21-foot long, hand-carved table, surrounded by twenty, amazing wood chairs, still wrapped in plastic. At the end of it all, my then 72-year-old father badly needed to rest - so he decides to take a seat on one of those chairs... My breath was immediately caught in my throat, along with the collective breath of at least another 10 people in the room, painters, cleaners and designers... "Dad, you can't sit on that..." I was about to say, but the head designer interrupted me by almost screaming: "Sir, that's a $10,000 chair - please get up!" My father looks at him, casually changes sides while still seated, stretches, finally gets up and says in his thick, Greek accent: "$10,000 dollars? It's not even that f...ing comfortable!" Everyone in the room roared in laughter, including the designer... See more