CINCINNATI - It's that time of the year, when home owners are getting started on home improvement projects, both indoors and out.

Beau Bolce isone of lead interior designers in Cincinnati, and the proprietor atQuince & Quinn, a furniture anddecorating store in Oakley. Besides running the store, Bolce does design work for clients around the Tri-State and around the country. On Saturday morning he stoppedby the9 News studio to chat with Brian Yocono aboutsome of his favorite tipsand trends forgreat summer design .

Bolce says a great place to start this time of year is "spring cleaning". It may sound cliche, but it's important to get a fresh start for the summer. With the change of season, Bolce suggests taking time to clean out closets and get rid of clutter.

Bolce says a great way to get your house ready for summer is to change out rugs, furniture, andaccessories, and give your home a beach house vibe. You can replace heavy wool rugs with sisal rugs, for a more light and airy look. Sisal is a woven natural fiber that is popular for rugs this season. Bolce sayssisal rugs areinexpensive and easy to maintain.

Another hot trend for summer is driftwood-colored finishes for furniture. Bolce says the light gray driftwood color is replacing espresso finishes this season. Using driftwood-colored furniture in your home can add to that vacation-house feel. Bolce suggests mixing gray tones with oranges and pinks for a pop of color. You can also add tropical plants to create a fun beachy look.

The pink and gray color trend is also making its way into the kitchen. Bolce says this color scheme is a retro throwback to the 1950's. The pink color palate is making its way onto walls and fabrics, and is beingpaired with stainless steel appliances. To complete the 1050's look, Bolce says vintage-style aprons are making a comeback as well!

Beau Bolce'sdesign store is called Quince& Quinn. It's located at 3235 Madison Road in Oakley. For more information you canvisit the store's website , or Facebook page .

Copyright 2012 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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Local decorator shares great summer design tips for your home

John Edwards leaves the federal courthouse in Greensboro, N.C. on Friday. (Chuck Liddy/AP) She thought maybe you should probably pay for your girlfriend yourself.

Bunny Mellons reaction to learning that her secret payments to the John Edwards campaign were used to cover up his relationship with Rielle Hunter, as described by her interior decorator friend Bryan Huffman in his court testimony Friday. Even the former senator on trial for alleged campaign finance violations cracked a smile at that line, reports the Associated Press. The heiress, now 101, had a complicated romantic history herself and wasnt about to judge him for an affair, Huffman said just the financing of it.

Read more: Lawyer for wealthy heiress says John Edwards knew money was for him (AP), 5/4/12

Read earlier: D.C. insiders line up to testify in Edwards trial, 4/24/12

John Edwards trial: Andrew Young is one confused witness, 4/24/12

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Quoted: Bunny Mellon’s thoughts on the Rielle Hunter affair

Historic homes like the Jackson Street classical revival house chosen for this year's San Francisco Decorator Showcase evoke visions of the lives that were lived in such a place.

If only the mahogany-paneled walls could talk.

This 30-room yellow brick structure built in 1902 was a wedding gift from the president of Wells Fargo Bank to his daughter Clara upon her marriage to attorney Emanuel S. Heller. Over its 110-year history, it's been home to wealthy philanthropists, attorneys, nature preservationists, psychiatrists, shipping magnates, jewelers and interior designers.

The austere facade hides a romantic interior that has seen many incarnations of fabulous home design, and the rooms reworked for this showcase house are no exception.

On view through May 28, the annual showcase benefits University High and features exquisite interiors by more than 30 of the Bay Area's best interior designers. The "bones" of the home remain as glorious as they were when the 1906 earthquake forced displaced financiers to set up shop inside its magnificent halls. The ornate woodwork, grand double staircase, large stained-glass window and stunning views stand as a testament to the luxuries attained in San Francisco's Gilded Age.

"The architecture really drove the design," says Geoffrey De Sousa, who created an intimate gentleman's study off the great hall. "We wanted to embrace the colors and pattern of the period in order to make the space more

The study

For this room De Sousa took his inspiration from "The Cult of Beauty" exhibit at the Legion of Honor, working in a color palette of coppery oranges and blues to take familiar elements of the late Victorian era into the 21st century. A hand-printed and appliqued rust botanical wallpaper extends onto the vaulted ceilings, while the blue and gray rug recalls exotic peacock feathers. Handblown glass spheres in a custom lamp by John Pomp hang over a craggy mahogany and brass desk by Sylvan Fiss. The modern photograph of a robed woman in nature evokes the ginger-haired muses favored by the Pre-Raphaelites.

The living room

A striking contemporary photograph of another red-haired maiden hangs over a plush French sofa in the elegant living room by the interior design firm of BAMO, a San Francisco-based design firm. Principal designers Steve Henry and Michael Booth upholstered the walls in a deep burgundy ribbed silk to complement the mahogany walls while the grand coved ceiling is papered in a pale gold de Gournay tea paper.

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San Francisco Decorator Showcase: Classic design, modern sensibility

VERGENNES At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, May 8, Vergennes officials and residents will take what could be one of the final steps on what has been close to a five-year journey.

Then, in the city fire stations basement meeting room, aldermen will convene a public hearing on new zoning regulations proposed by the Vergennes Planning Commission. A copy of the laws is posted at vergennes.org.

Planners have been working on those zoning laws since Vergennes adopted its award-winning city plan in October 2009.

When and if adopted by aldermen, the laws will create two new zoning districts, tweak regulations in other districts, and incorporate the citys subdivision regulations and significantly update them for the first time in 40 years.

The plan itself was the product of more than two years of work by the citys planners, who before writing the document conducted surveys, held well-attended forums and even interviewed residents waiting in line at the recycling center.

The Vergennes City Plan, said current planning commission chairman Shannon Haggett, provides both the vision for the citys future and the underpinnings for the new zoning laws, which planners approved after their own public process and gave to aldermen last month.

The goal of the process ... is to really to take the tenets set forth in the plan and reconcile our current zoning and subdivision regulations with them, Haggett said, so that our regulations are matching the intent of the plan, which was informed by the people coming together and saying these are the things that we want to see in the city of Vergennes.

Aldermen must hold at least Tuesdays public hearing; they may choose to hold more. If they accept planners work as is or with only minor technical changes, they may then adopt the laws.

If aldermen want to make major changes based on what they see or what they hear from the public, the proposal must go back to the planners to be reworked, and the hearing process must from scratch back before planners.

Haggett hopes and expects that wont be necessary, given that both the plan and the zoning laws have been based on extensive public input over the past five years for example, just recently, based on testimony at their final public hearing, planners added density bonuses for planned unit developments in the citys agricultural zone.

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New zoning could effect look of Vergennes

Photo credit http://www.theelectricbrewery.com

Hey, remember us?

Yeah, weve been busy babies, too many hours on the clock, building business plans, blah, blah, blah. The fact that so much time has passed since our last post seriously burrows into our collective psyche. It pains us. But, sometimes life gets in the way. What can you do? Please allow us to apologize. Consider it a hiatus, a time to recuperate. And we move on

One thing that we have absolutely not allowed to go stagnant is our endless trek down the path to better beer. We have been homebrewing every chance that we get. For us, brewing is not just a means to the end of having beer to drink. Its so much more. We want to make the best beer in the world. We put hours into recipe formulation. We read, we discuss, we reflect This is a log of our process.

The ever sharing Eric Salazar of New Belgium (photo credit http://www.fairfaxbrewfest.com)

The brewing community is phenomenal. We love being a part of it. We always feel accepted and we almost always walk away from a brewery visit feeling like we were virtually hugged by the staff. The one thing that we are often most surprised by is how open brewers are about what they do. Processes, recipes, sometimes even financials are shared with us openly. It speaks to the genuine quality of people that we aim to surround ourselves with. Ultimately, we want to be just as open and helpful. We want to spread the love too.

So this is our attempt to share. We thought that it might be helpful to write down our process for recipe formulation, if not to help other all-grain brewers, to help us remember why we did what we did. This way, if a bit of time passes between the first time that we brew something and the follow up brew,we dont have to start all over from scratch.

We urge you to share your experiences as well, for we are still figuring it all out ourselves.

I (Timperial) should, in addition, mention that I am also writing this as a means to assist one of my employers, Homebrew Heaven, get flow to their website and to create a deeper set of tools to assist homebrewers on that site. Please check them out if you havent already, for they are allowing me to take time on the clock to write these articles.

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The Homebrewer’s Brain – Munich Helles

FFKR Architects was named one of the top 500 design firms in the country by Engineering News-Record for the third consecutive year.

The Top Design Firms list, published annually, ranks the 500 largest U.S.-based design firms, both publicly and privately held, based on design-specific revenue and informs industry opinion.

"Were gratified once again to be included with such notable firms and to be recognized for our client driven design," said Ken Louder, FFKR President and CEO. "The ranking demonstrates our firms ongoing and successful commitment to growth and development across the intermountain region."

The Salt Lake-based FFKR Architects is an architectural and interior design firm, serving the western United States since 1976. Its practice encompasses a broad range of building types and services ranging from education, entertainment, hospitality, historical preservation, religious, and sport facilities.

FFKR recently completed the Davis Center for Performing Arts and the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute expansion. Current projects include the Salt Lake City Olympus Replacement High School, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints new Brigham City temple and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes Wellness Center & Sports Complex in Ft. Hall, Idaho.

Copyright 2012 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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FFKR Architects Named in Top 500 Best Design Firms

By Karissa Rosenfield (click here for original article)

You may remember Sou Fujimoto Architects radical House NA from this video we shared with you last November. Designed for a young couple in a quiet Tokyo neighborhood, the 914 square-foot transparent house contrasts the typical concrete block walls seen in most of Japans dense residential areas. Associated with the concept of living within a tree, the spacious interior is comprised of 21 individual floor plates, all situated at various heights, that satisfy the clients desire to live as nomads within their own home.

Described as a unity of separation and coherence, the house acts as both a single room and a collection of rooms. The loosely defined program and the individual floor plates create a setting for a range of activities that can take place at different scales. The house provides spaces of intimacy if two individuals choose to be close, while also accommodating for a group of guests by distributing people across the house.

Sou Fujimoto states,

Ranging in size from 21 to 81 square-feet, each floor plate is linked by a variety of stairs and ladders, including short runs of fixed and movable steps. Stratifying floor plates in a furniture-like scale allows the structure to serve many types of functions, such as providing for circulation, seating and workings spaces.

The short-spans allow for the thinness of the white steel frame. Complemented by the thin white-tinted birch flooring, many wonder where the utilities are hidden. Some floor plates are equipped with in-floor heating to help during the winter months, while strategically placed fenestration maximizes air flow and provides the only source of ventilation and cooling during summer.

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House NA / Sou Fujimoto Architects

When the letter arrived in 2007 inviting Tod Williams and Billie Tsien to enter a select competition to design a new Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, the husband-and-wife architectural team were momentarily stumped. Yes, they were well known among the cognoscenti, who admired their artisanal devotion to their projects. Yes, their new Folk Art Museum in Manhattan had just opened to rave reviews, raising their profile. And, yes, they had just made a good impression in Philadelphia with their elegant design for a small engineering building at the University of Pennsylvania.

The problem was that Williams and Tsien had never visited the Barnes Foundation and its fabulous art collection in suburban Merion.

Embarrassed by the lapse, the pair "hightailed it out there," recalled Williams, now 68. "I'd known about it since I was at college" at Princeton University, he admitted, but "it always seemed like a hassle to get to." He chided himself for his "intellectual laziness" and quickly acquired a pair of tickets to visit the galleries.

The Barnes worked its usual magic on Williams and Tsien. At the entrance, Jacques Lipchitz's stylized ceramic bas-relief stopped them in their tracks. They were left dizzy by the sensory overload of Matisses and van Goghs and Renoirs. And yet the element that intrigued them most was the one that perplexes many visitors: the antique hinges and brass implements that founder Albert C. Barnes had salted among the paintings. Albert Barnes, they realized at once, was a kindred spirit.

Barnes was a modernist who was intensely drawn to handcrafted objects. So are Williams and Tsien, who practice what might be called slow architecture. They pursue just a few projects at a time, so they can pay close attention to the details, etching and scoring and hammering every surface of their buildings as if they were crafting fine leather bindings or handmade paper. While they don't apply ornamentation in the same way that a neoclassical architect might have, they enliven their simple forms with the strategic use of rich color, unusual glazes, metalwork, and lavishly textured masonry.

Bigger names were considered for the coveted Barnes commission, including Rafael Moneo and Thom Mayne, but the board decided instead to go with the pair's small New York-based firm. It wasn't just their sensibility about craft and detail; the board also felt "they understood the complexity of the project better than anyone else," Aileen Kennedy Roberts, who chairs the building committee, has said.

Without a doubt, the $150 million Barnes building, which opens to the public May 19, was more complex than most museum projects. It was no secret to Williams and Tsien that the foundation's decision to relocate to Philadelphia was a controversial one, decried in the world's art press as a desecration of Albert Barnes' unique vision.

Because of promises made during the lengthy court battle, designing the new Barnes was a herculean assignment fraught with character-testing obstacles. For starters, the architects were obliged to re-create the interiors of the Merion galleries, inch-for-inch, inside the new building. Not just room dimensions, either. All the paintings, metalwork, and other objects would be placed in precisely the same arrangement as they had been in Merion. The imposition of that single requirement would ripple through the rest of the design, and would profoundly dictate the look and function of the new building on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

For most modern architects, the idea of replicating any building, even one as fine as Paul Cret's exquisitely proportioned 1920s gallery, is anathema. Some art-world figures were appalled to hear that Barnes' antiquated, salon-style hanging scheme would also be replicated, although others saw it as crucial to understanding the collector's intentions. Yet for the Barnes to succeed in its new location, the board understood that the building had to be a serious work of architecture, not a pastiche.

Many argued it was an assignment that simply couldn't be done well. "A faux Barnes is going to be a disaster, a compromise that will satisfy no one," said Lee Rosenbaum, who writes the CultureGrrl blog for the Arts Journal, and has been critical of the move.

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Architects' zeal for detail matched founder's

Seattle-based landscape architecture firm Gustafson Guthrie Nichol and New York-based architects Davis Brody Bond have won a competition to redesign Union Square, on the National Mall, in Washington, D.C.

"The National Mall is an extraordinary monumental landscape. Remarkable for its sheer scale, its powerful presence serves the country as both a public park and place of gathering and discourse," GGN Director Kathryn Gustafson said in a news release. "The goal of our design is to create a sustainable, durable and flexible plaza that is yet inviting and also active when it is not occupied for national events."

The Trust for the National Mall organized the competition to choose designs for three mall sites. Union Square, at the base of the Capitol, is the site of such major events as presidential inaugurations and mass demonstrations.

"Union Square represents an opportunity to fulfill the Mall's promise as a national place of assembly that is adaptable and easily maintained," Davis Brody Bond Partner Carl Krebs said in a news release.

The winning design "engages visitors with an impressive monumental scale, while also providing comfortable places for a range of experiences and voices," according to the team.

It focuses on a central space defined by the Grant Memorial and a reflecting pool consisting of a two-inch sheet of water that can quickly be drained to create a range of differently sized assembly spaces. Paved paths run diagonally across the pool.

"(T)he design dramatically rethinks the use of water operating with just 10 percent of the water of the current fountain and creates a series of plazas which can handle the heavy traffic of special events, and in turn reduces the wear and tear on the National Mall's lawns and gardens," Krebs said.

A series of outdoor rooms flank the central space, while "subtle changes in grade are used to form terraces and low retaining walls that provide seating surfaces and views into these rooms," the team wrote. "Planting further defines the spaces within, utilizing the existing mature trees on the site. Materials have been selected to reinforce the different identities of the constituent spaces, as well as to create durable surfaces that can be efficiently maintained through the life cycle of the project."

Read more real estate news. Visit seattlepi.com's home page for more Seattle news.

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Seattle landscape architects on winning team for National Mall design

NEWPORT NEWS, Va., May 4, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Huntington Ingalls Industries (NYSE:HII - News) announced today that its Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS) division broke ground on the shipyard's new Apprentice School campus. Apprentice School students, faculty and staff were joined by Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, U.S. Reps. Scott Rigell, Bobby Scott and Rob Wittman, Newport News Mayor McKinley Price, HII leadership and other business and community leaders Thursday at the construction site for a ceremonial ground-breaking event.

A photo accompanying this release is available at http://media.globenewswire.com/hii/mediagallery.html?pkgid=12729

Armada Hoffler, the City of Newport News, the Commonwealth of Virginia and NNS have partnered on the project, which will include an 80,000-square-foot school, workforce housing, retail space and a parking garage. The campus will be located between 31st and 34th streets, bordered by Washington and West avenues.

"Looking out across this technologically advanced shipyard -- the only place in America where our nation's aircraft carriers are assembled, and home to commercial and military shipbuilding facilities rivaled by none -- it is clear that America's long history of innovation and advanced manufacturing is still alive and well," said Gov. McDonnell. "The skills needed to create these engineering marvels cannot be learned haphazardly or in your average technical training program. Virginia is proud to partner with the company to create this new campus to house their program. This facility will provide a fertile ground to cultivate the skills and trades necessary to build the ships of today and tomorrow."

More than 100 faculty and staff teach 25 different programs and more than 75 course offerings at The Apprentice School. Since 1919, the programs have produced more than 9,600 graduates in support of NNS's operational needs. An apprenticeship is a formal training program that allows students to receive instruction and experience -- both theoretical and practical -- in the various aspects of a skilled trade.

"This project is a demonstration of HII's commitment to education and investing in our people," said HII President and CEO Mike Petters. "Make no mistake, we believe this commitment to workforce development is necessary because what we do as a heavy manufacturing company -- the products we build and the services we provide -- is a direct result of the skills, talent and capability of our 38,000 employees."

NNS President Matt Mulherin said, "This campus will provide a first-class learning facility for our apprentices, while also providing another significant step toward revitalizing downtown Newport News. It is yet another symbol that American manufacturing is alive and well in Newport News. Without the support of an engaged state and city -- and its leadership -- a large, industrial organization such as ours would not flourish. We appreciate the long-standing support and partnership the City of Newport News and the Commonwealth of Virginia have always shown us."

The Apprentice School attracts an average of 4,500 applicants per year for 280 openings. The school offers four- and five-year, tuition-free apprenticeships in 25 occupations to qualified men and women. Apprentices work a regular 40-hour week and are paid for all work, including time spent in academic classes. Through partnerships with Thomas Nelson Community College and Tidewater Community College, The Apprentice School's academic program provides the opportunity to earn associate's degrees in business administration, engineering and engineering technology.

"Our national defense depends on our Navy," said U.S. Rep. Scott, "and the work product of the graduates of The Apprentice School will serve as the backbone of the United States Navy. We all look forward to the growth and progress of the apprentice program and the impact that the apprentices will have on the future of shipbuilding and our nation."

Mayor Price said The Apprentice School project "represents a partnership of organizations which embraces the values of generations of citizens in Newport News and throughout the Hampton Roads region--quality education, superior work ethic and an exceptional quality of life." "We are proud to be the home of The Apprentice School and to have played a role in an endeavor which will create opportunities for years to come," he said.

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Photo Release -- Newport News Shipbuilding Breaks Ground on New Apprentice School