21-10-2011 12:30 kitchencabinetvalue.com Cherry kitchen cabinets are stylish. Cherry kitchen cabinets are in high demand in new homes, renovations and kitchen remodeling projects. Cherry wood is hard, durable and beautiful in color and grain. The heartwood is red to a deep reddish-brown, with a fine closed grain. At first, the color might be light when used to build kitchen cabinets, but it darkens with age. Solid cherry kitchen cabinets are among the most expensive of all kitchen cabinet wood choices. For many homeowners, the cost of solid cherry kitchen cabinetry is prohibitive. There is, however, another way to do a kitchen remodel with the elegance and beauty of cherry without the higher cost. The secret to affordable cherry kitchen cabinets is to buy quality cabinets that are stained cherry. The stain can be deepened and smoothed by glazing the cabinets. Cherry kitchen cabinets are a good choice. They are versatile. Cherry kitchen cabinets never go out of style. They look good in any design or door style. They work with any kitchen décor choice from colonial to contemporary. They blend beautifully with all countertop materials, flooring choices, color schemes and kitchen layouts. Like all cabinets available from Kitchen Cabinet Value, our glazed cherry kitchen cabinets feature - Solid wood dovetailed drawer boxes with steel under-mount, full extension and soft-close drawer glides. - Five-piece raided panel door and drawer face design. - Full overlay door and drawer design. - Cabinet ...

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BY DONNA VICKROY dvickroy@southtownstar.com February 2, 2012 6:52PM

Firefighter Paramedic Aaron Rutter points out where repair work to the wall had to be made after replacing their old stove with a donated one at Palos Fire Protection District Station 1 in Palos Park, Illinois, Thursday, February, 2, 2012. The station is one of five finalists in the IKEA Firehouse Kitchen Remodeling Contest. The cabinet drawer on the countertop in the foreground broke Thursday morning. | Joseph P. Meier~Sun-Times Media

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Vote online

You can vote daily at http://www.rescueremodel.com.

Updated: February 3, 2012 2:08AM

Marianne DeHaan made a distress call to Ikea last month to rescue the kitchen at the Palos Park firehouse where she’s worked for 10 years.

“The kitchen is currently on advanced life support and the firefighters/paramedics are performing CPR (Cabinet Partial Removal) when necessary,” DeHaan wrote in her entry essay for the Ikea Firehouse Kitchen Remodeling contest.

It worked. The Palos Fire Protection District station at 8815 W. 123rd St. is one of three finalists in the online voting competition that continues through Feb. 28.

“We’re asking everyone we know to vote, daily, for our station,” said DeHaan, the fire district’s administrative assistant. “As you can see, we need a new kitchen. But it’s not going to be in the budget, that’s for sure.”

If they get the most votes — beating out stations in Yonkers, N.Y., and Oregon — they will receive a $25,000 kitchen makeover, complete with new cabinets, countertops, appliances and tile work.

A win for the financially strapped fire district not only would improve cooking efficiency and time, it would be a morale boost for a staff that recently saw six fellow firefighters laid off due to budget constraints, Capt. Jim Graben said.

There is no money to replace the chipped tile, a faulty faucet and cabinets that are duct-taped together.

“This is a way to get these guys a nice, decent kitchen without costing taxpayers a cent,” DeHaan said.

Asked what bugged them most about the current kitchen, firefighter Aaron Rutter said the sink, while colleague Joe Lenzen pointed to the fridge.

For the past week, Palos has led the online voting.

“But that could change at any moment,” Graben said. On Thursday, Yonkers was gaining on them.

DeHaan said a win for Palos would bring regional bragging rights, as well.

“It would be great for the Midwest for a Chicago-area fire department to win,” DeHaan said. “All firefighters are wonderful, but this is local.”

The district has 29 full-time and six part-time employees. The kitchen at Station No. 1 is used daily by six to nine firefighters.

The district — which is seeking a property tax rate increase via a referendum in the March 20 primary to address its financial woes — has two stations, but one is sometimes closed because of the reduced staffing.

DeHaan said the firefighters have done considerable repair work in the kitchen on their own time with their own money. They’ve patched holes in a wall to accommodate a vent after a used stove was donated to the department. They’ve even built shelving units out of 2-by-4s.

“The station is their second home,” DeHaan said. “They deserve a nice place where they can gather and enjoy a meal together.”

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Palos firehouse a finalist in kitchen makeover contest

A growing need for a skilled workforce of ship builders in Northeast Wisconsin convinced NWTC to create a new marine construction program.

Interest is so high in just the first year, the technical college can hardly keep up with demand.

A welding class at NWTC is full. There's a waiting list of students who want to be right where Amy Rangel is.

Rangel lost her job in Illinois and wound up in Marinette, enrolled in the new marine construction program.

"I never thought I was going to go back to school ever, but as I got older I kind of wanted to do something, and I'm not the office-type of gal," she said.

By summer she'll have her diploma and be ready to work -- with one employer in mind.

"Marinette Marine, hopefully," she said.

The rest of the class has the same goal.

"Work at Marinette Marine," Kevin Henquinette said.

"It's pretty easy to get a job there. If you want one, you basically have one," student Chris Barribeau said.

It's the surge of openings at Marinette Marine and other area ship builders that prompted NWTC to create this program in the first place.

"It's like, 'Hey, I want to get into one of those places, how do I get that employment?' And this is one of the avenues to get there," instructor Dale Lange said.

Employers have long been telling us there are jobs but not the skilled workers to fill them.

Lange thinks this new program helps fill that void.

"There's a lot of emphasis now because this is a future. It's a very much expanding area in our area right now," he said.

Already the school has added more classes and instructors to meet demand.

For those enrolled, the opportunities that come with this new program seem endless.

"To build a ship, really, and to do something I haven't done," Henquinette said.

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Demand is Building for Marine Construction Classes

IAN ALLEN

Scaffold Marlborough has erected 6625 metres, or 31 tonnes, of scaffold around Rangitane House, Blenheim's Post Office building

The Blenheim breeze plays its part when working 25 metres in the air, says Scaffold Marlborough foreman Hamish Sutherland.

Nevertheless, renovations on the Blenheim post office building have been cancelled only once since work started on January 6.

Scaffold Marlborough has erected 6625 metres, or 31 tonnes, of scaffold for Robinson Construction, who are painting the 1970s government building.

The companies have been contracted by the Rangitane iwi, who paid $3 million for the Main St building owned by New Zealand Post last year as part of its Treaty settlement with the Crown.

The building was renamed Rangitane House.

"It gets windy up there," said Mr Sutherland. "But we've only had to stop one day and we could go a lot higher."

Scaffold Marlborough had enough materials to reach 35 metres, he said.

"It's pretty tough roping the gear to the top but it's just like a big Meccano set; nothing to it really," said Mr Sutherland. "You just keep going up and up."

Scaffold Marlborough owner Lyndon Robinson said Rangitane House was their tallest job in Blenheim.

However, Robinson Construction project manager Mark Watson said the job was pretty straightforward.

The job was bigger than it looked because of the scaffolding, which continues inside the building to stop the lower roofs collapsing.

"It's an odd shape. There are two separate buildings that are just two-storeys high beside the main building.

"The scaffolding comes down onto these roofs but with that much weight the roof would collapse so essentially the scaffolding carries on down to the ground on the inside. So although we are only doing the exterior painting, some internal work was needed to ensure the building was structurally sound," he said.

Only the steelwork and frameworks are being painted. The painters are working clockwise around the building and should be finished by June, he said.

- The Marlborough Express

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Paint job will take until June

A rendering of a 46,000 square foot retail/office project in Pasadena. (Courtesy Photo)

PASADENA - M+D Properties is gearing up to begin construction on a three-story retail/office building in Pasadena, a project the company says will create nearly 400 direct and indirect jobs.

A groundbreaking for the mixed-use project, at 61 S. Fair Oaks Ave., is set to take place at 2 p.m. on Wednesday.

It will include about 46,000 square feet of retail and office space and two levels of underground parking space.

"We have some potential tenants, but nothing is confirmed yet," said Boguslaw Megielm, M+D's project manager for the building construction. "We are working with Bloomingdale's, and we have some restaurants as a possibility. We're leaving the interior spaces open for improvements. We're confident that we'll have tenants."

Megielm said the project is expected to be completed by the end of the year so the retailers will be able to take advantage of the holiday shopping season.

"We'll be actively looking for other possibilities in Pasadena," he said.

M+D included an economic report with the project that breaks down the jobs that will be created as a result of the building and its construction.

For the entire development, 397 permanent jobs will be created, according to the study - 218 direct jobs, 63 indirect jobs and 116 induced jobs. This includes the indirect and induced jobs but not the direct jobs from construction, since the development is expected to take less than two years to complete.

M+D

has done other projects throughout Southern California. The Lynwood- based company developed Plaza Mexico, a 450,000- square-foot project in Lynwood that includes retail, food, dining and office space blended together to create a cultural Mecca of shopping, dining and entertainment.

M+D is working on another mixed-use development in Buena Park called The Source.

kevin.smith@sgvn.com

626-962-8811, Ext. 2701

Twitter.com/sgvnbiz

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Developer M+D Properties to break ground on Pasadena project

21-01-2011 14:19 More Reasons for Four Seasons - How will you use your new sunroom? For more information please visit http://www.FourSeasonsSunrooms.com

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Sunrooms on Long Island - Four Seasons Television Commercial - Video

21-07-2010 13:41

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I’ve been fascinated by parking decks for years, starting with the Hess’s department store deck in my hometown of Allentown. The exit was a single spiral of concrete, winding down to the street.

As a Penn State freshman, my end-of-film- class project was a grainy black-and- white meditation on the Eisenhower Parking Deck. I think parking decks are architectural Mobius strips and a ripe metaphor for many sustainability issues.

There’s a lot of discussion among local foodies about how to support new and experienced local farmers better and how to expand local food production capacity. And there’s talk about how to create more markets — outdoor seasonal farmers markets, indoor year-round groceries and institutional buyers’ markets serving universities and hospitals.

But farmers hesitate to ramp up production without steady buyers, and buyers hesitate to make new purchasing commitments without knowing there’s a reliable supply. Which comes first, the farmers or the market?

Which should be a higher priority: aggregating consumers through food-buying cooperatives? Aggregating producers through farmers’ associations? Setting up local distribution hubs to help farmers, buyers and cooks collaboratively work out insurance, bidding, refrigerated storage, inventory control, payment and delivery?

Then there’s the tension between competition and cooperation. Sometimes I hear that local farmers and farmers markets hesitate to band together for marketing and other common challenges, because they produce similar crops and serve similar customer bases. But many also recognize that working together to build the overall customer base and coordinate planting can benefit all of them, as it does for farmers in the Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative.

In past agrarian societies, how did farmers choose crops so as not to drive fellow farmers out of business? Or did their agrarian cultural identity preoccupy them more with the survival of the whole community than the survival of each farm individually?

Given that today’s farmers must cope with the demands of competitive markets in a declining but still pervasive industrial culture, how do we keep them going and build viable cooperative systems around them so they stay safe and strong as the competitive system erodes around them?

One piece of the puzzle may be creating a clear role for local governments. Public health depends on public nutrition. If “government” denotes the group of people charged and funded by people to implement their community priorities, then local governments arguably have a stake in helping bring local farmers and eaters together.

In response to real estate market disasters — broken title chains, foreclosures, blight — some communities are linking publicly owned banks with eminent domain, mixed-use zoning and infrastructure retrofits to return sidelined properties to productive use in the neo-agrarian economy. Which leads back to parking decks and the movement converting car-oriented public space to food-oriented public space.

State College has at least one mixed-use parking deck, on Fraser Street. We could set up a Local Food Fund — supported by voluntary donations from taxpayers who think food access is a public good (or even a human right), and administered by the public works department — to renovate the top level of a downtown parking deck into a centrally located, publicly owned pedestrian-, wheelchair-, bicycle-and vehicle-accessible local food marketplace.

Katherine Watt is a State College writer and community organizer. She maintains a blog at springcreekhomesteading. wordpress.com, and can be reached at katherine_watt@hotmail.com.

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Marketplace idea taken to new level

06-01-2012 18:50 After our sewer connection was installed, the young assistant used a backhoe to cover it up and smooth out the yard.

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Using A Backhoe To Cover Up Sewer Lines - Video

22-09-2011 08:21 BGW Construction is part of the Building God's Way (BGW) network of kingdom building services, which includes the highest skilled builders and architects of churches and Christian schools. If you are in need of a builder or architect for a church or Christian school project, call BGW Construction today."

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Church Building