J'ade, designed by Italian company CRN, can store an eight-metre speedboat in its floating indoor garage Hydraulic-powered hatch fills with 18,000 litres of water and can also be used as an indoor ocean pool The luxury vessel was nominated for Best Interior at 2014 Monaco Yacht Show 196-foot vessel also features a gym, hammam room, and aquarium, and can sleep ten guests in four cabins

By Andrea Magrath for MailOnline

Published: 10:13 EST, 2 October 2014 | Updated: 16:15 EST, 2 October 2014

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In the battle to be the most extravagant mega yacht on the seas,it takes a lot to really impress.

While helipads, waterslides, and movie theatres are commonplace additions to the yachts of the super wealthy, a stylish Italian vessel is making waves for being the first to feature a floating drive-in garage.

J'ade, by Ferretti group company CRN, features a hydraulic-operated hatch which can store an eight-metre speedboat without the use of a tender lift to hoist it out of the water.

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196-foot J'ade mega yacht with world's first floating drive-in garage

The latest upgrades to the Presidio Officers Club, which reopens to the public Saturday, are a showcase of meticulous historic preservation. They also show how subjective a term like historic preservation can be.

While you can glimpse an exposed adobe wall from Spanish military days, most of the newly completed work involved the restoration of an earlier restoration from 1934 that relied on romantic visions of Californias roots. More recent additions to the complex, by contrast, have been altered freely in the latest round of work to bring them into sync with current design priorities.

Make no mistake: The $19 million rehabilitation designed by Perkins + Will for the Presidio Trust is another welcome step toward making the former Army post part of the Bay Areas daily life. But it is an act of reinvention as well as preservation, a case study in how turning back the clock is never as simple as it seems.

Other local examples of blurred history include such high-profile cultural buildings as the Contemporary Jewish Museum from 2008, which spills out from the shell of a much older Willis Polk-designed substation facing Yerba Buena Gardens. The lobby includes the original iron trusses and tile-clad columns, but they were stored off-site while a parking garage was inserted below. On a more mundane level, consider the frequency with which the facades of older buildings are retained while much larger structures are erected behind them.

But the goal at the Officers Club, billed by the trust as San Franciscos most historic building, wasnt to restore pieces of the past as much of an overall sense of what was.

We wanted to repair what needed to be repaired and leave everything else in place, said Christina Wallace, project manager for the trust, which manages nearly all of the 1,491-acre enclave at the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge. The great thing about the Army is that they always added. They never took things away.

Relics of Victorian era

This is most obvious in the Mesa Room to the left of the main entrance: At the south end is a wall of exposed adobe bricks that were stacked there at some point between 1780 and 1812, a period during which earthquakes and fires periodically ravaged the Spanish garrison. The walls on either side are covered in thin strips of wood painted green, relics of the Victorian era when the small adobe building was expanded and, simultaneously, reclad in Old West style.

The overall tone of the room is set by the most thorough redo of all, 1934s Mission Revival makeover. The deep-set windows slathered in white plaster are from that era, as are the dark wood doors and beams that were artfully distressed back then to make them look old.

The faux historic 1934 details extend throughout the newly restored portions of the older wings of the complex, because thats what defined the building California Historical Landmark No. 79 when its period of historic significance ended in 1945. Army officials touted the Officers Club in 1934 as a faithful replica of the former building, complete with wrought iron grilles on the windows and a Mission Revival veranda and buttresses out front. Eighty years later, it feels more like a beguiling act of make-believe shipped in from Santa Barbara than a remote outpost of a fading empire.

Excerpt from:
Presidio Officers Club preservation also an act of reinvention

Primarily due to the Stonebridge of Plainview apartment complex, permitted construction in the city is running more than double the pace set in 2013.

The citys September building permit report, released Wednesday, shows total permitted construction for the month at $6,292,722. That brings the total permitted construction to date in 2014 to $8,306,378. That compares to just $3,230,107 for the same period in 2013.

The bulk of Septembers construction activity is for a single new residential project, valued at $6,227,000.

According to city officials, that project is the 80-unit Stonebridge complex.

The Plainview City Council in July unanimously approved the annexation of a 5.79-acre site just north of the Walmart Supercenter for the project, at the request of apartment builder State Street.

That request was made, according to an announcement at the time, so that the complex could connect to city utilities and have access to Plainview police and fire protection along with garbage collection.

Up until the September report, construction totals for 2014 were trailing 2013 slightly, coming in at the end of August to $2.01 million compared with $2.38 million for the same period in 2013.

During the entire month of September, the citys building and zoning department issued a total of 16 permits. In addition to the apartment complex, the city issued one permit for residential addition ($5,000), six for residential remodels ($24,320), three for garage/carport ($4,700), one storage building (no value listed), one commercial remodel ($30,000) and three signs ($1,702).

For the entire year, five new residential construction permits have been issued for both single and multi-family projects: 21 for residential additions, 21 for residential remodels, one residential repair, four residential demolitions, two residential accessory structures, 23 garage/carport projects, four storage buildings, one new commercial, one commercial addition, 14 commercial remodels, three commercial demolitions, two commercial accessory structures, one masonry fence and 24 signs.

For the year, 127 permits for various types of construction have been issued by the city. Thats down 56 from the 183 total permits issued during the same period in 2013.

Read more:
Apartment complex boosts construction values 10-02-14

Take a classic 1922 house in one of Charlottes oldest neighborhoods, simmer for 84 years, season with a once-in-a-century hurricane, add liberal measures of neglect and trash, garnish with a prime location on a corner lot and voila! A tasty fixer-upper to whet the appetite of fearless DIY practitioners.

And visitors can see the transformation for themselves during the annual Elizabeth Home and Garden Tour Oct. 11-12.

In 2006, Erik and Michelle Dagenhart had stalked the 2,500-square-foot house at 2134 Greenway Ave. for a couple of years and had a vision for it. It had survived Hugo despite extensive damage, had good bones, and was in the leafy Elizabeth neighborhood the Dagenharts loved. By the time it finally came on the market in 2006 they couldnt pass it up.

With Michelle acting as general contractor and their architect friend and neighbor Andrew (Woody) Woodruff serving as their design adviser, the Dagenharts started a complete renovation. A lengthy cleanup came first, followed by demolishing parts of the house affected by cats and smokers, shoddy work on previous maintenance projects and trees growing through the floor.

When we bought it, it was straight out of Amityville Horror or the season finale of The Hoarders, Erik recalls.

The couple were committed to doing much of the work themselves. Erik, a principal in an Atlanta-based commercial lightning protection firm, explains, I just hate the thought of giving somebody else money to do something I can do myself. Its not just to save money, although times were tight while we were in the middle of remodeling. My dad was a big do-it-yourselfer, so I give him a lot of credit for this mindset, even though Im mostly self-taught.

The Dagenharts hired contractors for the framing and roofing, plumbing and HVAC system. The couple did the remaining 70 percent of the work to remodel and expand the house to its present 3,600 square feet.

Wraparound porch

It wasnt all smooth sailing. There was a lot of trial and error. To learn how to wire a four-way switch, for example, Erik turned online to YouTube.

The family which includes twins Sam and Livi, now 13 moved into the 400-square-foot detached garage apartment for the last eight months of the construction phase. They moved into the house itself in 2008 while the finishing work continued. Erik, who manages his business from home, and Michelle, a director at Wells Fargo who was working only part-time then, had flexibility to juggle their jobs with their house projects.

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Home on the Elizabeth tour showcases couples hard work

Lets start by considering some of the most recent statistics (2011 and 2012) from the FBI about the almost 2 million burglaries that occur in the United States annually.

Most of them almost 75 percent occur in residences not stores or offices. And most happen during the day, perhaps when residents are out of town, at work or out running errands.

So if you dont want to become a target for a burglar, you ought to start thinking about how a burglar thinks when looking at your house. What follows are 30 suggestions for securing your home and property.

Your doors

--Remember a burglar wants to spend less than 60 seconds getting into your house.

--Add a dead-bolted security screen door to the front of your house and to back doors that has tamper-proof hinges with non-removable pins.

--Of course, you want good lighting on your walkways, but you might also want to install motion sensor lights.

--You need a solid core or solid wood front door with a deadbolt that has a one-inch throw.

--Make sure all your doors have bump-proof locks. In bumping, a burglar inserts a special key into your lock, strikes it with a hammer, and presto, pins in the lock move slightly so the door can be opened. If your locks are more than a few years old, you should replace them with newer technology to thwart bumpers.

--Install wide-angle peepholes in doors with no adjacent windows.

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Rosie on the House: Heres how you can think like a burglar thinks

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