View Slideshow Chris Russell | Dispatch The Franklin County Office on Agings minor-home-repair program did about $4,000 worth of work to Stanford Carters East Side home, including installing these handrails. View Larger Local More Local Stories US & World More US & World Stories By Encarnacion Pyle The Columbus Dispatch Monday February 17, 2014 4:53 AM

When Stanford Carters furnace broke one brisk day in October, he didnt know where he was going to come up with the cash to fix it.

Carter, 64, of the East Side, spends more than three-quarters of his retirement benefits and pay from a part-time job as a barber on his monthly house payment and utilities.

That leaves the Vietnam War veteran with barely enough to cover food, gasoline and other necessities. The last thing Carter needed to worry about was a pricey repair to his modest 63-year-old house that has more than started showing its age.

Carter might still be without heat if a local agency hadnt directed him to the Franklin County Office on Agings minor-home-repair program. The group helped nearly 1,400 senior citizens last year, including 565 older than 75, so they could stay in their homes.

It has taken a lot off my mind, and I dont have to worry anymore, he said. Its given me peace of mind.

Providing minor home repairs is one of the easiest ways to keep older people living independently, experts say. However, demand for such programs often surpasses what groups are able to provide, and money remains limited.

The U.S. has at least 13 million low-income households of people age 50 or older living in unaffordable or inadequate housing, the AARP Foundation says.

For vulnerable older Americans, housing upkeep is a challenge to maintain, particularly in these tough economic times, the foundations president, Jo Ann Jenkins, said.

The foundation awarded $780,000 to four groups last year to repair and add safety features to 1,179 homes across the country, including some in Ohio, with the hope of showing other groups that the work can pay big dividends.

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Repairs keep needy seniors in their homes

Kitchen Remodels | Kansas City | Before After
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With an attention to detail, a focus on honesty, and an emphasis on quality, Als Contractors Inc., located in Kinnelon, is a general contractor that keeps their customers satisfaction their top priority with each and every job that they tackle.

PHOTOS BY SANDY STUCKI

(Left to right) Joe Love, a Glendale Terrace homeowner, Chris Lawrence and Al Zor of Als Contractors Inc., stand in the kitchen they worked on inside a Kinnelon home.A view of the tile work over the kitchen stove in a Glendale Terrace home. From kitchen designs and remodels, to finished basements, to siding or to bathroom restorations, Al Zor and his crew can do it all.

Owner, Al Zor, began his business in 1996, and he is so appreciative of his customers and their loyalty, as this word-of-mouth referral he has seen throughout the years even got the business through recent hard times that the economy and other local merchants encountered first hand.

"Over the years, I want to thank my past customers for their trust and dedication through the hard times of the economy," explained Zor. "We rode through the rough times of the economy crisis because of word-of-mouth, and it has gotten us through it where we were able to not only keep our crew, but add on to it as well."

Zor said about 95 percent of his business is from repeat customers or by word-of-mouth. He and his crew can complete little home repairs, to big renovations, and have even started to dabble in light commercial repairs.

With a crew of four Zor at the helm, Joe Love (foreman), Chris Lawrence (helper), and Sean Donnelly (designer and sales) Als Contractors Inc. is a one-stop shop for all customer renovation needs. From kitchen designs and remodels, to finished basements, to siding or to bathroom restorations, Zor and his crew can do it all.

They also have many long-standing relationships with other local subcontractors, so if there is a job that requires work that Zor and his crew cannot complete on their own, he knows who to call to get the job done right the first time.

"We are very fortunate to work with the right people," he said.

With the recent addition of Donnelly to his crew, Zor said Donnelly, like his other crew members, focuses on not only customer satisfaction, but a specific attention to detail by listening to customers needs and wants, and then transcending this vision into a magnificent design.

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Als Contractors of Kinnelon makes it easy to renovate

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Provided by Networx.com

Are you remodeling all or part of your house this year? Whether you're preparing to move into a home and you want it to be just perfect, or you're working on the home you live in now, you might want to consider entering This Old House's search for the best remodel in the country. You could win critical acclaim for your hard work, and you could take home some case, too! The grand prize winner gets $5,000, while runners-up get $1,000.

Even if you're not brave enough to pit your home against the other entries (or you won't be done in time to meet the 27 May deadline), you should definitely take a look at the ongoing gallery of new entries in the competition being hosted on their website. With ten categories, including whole house, kitchen, attic, yard, and more, there's tons of inspiration for remodeling projects that may give you ideas for tweaking your project to make it just a little more perfect.

We at Networx know that planning a remodel can be fun, but also stressful, especially if it's your first time. Even when you're working with an experienced contractor, you'll be making lots of tough choices about materials, interior design, and little details that might matter a lot in the future, even if they don't seem like a big deal now. Like, say, the placement of cabinets, or your San Francisco plumbing layout.

Use these remodels as learning experiences and visual lessons; think about what works and what doesn't for you, and take note of the writeups to find out what people learned from their remodeling projects. You might just find the project of your dreams to show a contractor and use as a basis for your planning...or you might be warned off something that you were thinking about doing; let someone else's costly mistake work to your benefit!

There's another great benefit to this contest: the staff at This Old House kindly posted some tips on taking high-quality photographs of home improvement projects. All too often, inexperienced photographers don't capture a home at its best, making it hard to see the improvements they made. It's always disappointing to read about an interesting project and not be able to see it brought out in the images -- these tips can help people with issues like lighting, composition, and presentation.

Taking great photos isn't just about having something nice to pass around to people interested in how your remodel is going. It can also be useful for detailed documentation of a job in the event something goes wrong, or in case you need to file an insurance claim. Furthermore, good pictures are the cornerstone of a great home sale, as we know, because they're what lures potential buyers in to look at a home on the market, so if you're thinking about listing, get a jump on things with a stellar set of photographs.

Remember: pros sometimes take hundreds of shots to get the right one, and thanks to digital cameras, it's not like you're going to run out of film. So don't be afraid to spend some serious time shooting at different angles and different times of the day to get that perfect capture of your beautiful home...and then why not upload it to This Old House and put yourself in the running for $5,000 clams?!

Katie Marks writes for Networx.com.

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Searching for america's top (re)model

When "Jerry and Charlotte" went house hunting almost a decade ago, they initially envisioned a classic place filled with Old World charm. Instead, they chose a modest ranch-style home in Sunnyvale, built in 1957.

"It wasn't the look we were initially hoping for," says Jerry (the couple requested that their real names not be published), "but tastes change, and the clean lines definitely grew on us."

Eventually, though, the pair wearied of "quirks" such as condensation on the single-pane windows whenever the weather turned cold or rainy, and a perpetually chilly corner in the three-bedroom, two-bath house where mold was discovered. Moreover, the noninsulated walls and a poorly designed fireplace leaked warmth. The heating system was in constant use, drying the air and stirring up dust.

The large triple-pane windows in the living/dining area (which cost roughly 20 percent more than double-pane glazing) have dramatically reduced noise from the outdoors and helped stabilize indoor temperatures year-round. (Tour Factory/One Sky Homes)

Other factors fueled the couple's desire to make some changes. Charlotte, an excellent cook, yearned for an updated kitchen with more storage space. The master bath needed a makeover, too.

Clearly, changes were needed.

At about the time this realization set in some two years ago, Jerry had been exploring information about "passive houses," which incorporate an extremely energy-efficient construction concept and building standard, in which living comfort, air quality and durability are paramount.

'Conscious building'

The first passive houses were built in Germany in 1990. About 25,000 certified structures are now found in Europe, but only relatively few exist in the United States. According to Passive House California (http://passivehousecal.org), an organization formed to educate the public about passive homes, roughly 40 such residences (both certified and uncertified) have been built in the greater Bay Area.

"The principles on airtightness, super insulation, how it all fits together as a system -- the idea really clicked with me," says Jerry, who pored over websites such as http://www.passivehousecal.org to learn all he could. "You'd think in the Bay Area there would be a good concentration of this kind of forward-thinking, conscious building, but the number is still very small."

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Sunnyvale home transformed for 'high performance'