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With beautiful outdoor gazebos and the right outdoor casual seating, extend your living space to the great outdoors. Shop Kmart online or at the store for more affordable patio furniture, swings and outdoor living accessories for your patio.

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Outdoor Living | Buy Gazebos, Canopies & Pergolas and more ...

SAN ANGELO, Texas From cutting trees and mowing grass to building gazebos and fixing sprinklers, San Angeloan David Rodriguez has done it all in his 35 years working with the city and has no intention of retiring.

I love my job, every day its different, said Rodriguez, crew leader for the Parks Department, after a ceremony Thursday at the McNease Convention Center that honored 146 public servants for their loyalty to San Angelo.

The annual Service Awards Presentation celebrated employees who spent five to 35 years with the city, which made a cumulative total of 1,830 years of experience.

Congratulations to the guys in the trenches, to the supervisors, said Councilman Don Vardeman, who spent more than 30 years working for the city before his retirement. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Rodriguez, 58, began working for the city in 1978.

Rodriguez received a job offer from the city and the state, but he chose the city because it paid employees once every two weeks as opposed to monthly by the state, said Operations Director Shane Kelton with a laugh.

In more than three decades with the city, Rodriguez said things have changed somewhat.

He said he laughs when younger staffers complain about weed eating, because it is so much easier than it was in the 1970s. At that time, he said, parks staff would use a tool called yo-yos, which was like a manual trimmer.

Its gotten better, with the new technology, Rodriguez said. Those days are gone.

Back then, he said, staff also would mow the city parks with a push mower, and it would take all day.

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City's event honors its own

Published: Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2014, 3:15p.m. Updated 7 hours ago

The chairman of the Blawnox Planning Commission has an idea to improve riverfront property in the borough.

Richard Chene presented an idea to officials last week to beautify the riverfront area. His plans include a boat dock, gazebos, green space and 16 parking spaces.

He said residents who live on First Street and face the river would get a free parking space.

The area also would have a place for the Blawnox Volunteer Fire Department to put its boat into the water, which Chene said is needed.

Our fire department does not have a place to put a boat into the water, he said.

Chene said the need for a ramp led him to look into the project.

He said money would be available only for a larger project, not just the boat ramp.

The area would be similar to a boat launch in Sharpsburg.

Funding for the project would be secured using federal and other outside money and not local tax dollars, Chene said.

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Riverfront concept presented to officials

Arbors and Gazebos by American Iron Fence
Our garden structures - metal arches, arbors and gazebos come in all sizes and lots of styles.

By: Garrett Ingram

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Arbors and Gazebos by American Iron Fence - Video

One of the lesser known duties of a mayor is to unite couples in marriage.

Since he took office Jan. 1, 2008, Cambridge Mayor Tom Orr has done so on 225 occasions through the end of last year.

"I feel honored to stand at all of them," Orr said. "I've done them in some very unusual areas. The covered bridge at the City Park. I've been at Seneca Lake and Salt Fork. I've had brides and grooms come off a boat. I've had them stand in that special place where they met. I've had them [at City Hall] in different offices. I've been at swimming pools in family yards. Stood in gazebos. I've done them Christmas Eve. I've done them in front of fireplaces at special occasions. It's been a little bit of everything, quite honestly. It's a unique experience."

Among Orr's most notable officiations: The marriage of Cambridge native and stage and screen actor Corey Brill with girlfriend and actress Joy Osmanski. The ceremony took place on the steps of the Guernsey County Courthouse on Dec. 31, 2009.

Officiating the union of a man and woman did not come easily for Orr in the early years.

"I really struggled with that when I got the job," he said. "I wondered if the good Lord really wanted me to do that. It seemed to me like it was the short version of what should be a little bit more in depth. But then I realized that's between the two people who take the vow. The vow is the most important thing."

Though a wedding is often thought of as a time for happiness at the prospect of a long life together, Orr admits to a few times wondering what the future would hold for newlyweds.

"The one's that are going off to the service," he said. "Maybe they only have a 24-hour or 48-hour window of opportunity. And you see the little kids looking, and the parents ... and you just get a feeling. And no matter what the world tells you, it's easier to do with two than it is with one."

Orr averages about 38 marriages per year. His first year in office was his most officious to date, with 60 weddings performed. His slowest year was in 2011, when he wed 25 couples.

Orr's fee? He asks only for a donation.

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Cambridge Mayor Tom Orr has officiated more than 200 civil ceremonies, some of them in rather unusual places

TALLAHASSEE -- The Florida Association of the American Institute of Architects has recognized Richard W. Fawley among the 2013 AIA Florida Class of Citizen Architects.

The program was developed by the National AIA to recognize architects who use insights, talents, training and experience to contribute meaningfully, beyond self, to the improvement of the community and human condition.

Fawley has served the Manatee community for more than 30 years. In that time he has volunteered for many local organizations such as Goodwill Manasota and the Manatee Chamber of Commerce. Fawley is currently serving on the Board of Directors for the Manatee Education Foundation, the Lakewood Ranch Community Fund, and the Sarasota Chamber of Commerce as well as several task forces and committees for other local Chambers of Commerce and Economic Development Corporations.

"I am proud to be recognized as part of the Citizen Architect Class, a distinguished group of professionals who, by their actions advocate for higher living standards, the creation of sustainable environment, quality of life, and the greater good." Fawley said.

John Neal Homes opens new Palmevera model

LAKEWOOD RANCH -- John Neal Homes opened its Palmavera model in the Haddington section of Country Club East at Lakewood Ranch.

The Palmavera is a new 2,884 square-foot floor plan with three bedrooms plus a den, and open great room layout.

Haddington features private roads, including its own transponder-controlled "residents only" gate, paver sidewalks and community landscaping. Neighborhood amenities will include three gazebos and a kayak launch. Homes will range from 2,000 to 4,000 square feet, with home and home site packages beginning in the high $400,000s.

MSC Foundation donates nearly $20,000

LAKEWOOD RANCH -- The MSC Foundation, the philanthropic arm of Michael Saunders & Co., handed out about $20,000 in year-end charitable grants for 2013.

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Business briefs, Jan. 22, 2014

It's a neat idea, sure, but don't expect 3D printers to replace builders, bricks and mortar any time soon.

Pictures of 3D-printed houses keep popping up in the news. I've written about three such projects before forWired, including Enrico Dini's impressiveD-Shape, a gantry large enough that it can print out gazebos. There are other examples of such systems under development that work on similar principles, like Contour Crafting at the University of Southern California, or FreeForm Construction at Loughborough University. Nasa is even working on robots that may be able to construct bases on the Moon by melting moon dust into blocks and walls using lasers.

It's not a wacky gimmick, in theory. Developing societies across the world struggle to cope with the demands of urbanisation: China's urbanisation ratewill reach 60 percentby 2015; a 2007 UN reportfoundthat between 2000 and 2030 sub-Saharan Africa's urban population could be expected to double, whileat least 72 percentof the urban population was living in slums. A way to quickly produce homes that are more livable than slum shacks would be a valuable tool in combating poverty. (And as for moon bases, laser sintering is a much better idea that flying concrete all the way up there.)

These printers are, basically, scaled-up versions of desktop models, and they work the same way - a nozzle, on some kind of robotic arm, is programmed to follow a design which separates a three-dimensional objects into a number of two-dimensional slices. Thin layer upon thin layer of material (usually plastic on desktop, usually concrete in construction) goes down until it's built up the full object.

Anything that'll spurt out of a nozzle and set hard will work, but some materials are better than others for different uses - chocolate's great for 3D-printing food, for example. For buildings, the normal material (or "aggregate") is usually a kind of concrete. The nozzle moves back and forth, laying down material for the first layer, then it moves up (say, 5mm, or 10mm) and lays the next layer, and the next, through to the very top. Voila, a house.

The problems that researchers are having with scaling 3D printing up to the scale of houses should be pretty obvious - concrete isn't very strong on its own. A house that's 3D-printed might stay up (and some of Dini's structures are certainly impressive) but they're nothing on concrete houses built with such boring, traditional things like reinforcing rebar. Even a wooden frame is better, because then there's the possibility of having a second floor.

Nevertheless, these systems are generally said to be able to build the frame of the house in roughly two days at top speed if you're after something like a small bungalow, or maybe doing 20 or so larger buildings a year. And, because the walls and so on are done in one go, there's the potential to design certain things into the structure - like routes for ducts, or piping and wiring routes - that are fiddly, and have to be attached to a building's frame during a normal construction.

That's quite important, as the things that take up most of the time when building small homes is the fiddly, small stuff - wiring, windows, fixtures, fittings, plastering, that sort of thing. It's also quite cheap - again, in theory. There's just a problem in that it acts a replacement for the bit that's already quite cheap and quick when it comes to building homes. In rapid-build affordable housing projects the fiddly stuff could be cut back on, but that would be somewhat self-defeating.

There's quite an illustrative lesson from history that we can rely on here. Architect Wallace Neff was famous in the 1920s as a designer of mansions for the stars of Hollywood, and became instrumental in developing southern California's distinctive architectural style. However, in the later stages of career he tried to turn his hand to the problem of affordable housing. America's post-WII population boom demanded cheap housing that could be built quickly.

His solution, inspired by the resilience of bubbles of shaving foam in his bathroom sink, were "bubble houses" - concrete homes (using low-density, high-strength concrete called gunite), built by spraying a mix of water and cement at high speed over a large balloon. In 48 hours the concrete would be dry, the balloon could be deflated and dragged out of the front door, and there would be a perfectly solid and large building, ready to be used as a home.

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The Energy Debate

Gazebos Mar del Plata - Operativo de Verano 2014 - Arba

By: Jonathan Durisotti

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Gazebos Mar del Plata - Operativo de Verano 2014 - Arba - Video

Although its name makes it sound like just another quaint little seaside village like any other in Terengganu, it does possess all the trappings of a small town, and then some.

After all, not many villages can claim to be within walking distance to Terengganu's main airport and two universities.

One of the reasons that compelled me to move to a housing estate here three years ago was its proximity to the airport.

The Sultan Mahmud International Airport is so near, you can hear the plane that you will be boarding coming into the airport, and that serves as a reminder to better get to the airport already before it leaves with one passenger short.

The main road is not the preferred way to get to the airport for those who live here, as there is a much shorter picturesque seaside road linking Tok Jembal to it.

If you're still wondering, the village is indeed blessed with a long, casuarina-lined beach, complete with a thriving fishing community.

However, the beach has deteriorated badly due to coastal erosion brought on by the huge waves of the monsoon season.

One of the more popular seaside picnic areas bore the full brunt of the destructive waves in 2011, dragging four gazebos and countless casuarinas out to sea.

Fortunately, the state government acted fast to stem the erosion by building a wall of granite boulders before the waves claimed the two remaining gazebos as well.

However, more will have to be done as the coastal erosion has moved further north and is now threatening the beach at the rear of Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, one of the two state universities situated just outside Tok Jembal.

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Seaside town with rustic charm

Contry Side Gazebos - Design Your Own Gazebo!
http://tiny.cc/countrysidegazebos Gazebo designer Contry Side Gazebos Amish Style Gazebos Gazebo design Gazebos for sale buy gazebo garden gazebo patio gazeb...

By: James Wheeler

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