The Entryway

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Architecture, Build, Construction, Design, environment, Home, Homeowner, Houses, real-estate, Residence, Shelter, style

Though you live in your backyard, the world inevitably beats a path to your front door. Well-designed entryways can offer, privacy, light, charm and character to your home – without breaking style or the budget.
A new door, some well-placed windows or a fresh coat of paint can work wonders on a tired façade or an out-of-date entry. According to architect Richard Hartmann, “The ambiance of your home actually starts outside. It’s a whole sequence of events. Meandering through landscaping on a slightly curved path, for example, enhances the experience. ”

Here are a few tips for adding style:

* Add window boxes. They add color to a plain exterior when they’re overflowing with plants or flowers.
* Replace old hardware with brass numbers, handles, a mailbox or kick plate. Ceramic or hand-painted house numbers are good alternatives.
* Add a new front door, sidelights or transom. If you can’t afford to replace the door, add decorative molding around the one you have.
* Use clay pots or sculpture to spark an uninspired entry.
* Add an awning over doors or windows. With Florida’s seasonal rain showers, it’s practical as well as pretty.
* Add carriage lights on either side of the front door or low-voltage path lights along the walkway. They can help bring your best foot forward.

Sweet Beams: Inspiring everyone who lives under a new roof! is available on amazon.com.

Better than a lien

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Architecture, Build, Construction, Home, Homeowner, Houses, New Home, real-estate

Life is more complex today. In the past to ensure payment for work, masons secretly would place a glass pane inside the chimney flue to prevent its use. Only after they received payment would the mason climb to the top of the chimney, drop a brick and break the glass.

Excerpted from Sweet Beams: Inspiring everyone who lives under a new roof!

The basement is the original laboratory

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basement, Homes, real-estate

• The basement is the original laboratory. 
•  It affords freedom for children  (young and old) to experiment.
• This is where projects are born and dreams come true.

Home: Celebrating the Spaces of Your Heart  by Renee Garrison and Tom Szumlic

Mundane tasks

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business, Homes, Houses, mundane task, real-estate

The next time you find yourself resenting some mundane task around the home, just proclaim that you are managing your family estate.

“Home: Celebrating the Spaces of Your Heart” is available at Apple’s iBookstore.

Letting go

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arlington national cemetery, condo, Downsizing, Family, Home, Houses, Memories, real-estate, Shelter

My sister sold her house.

A red brick structure in McLean, Virginia, where she and her husband raised three children, the house sold two weeks after it was listed.

“I’m happy to get the contract,” she said on the phone, “but I also feel kind of sad.”

Sad to leave the bedroom hallway, lined with family photographs (or it was until the realtor ordered her to remove them and paint it.) For 28 years, her children walked to school, went to prom, and returned from college.

The entire family gathered there after our father’s funeral at Arlington National Cemetery. Then, repeated the event 20 years later when we buried our mother with him.

More than bricks and mortar, my sister is selling a house permeated with memories.

Last year, 15 percent of US home sales involved dwellings that had been in the same hands for more than 20 years, according to the National Association of Realtors. A century ago, several generations lived in the same house, so these transactions were more rare.

Today couples tend to unload large homes before they grow too old to take care of them. Downsizing has become a retirement “rite of passage,” as children follow career paths across the country and no longer live close enough to help out.

My sister and her husband will move into a new condo and I shall try to forget the address that I memorized 28 years ago. Soon , two new little boys will be playing in her old backyard.

My sister doesn’t need a five-bedroom house anymore. She just needs a moment to grieve.

So do I.