Did you know May is National Remodeling Month? Must have something to do with the after effects of spring cleaning. Are you inspired to start a home project? Heres the latest and greatest in lighting:

In lighting news  

Were in the midst of a revolution, according to the Washington Post. A light bulb revolution, that is.

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From left, Payton, Caleb, and Sasha are among the young gardeners whose work is on sale right now at the annual West Seattle Montessori/WS Academy (WSB sponsor) plant sale, till 3 pm at 11214 15th SW. The school website even has a list of what they’ve been growing for the occasion. L

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I’ve recently started buying vintage gardening tools. Previously, I had bought a set of Spear & Jackson traditional range. Not for any quality issues but purely because I liked the look of them. They have been great actually. But then I thought, rather than buying tools that look vintage, how about buying some that really are?

I figure if they have made it this far and are still in good repair they they’re pretty sturdy, right? I picked these up on eBay. The fork and trowel were around £5 each and the hedge clippers were around £9 I think. I’m v

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When Houston architect Ken Harry partnered with Hines Development to imbue the lobby of Houston’s Chase Center with new life, he called on acclaimed glass artist Paul Housberg. The result is a public work of art, a striking installation composed of over 2,000 individual pieces of glass, and a lobby that seems to transcend the workaday world inviting visitors to linger.

For Housberg, whose innovative glass art graces hotels, corporate offices, healthcare facilities and civic buildings across the country, this project brought a welcome return to Texas. Pr

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Projects all over the USA & the World    HOME ARCHITECTS ^TM for wherever you are.

Timeless Custom Home Designs | Building Architecture | Timber Frame | Mountain homes

This is a story about Ann and Roger Baxter and their desire to have their custom dream house designed and built on their beautiful land in Bowerton,  Indiappalacchia, USA.  Names and locations have been changed to protect the privacy of people.

Ann and Roger are in their late 50s and are planning for retirement.  They have planned well.  They have had their ups and downs, but have come out okay.  Especially now that the economy is starting to return to an even keel, the Baxters feel that they should plan to have a wonderful place in which to live on that country land that they purchased several years ago.

It is a panoramic ridgeline composed of 15 acres from the road down into the valley below.  Granite mountains are visible in a layered view, one offset behind the other, well into the blue haze in the distance.  Tall pine trees grace the sloping land, always green and gorgeous.  Boulders the size of houses dot the hillsides.  Turkey and deer graze on the fertile forest floor.  What a place in which to enjoy their well-deserved later years!

ONLINE PLAN SEARCHING

Ann was looking online and found a few home design companies that had several different premade sets of plans.  Roger liked to save a buck, so he thought that was the way to go.  He noticed that these were companies not indicating any licensed professionals on staff, like an architect.  Well, he figured, What does it matter? So Ann bought

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A fear of mistakes is one of the reasons many people refrain from embarking on a DIY project. Not only do they worry they will be mocked or laughed at should they make a noticeable mistake, but they also worry that the incurred damage will be irreparable.

However in most cases this is far from the truth. Com

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GE Lightings Nela Park Campus in Cleveland, Ohio is celebrating its 100th anniversary in April 2013. To kick off the celebration, they unearthed a time capsule this week buried in the cornerstone of one of the original buildings. Inside were photos, journals, a local newspaper, and five incandescent light bulbs packed in sand that date back to 1912.

Can you believe that one of those light bulbs worked when engineers connected it to power? GE spokesman David Schellerman said he believed the light bulb was a 40-watt tungsten filament incandescent bulb; but that it will be cleaned and tested further.

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Ingredients: 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts 1 15oz. can mild enchilada sauce 2 8oz. cans mild diced green chilies 2 8oz. cans sliced black olives 2  roma tomatoes diced 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese 5 large flour Tortillas 1 bunch of green onions chopped sour cream and salsa as a garnish

Instructions: • Put chicken in a large pot, cover with water, cook at a soft boil for 1 hr. •

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The Mangetout that we planted a few weeks ago in Jackson’s garden is growing well. He was amazed that it came up so fast and we put some sticks in for them to grow up. He wants to know if we can eat them yet? And even though I said that they won’t be ready for some time I expect he’ll still pick some and taste it, just to see!

He never believes me when I say things aren’t ready. He spat out quite a few green Strawberries last year before he admitted that I was right. He has a will of iron.

And… at the moment Jacskson’s little patch has more growing in it than my garden. All I have

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In most of the interior refitting cases of a top floor apartment, the starting point is a compartmentalized space, and the result – an open space. However, in this case, the starting point was a penthouse with interior elevator, divided only by glass panels and curtains, obtaining two distinct apartments with shared exterior access to the staircase and the elevator. The penthouse was pragmatically restructured into four rooms and two bathrooms, plus storages and circulations.

The apartment is organized along the longitudinal axis of the generous circulations (1.5 meters width), flanked by storage areas on one side, and access doors to the rooms on the other. Except for the bed wall, the exterior closing of the living room and the matrimonial bedroom is made exclusively of glass, precisely of sliding panels, at the maximum dimension of the chosen system, so that the interior could open as much as possible to the terrace.

The three colors – white, black and brown – are regularly distributed according to surfaces and volumes. The supporting structure pillars are covered with mdf panels veneered with nut plywood, the same as a newly created interior area, a container meant to separate the daytime area from the night time one, which contains two rooms and a restroom. The merge of the panels was made by cutting the edges on a 45 degrees angle, so that the surfaces covered this way would offer the image of a one-piece, and not of a veneering with visible material thickness.

All the vertical elements – including the doors – have the free height between floor and ceiling (2.60 meters). The vertical structure elements are made of pieces with a strong horizontal dominant. The living-dining-kitchen area gravitates around a console – a white structure, four meters long, which serves as flower box, countertop (with storage space beneath) and dining area. Supported by the TV stand, a composition made of white and black rectangles built around a relatively central pillar of the living room, the console is a chromatic accent element, well outlined on the black modular structure of the kitchen furniture. In this structure, there was inserted, between the countertop and the kitchens hanged cabinets, a mirror that reflects in a pleasant way the window and the curtains on the opposite wall, elegantly cropping the black composition.

The matrimonial bedroom and the bathroom compose a conjoint space, being separated by a clear glass closing, doubled by a white curtain; this way, to the white volume in which is sculpted the washstand corresponds, at a formal level, the black volume of the console in front of the bed. The sanitary objects are, obviously, in rectangular shapes, in order not to alter the stringency of the right angle. The double washstand is like a topographic drawing, in the form of level curves which become wider and wider towards the top margin. The rectangular structure of the washstand penetrates the bathrooms glass wall in order to allow placing, on its border, the light switch panel, which is as minimalist as the entire arrangement, with the switches indicated by blue LEDs.

At the detail level, the formal stringency of the omnipresent 90 degrees angle is sweetened only by the perfect circular lights placed on the ceiling and by a few organic graphic elements – the 2D black icon of a leafless tree which is symmetrically repeated against a vertical and, respectively, a horizontal axis, in the two bathrooms.

Layout plan

]]> http://www.fixer-upper-home.com/home-improvement-tips/ac-apartment-square-one/feed 0 http://www.fixer-upper-home.com/home-improvement-avenue/choose-your-living-room-furniture-carefully http://www.fixer-upper-home.com/home-improvement-avenue/choose-your-living-room-furniture-carefully#comments Wed, 14 Mar 2012 01:28:54 +0000 Christopher Palmerston http://www.fixer-upper-home.com/home-improvement-avenue/choose-your-living-room-furniture-carefully There are few rooms in the house that are frequented more often than the living room. Used as a reception room by many families but also as a place of rest and relaxation, it is important that a living room is well arranged and comfortable. There is a fine balance between a living room that is ascetic in appearance and a living room that appears to be congested. By carefully considering furniture for the living room home owners can achieve this fine balance and create a living space that fulfils all of the family’s requirements.

The first consideration when choosing furniture for a living room is to determine how much space is available. H

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When the Department of Energy issued new energy efficiency standards in 2009, they didn’t just affect T12 fluorescent lamps. PAR 20, PAR 30, and PAR 38 halogen lamps will face the new standards as well. As a result, many inefficient halogen reflector lamps will no longer be manufactured or imported in the U.S. be

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Coming home with a large bag of groceries and fumbling with keys to open a back door can be a frustrating experience, so can having your kids forget the keys but need to be let inside.

These small frustrations can add up but the SmartCode deadbolt seems like the best answer to help calm our nerves as well as provide great security. Don’t worry about hiding a key outside, just share the code with whomever you trust and if you need to change the code you can do that almost instantly.

We’ve got a deadbolt on our back door and went through the process of installation which took less than 20 minutes including program setup.

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At this time of year I love Hyacinths. It’s just so lovely to start bringing the outside in. Spring is here (on some days) and on others we’re flipping back into Winter. But that’s okay by me. I’m mostly staying indoors still and keeping warm. But it’s nice to have something growing and alive and promising in the house.

I bought the stubby bulbs from the florist at my local garden centre (she’s so smiley I can’t resist buying from her!). They came in

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