Ernest Hemingway's boyhood home in Oak Park, Ill., is for sale for $525,000. The Hemingway family moved to the house in 1906, when Hemingway was 7, and when he returned from World War I he spent time recuperating there. The large home is now a triplex.

The Ernest Hemingway Foundation of Oak Park, which has owned the home since 2002, put it up for sale with hopes that it can find a buyer who appreciates its literary legacy. The foundation is located in another Oak Park house, where Hemingway was born. That house underwent a restoration to honor his centenary in 1999.

The Hemingway house that's for sale was designed by architect Henry G. Fiddelke in collaboration with Grace Hall Hemingway. Each of the restored apartments has two bedrooms; together they rent for about $3,700 per month.

RELATED:

Happy birthday, Ernest Hemingway!

A farewell to Hemingway's Wyoming cabin?

Home repair, the Hemingway way

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo: Ernest Hemingway's boyhood home in Oak Park, Ill. Credit: Baird & Warner Real Estate

Originally posted here:
Ernest Hemingway's childhood home is for sale

Kennewick-based 1st Choice Restoration is rebuilding the home of a Moses Lake woman whose house was damaged by fire earlier this week.

The woman's 16- and 17-year-old daughters are under investigation for attempted murder as a result of the Wednesday blaze.

Moses Lake police Capt. Dave Ruffin said one or both of the girls lit a piece of paper on fire and dropped it on gasoline they had poured on the floor outside a bathroom their mother was in.

The woman was alerted by smoke detectors and put out the fire before authorities arrived. There were no injuries.

"Our primary goal is to help her rebuild her home and to help her any way that we can during this process," said Elizabeth Smith, spokeswoman for 1st Choice Restoration, in a news release.

"We are here to assist this woman who not only had a fire in her home, but is facing a crisis in her family."

Similar stories:

2 from Kennewick fires remain hospitalized

2 from Kennewick fires remain hospitalized

A 71-year-old woman severely burned Sunday when a fire started in her room at Cedars Inn and Suites in Kennewick remained in critical condition Monday at a Seattle hospital.

The Yakima woman, whose name was not released, apparently was smoking in bed when her bedding and clothing caught fire, said Kennewick police and fire officials.

She was taken to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where another woman who was burned in a recent Kennewick fire is improving.

At least 15 dogs die in house fire outside Benton City (w/ gallery)

At least 15 dogs die in house fire outside Benton City (w/ gallery)

An estimated 16 small dogs appear to have perished in a house fire Saturday afternoon about six miles west of Benton City.

A woman, who was in her 60s, tried to go back into her rental home at 26004 251 Private Road to rescue the dogs, but neighbor Mary Bramer said her husband and son prevented the woman from re-entering the home.

The neighbors said they feared the woman would not be able to survive her attempt to save the dogs.

UPDATE: Tri-City woman still hospitalized after fire

UPDATE: Tri-City woman still hospitalized after fire

The woman who climbed out the window of a burning mobile home Monday morning remains today in a Seattle hospital.

Aireen C. Upton, 49, was flown to Harborview Medical Center on Monday after suffering burns and smoke inhalation in the fire that apparently killed her mother.

Kennewick police released Upton’s name this morning. The name of the woman who died in the early morning blaze has not been officially released pending her autopsy today, said Sgt. Ken Lattin.

UPDATE: Mother, daughter believed victims of Kennewick house fire

UPDATE: Mother, daughter believed victims of Kennewick house fire

Investigators still are trying to confirm the identity of the woman killed early this morning in a Kennewick mobile home fire, but believe she is the mother of the victim who escaped the blaze.

Benton County Coroner John Hansens said the resident is an Asian woman in her mid-60s, and her daughter had been spending a lot of time there. The vehicles found in front of the home are the ones both women are said to drive, he said.

A positive ID on the woman likely won’t be known until the autopsy is completed Tuesday, Hansens said.

Investigators still trying to find cause of fatal fire

Investigators still trying to find cause of fatal fire

Investigators still are searching for the cause of Monday's mobile home fire that killed a Kennewick woman and severely injured her daughter.

Nothing suspicious has been found, said Kennewick police Sgt. Ken Lattin, and everything appears to point to the fire being accidental.

Fire investigators, however, continue sifting through the charred rubble at 4815 W. Clearwater Ave., No. 35, to try to pinpoint an area of origin or cause of the early morning blaze.

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Kennewick company to aid house fire victim

HARFORD, Pa. - For more than a decade, Bronson Pinchot has spent much of his downtime in the picture-book Pennsylvania hamlet where he found a dream home far from the stressful clamour of New York or L.A.

Pinchot likely remains best known as the endearingly naïve, quasi-Mediterranean immigrant Balki Bartokomous from the TV sitcom "Perfect Strangers." But unlike Balki, Pinchot is by his own admission "fiercely private" and an "introvert that does a pretty convincing performance as an extrovert."

Still, he has decided to open his doors to America via "The Bronson Pinchot Project," which premiered Feb. 11 on the DIY Network. In all, eight episodes were shot over 13 weeks at the end of last year in Harford, a village founded in 1790 and nestled in the Endless Mountains of Susquehanna County near the New York state line.

His filmography includes 1980s hits like "Risky Business" and "Beverly Hills Cop," but since "Perfect Strangers" ended in 1993 after eight seasons, Pinchot has performed on and off-Broadway, appeared in touring theatrical productions and done voiceovers and audiobooks.

His new show, though, is altogether different.

First, the designs are his own. "I get a kick out of it because I sit there with a sketchbook and say, 'This is what it should look like when it's done' and in the end it either looks like that or it's better," he said. "My theatre training helps; in theatre, it doesn't matter where you're at with your performance, opening night is opening night."

Home base is Pinchot's circa 1840 mansion in the centre of Harford, a town of about 1,300 people. It was the home of state Sen. Edward Jones in the early 1900s and had more recently served as office space. Pinchot bought the place in 2000.

"I wanted a Greek Revival house within five driving hours of New York City," Pinchot said. When he first walked in, he said, he knew he would buy it.

When he arrived, the scene couldn't have been better staged by a Hollywood set designer: The house smelled of cinnamon toast, the air outside smelled of fresh manure, a woman pushing a baby carriage paused to admire a neighbour's fuchsia roses across the street.

"I was already sold, but that was like God was hitting me over the head with a sledgehammer," he said. "OK, I get it, I get it!"

He now owns six historic properties in Harford, including what was a burned-out vacant home also from around 1840 and a sweet blue-shingled building that houses the town's post office. Eventually, he hopes many of the properties will be places for visiting friends to stay.

The first season's architectural stars are his Ionic-columned mansion and Decker House, a smaller home rehabbed with salvaged wood from demolished old buildings, windows from an abandoned farmhouse and floors from a property formerly part of late heiress Doris Duke's estate.

Not only is "The Bronson Pinchot Project" a show about historic restoration, it's a love letter to his adopted hometown.

"Harford is to be seen through my lens, which is that that it's heaven on earth," he said. "None of this 'big fish in a little pond.' No. We're not doing 'Green Acres.'"

Pinchot, 52, an antiques collector and enthusiast of classical art and architecture since childhood, is a hands-on renovator who employs local carpenters and craftspeople; many are slated to appear in the show.

Years of trial and error have culminated into the current style viewers will see taking shape — a blend of English regency and American high country along with 19th-century plaster casts of ancient Greek sculpture and architectural flourishes. The goal is for rooms to look like they've taken shape over many decades, he said.

His earliest home rehab forays involved getting all the period details and furniture just right. But it felt wrong.

"I looked around and thought, 'Well now all it's missing is a docent and a leaflet that says where the cafe is," he said. "I made a little museum and that's not what I want."

Things you won't see in Bronson world: kitchen appliances. Refrigerators — which Pinchot calls "unacceptably, unforgivably ugly" — ovens, dishwashers and microwaves are cleverly concealed behind salvaged wainscoting, cupboards and cabinets mounted clandestinely on hinges, like a bookcase hiding a castle's secret passageway.

All of his properties eventually will get the full "Bronsonian" treatment, a process shaped both by the availability of salvage materials and Pinchot's own improvisational approach to renovating.

"I hope we can do this for 10 seasons!" he said. "We could do an episode on every room."

___

Online:

"The Bronson Pinchot Project": http://bit.ly/xjLyv3

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Balki's back! Actor Bronson Pinchot returns to television with Pa.-based home restoration show

27-12-2011 05:38 This is the fifth episode of BBC's Restoration Home, a brilliant program on the saving of 'At Risk' buildings with significant heritage. -I own nothing of the content of this film, it belongs to the BBC. I have uploaded this for entertainment.

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Restoration Home - Calverton Manor - Episode Five - Video

20-02-2012 01:50 The whims of a dictator, war, and salt water erosion have all contributed to the deterioration of one of the wonders of the ancient world in Iraq. Babylon, built 2600 years ago, suffered under the weight of Saddam Hussein's 1980s emulation of King Nebuchadnezzar, building his own palace on top of Babylon's north palace. The weight of modern stones, concrete, and erosion caused by new salt water canals near the ancient palace have caused great damage to the site. The structural and environmental impact of Saddam's palace coupled with poor attempts at restoration twice kept Babylon from being recognised as a UNESCO world heritage site. During the US occupation, the ancient city was home to US and Polish troops whose trucks and helicopters further damaged the one-time centre of astronomy, science, and culture. Al Jazeera's Jane Arraf reports from Baghdad on efforts to restore this wonder of the ancient world.

Read more here:
Efforts under way to restore Babylon's glory - Video

Members of the McKay family, which had occupied their home at 13 Gilmore St. for generations, were proud of their family homestead. So proud, in fact, that they had ordered an historic house plaque through the Foxborough Historical Commission that identified the building as being built by Daniels Carpenter in 1876, the year that American celebrated its Centennial. Mr. Carpenter himself was a blend of Foxborough's first two families, Daniels and Carpenter and there was much to be proud of.

But when changes in family circumstances dictated the sale of the home, most of the builders who had expressed an interest planned to demolish the structure to take advantage of the large corner lot to erect a new building.

Fearing there would be nothing left of the structure, they removed the historic plaque as a keepsake prior to the closing, fearing it might be the only thing left to remind them of their childhood home.

But wait. The successful bidder on the property wasn't one of the early builders who had planned to demolish the house. It was Maystar Realty, owned by Greg and Kathy Spier, and when Greg explained to the family that he and Kathy planned to save the historic home and restore it, they were overjoyed. They quickly gave Greg the historic plaque that it might remain on the house for all to see its proud history and extended their best wishes for a successful restoration.

Many challenges

Greg admits to thinking "it would only require a quick renovation before we could rent out each of the duplex units," but old houses have a way of striking the word "quick" from the vocabulary.

Renovations started with the "newest' section of the house, the one and one-half story kitchen wing. Added to the main building about 1920, it had settled six inches over its 20-foot length. Checking out the foundation, the problem quickly became much more involved. The wing had apparently been moved into place from another site. It was supported by a combination of stone rubble and oak logs directly on the ground without any footings.

The next 60 days were spent pouring footings and replacing wooden logs with metal columns on concrete footings. Four house jacks were used to raise, level and stabilize the wing.

"We were so excited to get the floor level," said Greg, "but then we had to straighten the windows which were now six inches out of level."

Stripping two layers of siding revealed the original pine shingles but also exposed the damage to the entire balloon beam framing that had been damaged by powder beetles. It would have to be replaced or removed.

Six months into the project, so much labor expended, but they would have nothing to show for the effort, as circumstances dictated there was only one possible alternative and that was to remove the wing and replace it with a new structure.

For less determined builders, that could have been a deal-breaker, but for Greg and Kathy, it was back to the Building Commissioner Bill Casbarra to check zoning, setbacks and building codes.

Casbarra ruled a new wing would be considered a new structure under current codes but that the main existing structure could be renovated under the remodeling section of the code as long as the original stairs connecting the two remained in place.

Determined to press forward, Greg and Kathy agreed to continue renovating the original structure and use the new, now expanded wing to provide new kitchens for both rental units.

They then brought in an architect to design the replacement wing that would complement the architecture of the original home.

While waiting for the final design, they decided to investigate the structural integrity of the remaining original structure. Considering the challenges that had been encountered in the wing, only the most determined - and courageous - would move deeper into the project.

When starting to remove the wood planking from the basement floor, they found the planks had been placed on top of chaffed oak logs cut flat on one edge to support the planks.

The oak logs had rotted and had to be removed. They also noted the brick and stone foundation under the main house had deteriorated. The bricks were lying loose on the ground.

Another critical item was the absence of a main structural beam supporting the two-story building. Back to the architect and Building Commissioner to learn what would be required.

The remedy would be to temporarily support the entire house while digging out and installing a new foundation and interior footings. Cement interior footings were put in place to support the entire house while pouring a cement footing and a new masonry block wall. With the use of a mini-excavator and a lot of hand digging, the basement floor area was also lowered for improved ceiling height.

Ready to restore

Once the building was finally structurally sound, work could commence on the actual restoration. Greg and Kathy were determined that the house would be rebuilt from the bottom up, and over the next few months that is precisely where they would be, any-where from the basement floor to the shingles on the roof.

The next challenging phase of the work would involve another family member, Greg and Kathy's nephew, Mark Lightbody. "His challenge was to rebuild the house from the inside out," said Greg, "starting with the replacement of all the foundations and main supporting beams.

Making another quantum leap forward, it was decided to remove all exterior siding and replace it with cement siding, build the curved top dormers in the mansard roof and replace all exterior rotted wood with PVC trim.

All windows were replaced with Energy Star Harvey windows and they took that even further by renovating the entire house to Energy Star standards. That required replacing insulation throughout the structure and installing a new heating systems with new 93% efficient HVAC units.

The original location of the lower level entry facing Gilmore Street was also rebuilt for new entrances to the lower levels.

In her element

As the structural part of the restoration neared completion, Kathy Crane Spier came into her own element, one of layout, design, color choices and accents. The history of the property promoted decisions such as red roof shingles on the mansard roof and selecting a dark gray exterior color, transforming one of the least attractive structures on the street into one of the most pristine homes in the neighborhood.

More than six months had passed since those first thoughts of a "quick renovation" had passed when guests were invited to a neighborhood party to see the finished product, the fully restored home with its new wing. Audible gasps could be heard as guests slowly made their way, room to room, through three floors of quality craftsmanship, unique design and tasteful appointments that included such practical applications as two bathrooms for each unit, new kitchens with stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops and a living area that said "welcome" to a home with a long history enhanced by a commitment to a total restoration.

"It certainly was challenging," said Greg of the project, "more challenging than we ever realized. But in the end, we have the satisfaction of having taken a building of historical significance and totally rebuilt it structurally and restored it to its original splendor, the gem of the neighborhood."

The commitment of Greg and Kathy Spier, together with Mark Lightbody, was recognized by the Foxborough Historical Commission with its 2011 Historic Restoration Award in appreciation of their efforts and as an encouragement to others who might also be inspired to give an historic property new life and prominence within the community.

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Restoring an historic gem, from the bottom up

Give me a home where the stacks of books loom, and the reader and researcher play.

Two self-described bookish people with an unusual dream worked a quarter-century and amassed a 30,000-volume collection on "the land and people's connection to the land" that could make any naturalist drool.

It's called the Rocky Mountain Land Library, and experts say it's a Colorado treasure. But the books are about to be homeless.

Soft-spoken Tattered Cover Book Store employees Jeffrey Lee and his wife, Ann Martin, who met on the job, bought all of those books and stored them in every nook and cranny of the rooms of their rented home on Humboldt Street.

After about 23 years , they must move because the house will be sold.

This collection of nature books has evolved into one of the finest archives of it's kind anywhere. (Helen H. Richardson, The Denver Post)

They have found a much smaller place for themselves, but there's not enough room for the books.

Losing the house was "totally depressing and disorienting," Lee said. The timing was bad — which becomes apparent as the story unfolds — but they rally.

By midweek, Lee, Martin and helpers had packed more than 100 of the 600 large boxes they estimated would get the job done. "But we're kind of wondering if we low-balled it," Lee said sheepishly.

They're also wondering where the books will go. They have a March 8 deadline.

Upstairs, the situation seems almost under control. But in the basement, the stacks are floor-to-rafters. Leaning. Forming walls. Framing the furnace and water heater. Filling the stairwell. Each book is a beautiful brick of paper and knowledge bound together and asking to be held.

However, picking up the beguiling "Mad Farmer Poems" or a Teddy Roosevelt biography off a basement stack might set off an avalanche of the printed word.

"Ann and I have always gravitated to the same kind of books: natural history," Lee said.

Bird, bee, bug, beast and botany books are abundant enough to populate their own sections. The Rocky Mountains are well-represented, but then so is every range on the planet.

They have a serious American Indian collection. And here and there is the odd title: "Ask the Fellows Who Cut the Hay."

Each book, however chaotic its placement in the basement, has a handwritten 3-by-5 index card devoted to it. These books are loved.

"I had to actually see the books to believe it," said John Calderazzo, a Colorado State University English professor and a nature writer on the board of the nonprofit, all-volunteer Rocky Mountain Land Library.

"It's the best nature library I know of anywhere. There are so many beautiful books. Piles and piles and piles. There's a thin line between collecting and hoarding," he said, laughing loud.

Lee and Martin have made the books available to nature writers and others interested in them, and some have been used in the Tattered Cover's Rocky Mountain Land speaker series.

But a library that exists as piles, or in boxes, is not a proper library.

Yet there is much more to the story. Lee and Martin have been slowly hatching and executing a grand plan to create something extraordinary.

They were inspired by a visit in the mid-1990s to "a bed and book" called St. Deiniol's Library, now known as Gladstone's Library in Hawarden, Flinstshire, Wales. The residential library, considered an important British research resource in the arts and humanities, was founded by Victorian statesman William Ewart Gladstone in 1895.

"We came back with the naïve thought we could do something like that in Colorado," Lee said.

After years of looking for a site, followed by almost six years of discussion, Lee said, he is close to signing a 99-year lease for a residential land-study center at South Park's circa-1863 Buffalo Peaks Ranch along the Middle Fork of the South Platte River. It's about two hours from Denver and Colorado Springs.

Working with Park County's community-development officials and the city of Aurora, which owns the ranch because of water interests, and Denver Water, which owns water rights, Lee and Martin sketched out program possibilities.

Colorado's residential library could be home to workshops, classes, conferences, field work, heritage tourism and more than 20,000 of Lee and Martin's books, as wells as maps and journals.

The center, with its views of Mount Silverheels, could host and inspire teachers, writers, artists, students, conservationists, ranchers, historians, chefs, astronomers, birders, archaeologists, other scientists and all species of nature lovers.

"We're offering people a refresher course in nature," Lee said. "If you don't have joy in nature, it's hard to save any part of it."

Lee describes himself as "not the most dynamic person," yet he and Martin have dreamed large and recruited well.

The library partnered with Denver Water and the Thorne Ecological Institute to establish in 2009 a 3,000-book Kids and Educators Library at Waterton Canyon's Kassler Center, southwest of metro Denver.

Lee and Martin are also proposing an unconventional library to house children's books and an urban-homestead collection to bring nature into the inner city (urban farming, beekeeping, raising chickens). They are looking for a site. It could also serve as temporary storage for the land library until Buffalo Peaks is a done deal and ready for occupancy in a year or two. One candidate for the urban-connection land library is the Cole Neighborhood's Phillips Center.

They need about $200,000 to put this piece in place. Failing that, they need to find storage space somewhere — on a campus, in a garage or in a warehouse — for about 600 boxes.

"Help us, please," Calderazzo said. "This is really a wonderful resource. And they're great people."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Graduate School of Architecture at the University of Colorado Denver has been designing, over several semesters of Kat Vlahos' Studio Class, restoration of the Buffalo Peaks ranchhouse, bunkhouse, barns and other structures to accommodate the land center. Volunteer crews have scraped and painted, cleared brush and fixed fences.

The Environmental Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder gave its 2,500-volume environmental- studies library to the Rocky Mountain Land Library because of storage-space problems of its own.

The Tattered Cover donated shelving it left behind in 2006 when it moved from Cherry Creek to its new location on East Colfax.

So many pieces are in place, or nearly so.

But this weekend, and for the next few weeks, the job is boxing books and finding someplace safe and dry for the short term, until the books are home on the range.

"I'm a little daunted by the task at hand," Martin said. "That's the hurdle in front of us right now. But we're excited. We're moving ahead."

It's not hard to imagine Gladstone cheering them on.

After all, at age 85, he personally hauled most of the 32,000-book collection he donated to its new home at St. Deiniol's using his wheelbarrow.

Electa Draper: 303-954-1276 or edraper@denverpost.com

Got an idea?

For more on the Rocky Mountain Land Library, visit landlibrary.org or write to jeff@landlibrary.org.

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Couple needs new home for 30,000-volume Rocky Mountain Land Library

By Ronda Wertman
Tribune Correspondent
ELKHART, Ind. – Mary Elizabeth Dye Walker, who was a West Virginia History Hero and a saving force behind the restoration of Traveller’s Rest, the Stone House in Burlington, died Dec. 19 at her home.
Walker was born in Ridgeville, W.Va., in the early part of the 20th Century to William "Daddy Bill" Dye and Mary Homan Dye in The Stone House.
The Stone House, a former stagecoach inn built in the early 19th century, was the birth place to not only Walker, but her father, aunt, uncle, brother and sister.
It was Walker who convinced the former owner John Glad to sell the property to her so that she could give it to the Mineral County Historic Foundation to preserve. Glad later donated the remaining property, giving the site a total of 4.4 acres.
The roots of the Stone House can be traced back to the early 1800s when it was built by the Isaac Kuykendall family. The Stone House was an inn and became a regular stage coach stop on the trek from Winchester to the end of the turnpike.
In the mid 1800s the property changed hands five times, with George Russell Dye (Walker’s grandfather) as the owner in 1870. From 1870 to 1875 the Stone House continued to operate as an inn. Dye then decided to close the inn and utilize the property as a working farm.
It was in 1852 that the Dye family donated one acre of land for the Stone Chapel Church. While the church was torn down in 1937, the cemetery remains, with many of the Dyes buried there.
Elizabeth Dye Walker lived in the Stone House until 1923 and had many memories of growing up there from picking berries, feeding chicken and making mud pies to Thrashing Day and Ice Harvest Day.
Her father got tired of farming and sold the farm in 1923. He moved the family to Indiana, where he sold building supplies. Walker continued to live in Indiana from moving there as a child until her recent death.
Walker shared her memories of the Stone House in her book, "The Old Stone House 'Traveller’s Rest: A History in Bits and Pieces.’"
“I felt it deserved some recognition. It needed to be restored and preserved for the state of West Virginia so it could tell its story to present and future generations,” she said of her home place.
Sales of her book continue to benefit the restoration of the Stone House as the stories are handed down to new generations. The book is available by calling Frank Roleff at 304-788-5129. Books will also be available at the Stone House Traveller’s Rest during the annual Route 50 yard sale May 18-20.
 

Continue reading here:
Elizabeth Dye Walker, former Stone House resident, donor, has died in Indiana

Saturday, February 18, 2012

Customs renews call for restoration of 80 hours biweekly

Corrects number of smuggled cigarettes to 4,000 cartons

Customs Services Division officials and employees renewed their call for the restoration of 80 hours work biweekly during a public hearing yesterday on a bill seeking to allow promotions with salary increases.

Customs director Jesus Muña, at the same time, said the volume of smuggled cigarettes is 4,000 cartons that were seized on Tuesday, correcting the earlier figure of nearly 5,000 cartons that Customs provided. The cigarettes were hidden beneath chips and crackers

“All we want is for the austerity to be lifted for Customs,” Muna told Saipan Tribune.

Customs is understaffed, and there are over 10 vacant positions that were funded but were not filled because of hiring timeframe requirements.

The division only has 42 personnel, including the director and those currently assigned to a federal-local task force. Muna said the division needs at least 64 personnel.

Because of 64 work hours biweekly, Customs has limited personnel at any given work shift.

Rep. Ray Basa (R-Saipan), meanwhile, said his House Ways and Means Committee is poised to recommend the filing of Senate Bill 17-93 which seeks to amend a law to allow promotions with salary increases, given the government's current financial state.

Finance Secretary Larrisa Larson and Office of Management and Budget's Vicky Villagomez also expressed reservation about the bill, saying the government has no funding to increase salaries at a time when work hours could not even be restored to 80 hours biweekly.

But Basa and Rep. Ray Yumul (R-Saipan) reiterated their support for Customs to have an 80-hour work week because of the critical nature of their function, including ensuring that imported goods coming into the CNMI are taxed and free of illegal drugs, among other things.

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Customs renews call for restoration of 80 hours biweekly

If there?s a question relating to home improvement, the answer can likely be found among the 137 booths at the 43rd annual Johnson City Area Home Builders Association Home and Garden Show, which is set to begin Saturday at Freedom Hall Civic Center.

JCAHBA executive director Lisa Luster said all signs are pointing up for an industry that has seen some decline during the recession.

?A lot of the industry has been hit hard, but they have come to us this year realizing that things are turning around. The public is calling, builders are starting to build again, remodelers are working, landscapers are working full-tilt and this is a good time to start doing this work,? she said.

This year, the Home and Garden Show will feature 89 vendors dealing with everything from building, remodeling and landscaping to answering questions about refinancing and home restoration.

Even if one isn?t in the market to build or remodel a home, Luster said the show is the perfect place to come to get ideas for future projects.

?If they?ve got a wish list or a plan, we have an architect that can work with you,? she said. ?Come to get the idea. Come to make a plan and find the professionals that can put your plan into action, and that?s what we?re all about for this.?

As with previous years at the show, there is a concentration on energy-efficient building, including several vendors who offer solar power services.

?We feel like building smart is the only way to do it,? Luster said.

Certified green professionals will be on hand at the show, as well as green flags at booths where green products will be available.

Workshops will be hosted throughout the weekend, including workshops presented by the Northeast Tennessee Master Gardeners, the Orchid Society of East Tennessee, Englewood Lawn & Landscapes and Paul Walton, certified aging in place specialist and certified green professional.

For the first time in the show?s history, a ?Kid?s Zone? will be available for children where they can learn about building and decorating in a kid-friendly environment.

The showrooms will be open Saturday from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. and Sunday from 11 a.m.-4 p.m.

Tickets are $3 per person per day and a weekend pass is available for $5. Children 12 and under will be admitted free when accompanied by a paying adult.

For more information, call the JCAHBA at 282-2561.

The rest is here:
Home sweet home, garden show