So you've got this wet bar in your 1970s house or apartment and it's screaming for a mirror backing, glass shelves, a collection of cocktail glasses, a faux leather ice bucket with tongs, and fifths of Jack Daniels, Tanquerey and Absolut.
Trouble is, you don't drink. So what to do with the wet bar?
A Southern California blogger named John posted his solution on a website called Ikea Hacker. On this site, readers send in photos of ways they've used Ikea products in unexpected fashion.
In this case, John turned a simple Ikea bookcase into a custom built-in. He installed a tile counter, put Ikea pulls on the bottom cabinet, and added the shelves.
He writes:
"I basically cut up a $39 bookcase added a few left over dowels and fitted it inside my existing opening. The cabinet below houses a rack of my audio equipment. Sounds great, looks great."
Question: I saw an episode of Flip That House where the house in Thousand Oaks had Corian counters in the kitchen and the flippers didn't think that looked like a million-dollar house, so they covered the Corian with granite tiles. Later, the real estate agent said they should have taken the Corian off completely and installed slab granite.
We are in a similar situation in that we are about to sell our house and other houses in the neighborhood are going for just over a million dollars. And we, too, have Corian counters. We love our counters, but should we replace them with granite to get the highest price for our house? Should we use granite tile or slab granite? In terms of sales value, is there any difference between natural granite and engineered quartz counters?
In a million-dollar house, I would not use granite tiles. Granite slab, a quartz composite, or tile would be a much better option. To install one counter material over another is poor workmanship and inadvisable. In terms of natural granite vs. a quartz composite, they are just about the same price. And they look pretty much the same. Moreover, quartz is much lower maintenance than natural granite. So having quartz shouldn't negatively impact the value of your home. In true L.A. fashion, as long as it looks real, it’s fine. (Click below to finish reading answer.)
This is the master bath shower in a house that was rebuilt after the tragic Cedar Fire of 2003, which Wikipedia says was the second-largest wildfire in California's recorded history.
But from the ashes of the San Diego County fire came this opportunity to rebuild, and thus this shower.
The flooring is slate, and the band under the seat is Indian multicolor slate.
The gray tile on the walls is a Dal-Tile porcelain called Aqua.
And the bench seat and tub counter are red marble.
Delicious, no?
I found this shower on a blog called Duderosa. To see the entire process of this house being rebuilt, start at the bottom of the blog and work your way up.
OK, so this contraption that chills and then cooks your dinner — and responds to phone prompts — costs nearly $8,000. That’s ridiculous, of course. But once the early adopters help work out the kinks (as with the iPhone), and the technology geniuses make it more affordable (ditto), this may be our future.
The new Connect Io Intelligent Oven by TMIO — voted by developers as one of the coolest products to be displayed at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference in San Francisco — is a refrigerator and oven in one.
Want to come home from work to a home-cooked meal? Well, get a wife. Just kidding. A simpler plan is to put your chicken in a pot in the morning or the night before, surround it with potatoes, onions and carrots, and leave it in the TMIO on refrigeration mode.
Then, an hour or so before you’re set to arrive home, call your oven and tell it, via voice prompts, to get cooking. Or, use your computer at work to make the commands. And if something comes up, maybe a late meeting or impromptu drink that makes you want to delay the oven's starting time or switch to the warming mode, even single people will have a reason to say, "Excuse me, I've got to call home."
Donna Bankowski has some good reasons why it took her 12 years to remodel the cruddy main bathroom of her Moorpark home, a feat she finally pulled off.
"I'm taking my time," said Bankowski, who bought the fixer-upper with her husband, Leroy, in 1993.
Indeed, since buying the 1970s tract home, the couple has made steady progress on its upgrades — replacing the wood on the front of the house with brick, redoing the driveway and walkways, adding a back patio, replacing the windows and doors, replacing the roof, scraping off the "cottage cheese" ceilings, installing Pergo floors, painting the walls and adding thick crown moldings and baseboards.
As the rest of the house rose up out of mediocrity, the bathroom upgrade kept getting delayed. But it wasn't for lack of need.
The bathroom had a dropped ceiling consisting of plastic panels on a rusted frame over fluorescent tubes. Plus, the dark oak vanity was not at all in line with Bankowski's French-Country palette. Worst of all was the cracked and dingy fiberglass tub enclosure.
Question: We want to do several upgrades to our house, including the kitchen, the master bathroom and a new deck. Should we have them all done at the same time, or would it be easier on my family to have them done one at a time?
My answer: I've seen projects tackled both ways. Many homeowners who undertake a massive, all-encompassing remodel say it was the right thing to do, although others who tackle projects one at a time report they actually enjoy the experience.
If you like the process of remodeling, of working with contractors and craftsmen, of tweaking each project to perfection, and you approach it like a hobby, you might like to take it one adventure at a time. I call these people serial remodelers.
But I suspect most people want to plow through, get it done, get the workers out of there and get the dust cleaned up. (What I'm trying to show by this photo of a San Fernando Valley remodel in progress is how messy and dusty a project can be.)
However, if you've never had remodeling work done to your home, you might be ill-equipped to handle three large projects at once. Try having one small project done so you can experience the chaos (and dust!) that ensues.
Maybe you could have a skylight or a bay window installed or some doors replaced. After you get a taste of it, you might decide to go forward with the next project. Or if you get migraines, you might choose to move to a rental down the street and get the whole job done at once. More than one family I've interviewed has said they will "never again" live in the house during a major kitchen remodel.
For a contractor's perspective, I asked Alon Toker, president of Mega Builders in Chatsworth, what advice he would give.
Where is it written that hot water must be heated and then stored 24/7 in a big tank that needs a whole closet to itself? Those days are fast fading.
Whole-house on-demand systems, about the size of a breadbox (remember breadboxes?), use electric or gas to heat water at the moment you need it and are increasingly replacing tank-storage systems.
Now, German manufacturer Stiebel Eltron has taken the concept one step further with its new mini on-demand electric water heater, which is pretty cute at about 7 inches square and 3 inches deep.
Though not big enough to fill Kohler's new 84-inch overflowing bath for two with any efficiency, the new mini could provide hot water for a guest-bath sink or a wash-up area you've been considering for the garden shed. Or a pool house? How about on a boat, small cabin or RV?
Stiebel Eltron's whole-house electric on-demand heaters are available online for about $400 with free shipping; the mini costs less than $200.
Here are the actual costs for the kitchen remodel and dining room addition done by Lily and Arnie Richards in Downey. The couple did all the work themselves over a five-month period where they worked every weekend, evenings and during their vacation time. If you were to undertake a project like this, and were ready to break ground today, you would be done in time for Thanksgiving, and it would consume most of your waking thoughts.
As you lean back against a comfy armchair in Barbara and Gene Noller’s family room, you can hardly grasp what they’re telling you: This used to be a garage.
Nothing here speaks the architectural “language” of a dreary, drafty garage: not the wood floors, the French doors, not the sheer swag curtains at the windows or the custom bookshelves on the walls.
But this room did indeed start its life as a garage, attached to the house through the service porch, with a cement slab floor, exposed wall studs, tarpaper, and overhead wood rafters.
A few years ago, the couple transformed the room with $12,000 cash and what Barbara calls “sweat equity.”
The Noller’s bought their two-bedroom house in anticipation of Gene’s 1996 retirement from Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The sturdy, ranch-style house was built in 1953 on a 1/2-acre lot in the upscale Friendly Hills area of Whittier.
Their previous house in San Gabriel, where they lived for 34 years, had grown too large after their three children left home.
But eventually, this house grew too small.
Once retired, Gene needed an office for consulting and an art studio for painting. Barbara needed a crafts room. And they wanted space to entertain their growing circle of retirement-era friends.
And mostly they needed somewhere to entertain and supervise their seven grandchildren, all of whom were younger than 11, when they came to visit.
“That’s it,” Barbara had said one Thanksgiving, a few years ago, when the grandkids were underfoot. She was ready to turn the garage into a family room.
I saw this deep bubbling baby at the International Builders Show in Orlando and all I can say is: Oh my. I want it.
It's called the "Sok" overflowing bath for two by Kohler, and it has effervescence (bubbles) and chromatherapy (colored lights). It's deep enough to submerge your shoulders, and if it overflows, well that's the point. The bubbling waters from the inner tub overflow into the outer tub. Look here for more pretty pictures.
This is so politically incorrect I don't know where to begin. The enormous amount of water it would take for one bath? The gas or electric needed to heat that volume of water? The 240 volts of power to amp up those 13 bubble jets? The decadence? What if one had a fireplace in the bathroom? And a flat screen TV? Would you feel compelled to hide those facts from the rest of the world?
This kitchen, featured on the Dwell magazine website, was done for less than $2,000 (not counting DIY labor) with Ikea products.
The total cost was about $1,400 partly because the guy who did it works for Ikea and got his employee discount, but he figures the rest of us could do it for less than $2,000 (plus our labor).
Here are the products he used: Akurum wall cabinet frames, Lansa door and drawer handles, Imperativ back splash panels (stainless steel), Emsen double sink, ENSKÄR faucet, Tundra click-lock laminate flooring (maple finish), IKEA stove and hood vent.
When Cathy Nordlund decided to remodel one room in her Woodland Hills home to heart's desire — the powder room — she began by looking through "millions" of decorating magazines. Eventually, she decided on a Victorian theme.
But during her contemplation of fabulous Victorian bathrooms, it finally dawned on Cathy that they all shared a common virtue: "The wonderful light from their wonderful windows."
Cathy's powder room, however, was windowless, and would remain so — the room has no exterior walls. And she could not add a skylight because of the second story above.
At first, she thought of adding an old window frame to give the appearance of a real window, but after more magazine research she started to notice examples of trompe l'oeil, which is French for "fools the eye." Finally, she had her solution. She would hire an artist to paint a faux window on the wall. She thought: "Wow, I'm onto something."
To get exactly what she wanted, which was her ongoing theme, she made a detailed drawing of the window for a local artist who advertised that she painted wall murals.
The drawing shows a white casement window measuring 46 inches wide, 40 inches high and five inches from the corner of the room. One side of the window is open to a bucolic backyard scene showing the family's Rottweiler, Molly, and Nordlund's two children, Bobby 9, and Samantha, 7. It was husband Robert's idea to show a spare roll of toilet paper on the windowsill, and Cathy's idea to show a plant with dropped leaves and a dead bug.
"That's real life," she decided.
The artist's fee, at $200, was a bargain. After it was done, Cathy installed two real knobs on both of the faux windows, choosing a smaller knob for the "open" window to create the sensation that it's farther away. "I'm an engineer," Cathy explained. "That's how I think."
For a less custom look, you can buy ready-made murals. Check here and here.
A cramped bungalow becomes a 5,000-square-foot oasis with plenty of elbow room for all.
The first thing you notice about Janet Mitsui Brown's remodeled Mar Vista home is its sense of balance, harmony and consistency.
The slate on the fence posts is repeated on the chimney, the front steps and into the foyer. The red-toned wood of the double front doors appears again in the eaves and around the windows. The lanterns flanking the fence posts and porch unify its design, a combination of Asian and Craftsman features.
But once you enter the grand foyer, the 5,000-square-foot, two-story house reveals itself as a series of distinct spaces designed for the four individuals who live there: Janet; her husband, Roger Brown; their teenage daughter, Tani; and Janet's mother, Akiko Mitsui.
"I wanted the house to be a reflection of our family," said Janet, an author, illustrator and producer, as well as a practitioner of the ancient Chinese art of placement, feng shui. To achieve that, each member has his or her "own place."
The first time we reported on Michelle Minch — a professional home stager and owner of Moving Mountains Design & Staging in Pasadena — she had just announced on her blog that she won two regional Chrysalis Awards (remodeling awards sponsored by Qualified Remodeler magazine) for Best Kitchen Remodel Under $40,000 and Best Whole House Remodel Under $200,000.
Today, Michelle contacted the Pardon Our Dust blog to report that she was awarded the NATIONAL award for best kitchen remodel under $40,000, winning over regional competitors from across the country. Congratulations, Michelle.
Here's how Michelle describes the project:
My partner, Richard Tinsley, and I purchased the property as a flipper. The house, a classic California Craftsman cottage built in the 1920s, had been the victim of numerous misguided and poorly done remodels over the years. Despite the neglect, we could see past its ugly duckling exterior to its good bones. At only 840 square feet, sitting on a 4,000-square-foot lot, our goal was to restore/improve what we had to work with while opening up the interior to create a sense of openness and good flow.
We basically stripped the interior down to the studs, removed a wall between the kitchen and the dining area to open the house up, replaced the electrical and plumbing, added new insulation and drywall, and completely redid the kitchen and bathroom. Oh yeah, we also put in a new, prefinished solid hardwood floor and a new forced-air furnace and air conditioner. We tried to retain as much of the original character as we could, without being a slave to history. All of the windows, except one in the dining room and a bank of three in the bedroom, are original with the old wavy glass. I designed the kitchen with the idea of using a vintage restored O'Keefe & Merritt stove which I found on Craigslist.
When Arnie and Lily Richards remodeled the kitchen in their Downey home — doing every single task themselves — Lily's wish list included a custom stove hood. Arnie was a little tired from the months-long process when the job of building the hood came up. But he's a good husband, and so he made it happen.
You can see from this photo that Arnie was victorious. (And, hey, Lily's no slouch. She did all the tile work, among other things, including the granite tile counters.)
To figure out how to make a hood like this, I asked Arnie how he did it, and here's what he said:
"The hood was actually quite easy to build. The guts consist of a rectangular metal box with a high-powered fan, which we purchased from Pacific Sales.
This box is mounted inside the hood framework, which consists of a framework made of 2-by-2s covered with 1/4-inch drywall, and finished with molding. The 2-by-2 framework was bolted to the wall and ceiling before applying the drywall and molding. It was really pretty simple. I also stuffed the inside of the hood with fiberglass insulation to try to cut down on fan noise. It helps a little."
Thanks, Arnie. And to the readers of this blog: Have you done a DIY project you would be willing to share with us?Please email a photo and a paragraph or so telling how you did it, and where you got the stuff to do it with. The email address is: podblog@aol.com.
When you set out to design your new kitchen, the first question you have to ask is: Where do we put the refrigerator/freezer? Why? Because the unit is so darn big and bulky, right?
But no longer does the hulking refrigerator have to restrict your layout options, at least not if you choose the new Integra refrigeration line from Bosch, which offers the refrigerator and freezer separately.
You can get each in various widths — refrigerators at 24 and 30 inches wide, freezers at 18, 24 and 30 inches wide — and put them in different spots, like on either side of a counter. You can also get wine coolers that are 18 or 24 inches wide. And, the hinges are reversible, so you can get the door to open the right way for you. Another bonus: the narrower units are much easier to get through doorways and up stairs.
This product line features eco-friendly options including: Sabbath Mode, during which the unit uses no energy; Economy Mode, which adjusts the temperature for extra efficiency; and Vacation Mode, which adjusts the temperature and disables water and lighting. And of course, as Bosch has long been a proponent of energy efficiency, these units are Energy Star rated.
When it's time to sell your home, which upgrade will bring a bigger return on your remodeling investment:
Granite or Corian counters? A bigger master bath or a walk-in closet? Tile or wood floors? New windows or a new roof? A patio or a deck?
Will the remodel you are considering now add a lot to your asking price, or just a little? Or will your remodel actually lower the asking price?
To help you sort that out, David Kean, a Los Angeles real estate agent with Prudential California Realty, will answer your online questions this week about the appeal of your remodel to future buyers.
Just post your question in the comment section below. And please give David as much information as possible: the town you live in, the age of the home, the value of homes in the area, how long you plan to live in the home before you sell, what kind of remodel you're considering, etc.
Post your question, then check back to get David's answer.
This new kitchen accessory from Broan (makers of those super-quiet exhaust fans, among other products) goes in the category of instant kitchen update for less than $500.
Of course, only one spot in your kitchen will enjoy a new beauty — those few square feet of backsplash above your cooktop — but it will be a solid, high-quality beauty.
These instant tile backsplashes come in three sizes: 36 inches by 20 inches, 30 inches by 14 inches, and 30 by 20 inches. They range in price from $320 to $360, so they're not cheap. To install one, you first hang a metal bracket securely into the wall, and then hang the tile piece onto that. It's kind of like an artwork for your kitchen, but one that can be cleaned.
Pictured here are two of the four styles, though I look forward to the day when Broan, or another manufacturer, shakes it up a bit and offers more vibrant colors.
The "Tuscany" style (top) is made of porcelain tile with a porcelain center mural and border in pewter-tone glaze.
In the "Spatola" style (taken from the Portuguese word for spatula), three stainless cooking utensils appear to hang in a tumbled marble backsplash with inlaid stainless and black accents (to blend with either stainless or black appliances) and set in a brushed aluminum frame.
I am looking for an upcoming Southern California kitchen or bath remodel to follow on this blog.
Here's how it works: If you and I decide your project would be a good one to blog about, you write a few diary entries per week and take a few digital photos that I would post, and let all of us follow your ups and downs, glories and challenges. Whatever you go through, we all go through. Your burden is lessened, I would think.
A few years ago I followed a modest kitchen remodel for the print edition of the L.A.Times, and I thought it was great fun to receive the homeowner's missives every few days, from beginning to end. And it seemed like the homeowners, Val and Bernie, had fun as well. In this photo, you see their carpenter and a helper taking out the old counter. At this point in a remodel, homeowners are elated. "It's finally starting!" they often say.
Interested in sharing your remodel and helping others understand the process better? Please e-mail me at podblog@aol.com and let's start the conversation.
While showing off her new kitchen/dining room addition one evening, Lily Richards explained to me why she and her husband, Arnie, never considered hiring a contractor to oversee the project.
"We're kind of conservative financially. . . ," Lily began.
"We're cheap," Arnie broke in. And, he added, "We're too egocentric."
What's more, the couple didn't even hire subcontractors like drywallers, framers or electricians to do the work, choosing instead to take on every task themselves, including Arnie's worst nightmare: plumbing.
"I detest plumbing," said Arnie, a director of quality at Mattel toy company. "I'm no good at it. I'm lousy at it."
Indeed, he cursed so furiously over his plumbing duties during the project last year that, Lily, a secretary in Mattel's Hot Wheels division, said, "I can't listen to this anymore," and threatened to call in a professional plumber.
"Don't," Arnie implored. "I won't let this beat me."
Artist and professor Gilah Hirsch has lived in her Venice home since 1974, and she has no plans to leave.
Rather, she continues to make it into a very personal space.
To get a feeling for Gilah's home, you could study one of her paintings: mysterious, mystical, flowing, teeming with nature. According to a review of her paintings by Artweek magazine: “Each stroke, each gesture is charged with a tremendous energy and immediacy.”
But while most of Hirsch’s works are with her but a short while – from her brush to the canvas and off to collections around the world — her largest creation, at 1,500 square feet with an added art studio, has been a 33-year remodeling odyssey.
It was 1974 when Gilah, as a newly hired art professor at Cal State Dominguez Hills, beat out several developers to buy a 1904 duplex in a Venice neighborhood she called a “heroin slum.” The duplex had been built as a beach house and had neither electricity nor heat. In the 1970s, the ice man still came around.
A home improvement saga is playing out in San Francisco where a house being worked on by a young couple collapsed and crashed into the house next door.
According to this story in the San Francisco Chronicle, the couple had bought a distressed 1909 bungalow for $524,000, said to be the cheapest house for sale in San Francisco, and then proceeded to try and fix it themselves, without the benefit of a licensed contractor. Their goals included jacking up the house and replacing the foundation. But, according to the neighbors, they were using Kragen auto jacks, among other foolish tactics.
In May, the house fell off the jacks and slid 15 feet, crashing into the neighbor's house.
According to senior building inspector Carla Johnson, as reported in the article: "Jacking up a building can be dangerous. If this were a professional putting in a new foundation, a much more substantial system would have been used. It was inadequately shored and braced."
But now, the neighbor's insurance company is questioning whether or not they are covered for another house crashing into theirs.
The moral of the story: if your neighbors' house is within sliding distance of yours, and they are raplacing the foundation as a DIY project, best read the fine print on your insurance policy to make sure you're covered for an unexpected visitor of the lumber variety.
Wes Craven, the 67-year-old director of "Scream" and "Nightmare on Elm Street," filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court last week against Pauly Shore, the 39-year-old "Encino Man" star, for damage to Craven's home allegedly caused by Shore's horror-inducing home improvements. Shore has reportedly denied the charges.
Specifically, the suit alleges, poorly done renovation work caused water runoff to Craven's property, which then caused a hillside collapse last December and damage to the home itself.
Shore "failed to properly or adequately design, construct, build, furnish, maintain and/or repair his yard," causing "substantial damage" to the Craven homestead, including a significant reduction in the value of the property, the exact amount of which will be determined in court.
I don't want to make anyone feel bad who uses a salt-based water softening system, but you know all that salt being released into our environment as a result of your system? Not good. That's why they are banned in some areas. For me, I don't like the slimy feeling of water softened with salt.
I came across a system by Sterling Water at the Pacific Coast Builders Conference that uses an electrical current to "condition" the water. Water conditioning is the alternative to water softening. The latter takes the minerals out of the water, while the former leaves the minerals in the water but prevents them from crystallizing into the scale that harms plumbing, fixtures and appliances.
The Sterling device is small and operates inline, with unconditioned water coming in one end, and conditioned water coming out the other. It costs about $1,500 and the only maintenance it requires is an annual flushing with vinegar.
At my house, we use magnetic water conditioning. It's basically the same idea as the Sterling system, but instead of electrical current causing the mineral atoms to repel each other and not form colonies to attach to pipes, the same effect is caused by strong magnets clamped onto the main pipe coming into the house. They cost about $900 for a typical house that uses one 40-gallon water heater. You can find a few brands here and here.
How about you? Do you still use a salt-based softening system? Would you switch to a more environmentally friendly system if you could?
Good news, junkies! Garage-sale shopping is bigger than ever, helped along no doubt by the environmental movement's focus on reusing and recycling.
Garage Sale America, a new book by Bruce Littlefield, takes the reader on a journey of homey bargains.
Here are some reader comments from Amazon:
It is a quiet chilly afternoon, and the rain is dripping down. All you want to do is to curl up with a good book, and escape the dreary day. Picture a friend stopping by and sitting down with you and taking you on a most wonderful voyage through time, place, and through many adventures. That is what will happen when you sit down to the 132-page Garage Sale America book by Bruce Littlefield.
. . . and . . .
What I did not expect, but I probably could have, is this is a design book. Here I've been making excuses for our psychedelic-themed bathroom, and our western-themed coffee room, and our dark and brooding theatre-like TV room. I walk into "normal" people's homes and everything was bought to match. That's design, right? Well, as it turns out, not necessarily.
Question: We want to build a deck this summer, but now we are confused about what to use: wood or a composite product such as Trex. Any suggestions?
Answer: From Pamela Berstler of Flower to the People, a Los Angeles landscaping company known for being environmentally sensitive: Composite wood materials have come a very long way just in the last four or five years. As you may know, many composites have an unnatural sheen and faux wood grain that is too prominent. We try to avoid these, as they tend to scream "fake."
However, there are three brands of composites we have used in various situations and been pleased with both the aesthetic and functional results.
As a substitute for ipe (a rot- and insect-resistant Brazilian hardwood, pronounced EE-pay) in a very high-traffic and water-splashed area around a pool, we have used Fiberon Tropics. This product's warm brown color requires no maintenance and has taken the beating of a gaggle of children without fading, pitting or splintering. (Continue answer by clicking below.)
In this kitchen, the backsplash tile sets the tone. If your kitchen could be jazzed up with tile, installing a backsplash is a good DIY project.
I saw step-by-step instructions for this in a great book from The Taunton Press called 52 Weekend Makeovers, so I got permission from the editors to reprint their excellent instructions and photos for you.
This is a project you could actually do this weekend if you found some great tile. Here are some tile places that have been recommended by SoCal homeowners:
The great thing about living in a metropolitan area is your access to so many shops, supply houses and enterprises.
Daniel Gonzales and Janice Stango took full advantage of this when they set out to convert their old, dirt-floored garage in North Hollywood into a sitting area (they will build a carport to replace it as per zoning laws).
For the floor, they discovered that stone yards generally throw out broken fragments of granite, so they started collecting these variously colored pieces until they had enough to cover the whole area. After a wood subfloor was laid, Daniel let the accumulated stacks of granite pieces determine the layout of the floor -- and they seemed to suggest a mandala*. "We only had one of this color," Daniel says, standing on a large remnant in the middle of the mandala; "so many of this color," he says, stepping out from the center; "so many of this color." And so on, with larger areas of color building to the edges of the room. Near the doors, the thresholds are different colors. I think it looks pretty darn cool. Your thoughts? (*From Wikipedia: Mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the universe from the human perspective. A mandala, especially its center, can be used during meditation as an object for focusing attention.)
Why is it not news that licenses were revoked from 35 California contractors in one month? That's because a similar number of revocations by the California Contractors State License Board happens month after month, year after year.
The real news might be the 295,000 contractors in the state who didn't lose their licenses. Who needs a license? According to the CSLB:
"All businesses or individuals who construct or alter, or offer to construct or alter, any building . . . in California must be licensed by the California Contractors State License Board (CSLB) if the total cost (labor and materials) of one or more contracts on the project is $500 or more."
But geez, there are so many rules. Look at some of the complaints one of the unlucky "April 35" had toward his license that caused it to get it pulled:
• Departed from trade standards • Violated building law - no permit • Exceeded contract amount • Failed to comply with Contractor's License Law • Home Improvement Contract violation • Excessive down payment • No payment schedule • Payment exceeds value • Abandonment without legal excuse of any construction project • Contracted out of classification • Willful or fraudulent act • Failed to pay for materials or services
Here's something to know: Unlicensed contractors, or those whose licenses have been suspended or revoked, will often hand out business cards with a fake number, or with their city business license number, knowing that homeowners rarely check on the status of a contractor's license.
What does it take to build a very green infill condominium project in conservative, tourist-driven, image-conscious Santa Barbara, where detractors argue that solar panels on red-tile roofs create visual blight?
“It takes explaining and patience,” says Dennis Thompson, AIA, the architect charged with shepherding a four-unit project through the seaside hamlet’s notoriously picky boards, commissions, committees and bureaucracy. “Anytime you do something innovative, you’ve got to be prepared for that.”
And the project certainly is ground-breaking, involving structural insulated panels rather than conventional framing, grid-connected solar panels to produce 100% of the electrical needs, and cutting-edge gypsum wallboard infused with microscopic beads of encapsulated wax that melt or harden with the weather to create a thermal barrier.
Most controversial is a parking system that uses hydraulic lifts to stack autos in space-saving garages. Indeed, it is the parking spaces created by the system that allow for four units on the lot, rather than three.
And that extra unit is pretty significant considering that it will have a market value of about $1.5 million. With the lifts costing $6,000 each, even with a lot of explaining to the city planning department, that’s not a bad investment, Thompson told me.
(Click below for the site plan showing how they got more open space and less driveway space.)
The Westlake Village-based research firm surveyed 842 customers in April and May who had bought cabinets in the previous year. Customers were asked about their satisfaction based on five factors (in order of importance): operational performance, ordering and delivery, design features, price competitiveness, and warranty.
By the way, the cabinets pictured here were made by a non-English-speaking carpenter, presumably unlicensed and probably undocumented, in a converted garage off an alley. He is the father of a student of the homeowner, who was so dissatisfied with her cabinet-shopping experience -- prices too high, kitchen shop owner had too much attitude and tried to jack up the prices, the homeowner claimed -- that she turned to the cabinet underground.
If you hang around the building industry long enough, you notice people have a lot of trouble with new cabinets, including complaints about high prices, getting the wrong cabinets delivered, and with parts and pieces missing. Though I'm not advocating this anti-establishment method of cabinet commerce, which seems way too risky for me, I do understand what drives people to it. And I have to report that this homeowner's satisfaction level is very high.
Had any good experiences with new cabinets? Any bad experiences?
So how did Richard Gomez manage to build an architect-designed home in Long Beach for less than $300,000, including the land?
Here's what made it possible:
1. Richard bought the lot in 2001 for $30,000. Why so cheap? The lot is tiny, at 45 feet by 50 feet, and it had some "issues" that had to be resolved (something about a neighbor's fence).
2. The lot was, and is, in what's charitably called a "transitional neighborhood," which means everyone hopes it will transition from sort of a rough area to one a little nicer. In this case, the city of Long Beach is helping that process along by designating certain areas as part of its arts district. This lot is on the outer edge of that area.
3. Richard acted as his own contractor, hiring and bargaining with subcontractors. And, he did a lot of the work himself. Oddly enough, as budget-minded as he was, he did not mind paying architect John Sofio tens of thousands of dollars to design the house. After all, that was the point of Richard's adventure, to build a cool, avant-garde house. That would have not been possible without an architect.
4. And finally, the house is built without a lot of things you take for granted, such as doors (it's a very open floor plan). But it does include good stuff like bamboo floors and granite counters.
So that's how it's done, and it took Richard two years to do it.
If you consider Southern California one big neighborhood, then the designers and architects listed below have been recommended by neighbors. And these neighbors were so pleased with their remodels that they wanted to see them, and their architect or designer, featured in the Los Angeles Times, in my "Pardon Our Dust" series. That's a pretty good recommendation.
When Chantal Dussouchaud and Harry Dolman bought this Hollywood Hills home, they had one major objection to it: the massive driveway that dominated the entire front of the house.
Part of the couple's reaction stemmed from the fact that they had been living in Paris (they are both European natives), where the car culture is much less pronounced than in Southern California.
To them, the driveway was nothing less than shocking, and all the more so because Chantal wanted to convert the existing garage into a workshop for her interior design business and to build a carport on the other side of the house, as was required by codes.
Then, the driveway would be totally useless.
So they did a radical thing: they took out the driveway and replaced it with lawn, an olive tree and a gravel walkway lined with lavender. Did they do the right thing? Or did they hurt the overall value of the home?
From the Bloom Where You Are Planted Incarcerated Dept.:
Next time I go to jail, Martha Stewart will be my role model, not Paris Hilton. Martha took her sentence like a woman. She said: Let's do this thing. And she got it done.
Maybe Martha's five months in the slammer were easier to handle than the 46 or 23 or however many days Paris will be there because Martha has what it takes to decorate a cell.
For me, this post is a long time coming. It was back in the mid-1990s when I was writing my "The Way We Live" series for the Santa Barbara News-Press (back in the good old days when it was owne
So you've got this wet bar in your 1970s house or apartment and it's screaming for a mirror backing, glass shelves, a collection of cocktail glasses, a faux leather ice bucket with tongs, and fifths of Jack Daniels, Tanquerey and Absolut.
