Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

The toils and snares that led the First Baptist Church at Conshohocken to what it describes as an amazing new year back home were sparked by an errant blowtorch.

It touched off a fire that engulfed the Neo-Gothic church built in 1902 and flattened everything but its bell tower and an adjacent stone wall.

That was eight years ago.

It has taken that long for the congregation of 60 to muster the money and labor that has enabled them to spend the start of 2014 in their new building at Fourth Avenue and Harry Street.

"It's such a feeling of victory," said Eva Ross, 84, a longtime church member.

The congregation is celebrating completion of the first stage of a $3 million rebuilding that it had no idea would be eight years in the making.

Members are holding services in the fellowship hall, where they have a temporary occupancy permit. They held their first service there the Sunday before Thanksgiving. A formal dedication is planned for February or March.

But amid the celebration is the recognition that the church still has a long way to go. Classrooms, offices, a dining facility, and the sanctuary have yet to be completed.

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Conshohocken church rising from its own ashes

WATERLOO | Queen of Peace Catholic Church, quite literally, unwrapped a Christmas present for its parishioners this past week in the first "steps" of an anticipated major renovation.

Most of the front of Waterloo's oldest Catholic church had been covered in plastic for a few weeks in December. Work crews are refinishing and renovating the church steps and reducing the size of adjacent planters.

The steps have been repainted over the years, making them slippery to navigate, particularly in inclement weather.

The current project, Queen of Peace parish council chairman Craig White said, has some traction to it.

"We're putting on a rougher coating to make them less slippery, and changing their color from gray to beige, to match the color of the church, which looks very nice," said White, also a Black Hawk County supervisor.

The planters are being reduced, re-bricked and lowered to ground level, White said.

That work was completed in time for Christmas services at the church.

Also, an elevator to accommodate persons with disabilities has been repaired, said the Rev. Dave Ambrosy, Queen of Peace pastor.

The steps and other work accomplished to date is the first part of what is anticipated to be the most extensive renovation of the church since an interior remodeling in 1996.

It involves work on flooring, carpeting, pews and a handicap-accessible approach to the altar sanctuary, Ambrosy and White said.

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Waterloo Catholic church 'steps up' to renovation

NEW YORKLocated in the heart of Wall Street, Trinity Church was the first Anglican church in Manhattan. Founded in 1697, the iconic church has a rich history, including several signers of the Declaration of Independence (Alexander Hamilton is one) being laid to rest in its burial grounds.

Aiming to preserve its 17st century roots while using 21st century technology to spread the message of the church, Trinity began planning the construction of a new control room early last year. The new control room was completed last month and is centered around a For-A 2 M/E HVS-390HS video production switcher.

The switcher first caught the attention of the house of worships director of media, production and operations, William Jarrett, at NAB 2013.

The HVS-390HS switcher is a perfect fit for our church, explained Jarrett. We appreciate the amount of inputs it offers and its optional video outputs. A frame synchronizer with every channel was also a big draw to us. We found that theres an elegance about it that inherently made sense. We needed a system that was easy to use, and the flow of the switcher is simple for our operators to understand.

In addition to using its video technology to perform IMAG (image magnification) production during Trinitys services, the parish webcasts all of its Sunday morning and weekday services onits website, reaching viewers worldwide. Concerts from its Grammy-nominated choir, conferences, and other special and live events are also webcast. The first major production in the new studio was HandelsMessiah, a widespread oratorio house of worship Christmas tradition that was first performed in the New World at Trinity Church.

The new control room was commissioned and blessed on December 8. The event was webcast on Trinitys website, and can be viewed onlinehere. Jarrett estimates that the switcher will be involved in 450-500 events throughout the course of a year.

In building a new control room, we made a commitment to doing it right and designing a system thats future resistant, said Jarrett. We live in a multi-platform world, and we created our control room and associated workflow with that as a focus. Its modular in design. Our technology is designed to ease the production process and make it more streamlined, and we have the ability to swap out a piece of equipment without that affecting everything else. Using high-quality technology to convey the mission of Trinity is critical to us, and FOR-As switcher is an integral part of our new control room.

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Trinity Church Updates with For-A Switcher

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By: tony collier

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tonys heating and air appliance repair for Richmond va - Video

Published: Monday, 1/6/2014 - Updated: 1 minute ago

BY TOM TROY BLADE POLITICS WRITER

Toledo City Council put off until its next meeting the vote on a proposed apartment building on West Bancroft Street near the University of Toledo after several newly sworn-in councilmen asked for the delay to get more information.

The delay occurred when a majority of council voted down a motion to hold the vote at its meeting last Thursday, after first apparently becoming confused veterans as well as newcomers by what it was voting on.

Council swore in five new members Thursday night.

Developers are seeking to demolish a former night club, coffee shop, and other buildings on Bancroft near campus for the $27 million construction project to put up a 143-unit building designed to appeal to college students.

The developer needs a special-use permit and zoning of mixed commercial-residential on the 6-acres at the southeast corner of Bancroft and Westwood Avenue.

The plans won approval from the city plan commission and from councils own zoning and planning committee, where it was the subject of about 90 minutes of discussion.

But council has been peppered by complaints from some neighbors in the adjacent Bancroft Hills subdivision who say the project will worsen the problems linked to student housing in the area, as well as compete with existing student rentals.

Mark Rose, a Toledo lawyer representing the builder, Guy Totino of Cleveland, said the project will be first-class, which he said appeals to a trend among college students.

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City council delays apartment vote

January 06, 2014

Rescue workers look on as an excavator is used to move rubble at the site of a collapsed building that was under construction in Canacona town in the western Indian city of Goa, today. - Reuters pic, January 6, 2014.Indian rescuers pulled two more bodies from the rubble of a collapsed apartment block, taking the death toll from the country's latest building accident to 17, an official said today.

The building, which was under construction, crumbled mid-afternoon on Saturday while more than 40 poorly paid daily-wage labourers were on site in the southern tourism state of Goa.

Rescue workers discovered the two bodies overnight yesterday as efforts continue around the clock to try to find survivors still trapped in the rubble of the building that a witness said collapsed like "a pack of cards".

Although about 16 people are still unaccounted for, the official said the chances of finding survivors were slim given the length of time since the accident.

"Only a miracle can save them," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Another 16 people were recovering in hospital, the official said.

Rescue workers were using bulldozers, shovels and bare hands to try to shift concrete slabs and other debris from the site in the seaside village of Canacona, south of the state capital Panaji.

"The rescue work is tedious. You have to ensure that the nearby buildings don't get damaged and also the debris doesn't collapse further while digging in," the official said.

Sniffer dogs have also been brought in to try to find those trapped.

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india-building-collapse-reuters-060114.JPG

Says rolling blackouts are proof of need for Muskrat Falls

With the province entering the fourth day of rolling blackouts, tens of thousands of Newfoundlanders without power, and the prospect of a strained electrical grid for weeks to come, Premier Kathy Dunderdale assured the people Sunday afternoon that there's no crisis, and things are under control.

Telegram photo

Premier Kathy Dunderdale says she has no regrets about anything she did in the past year; and she will run in the next election.

What's more, Dunderdale warned that due to aging infrastructure and higher demand for electricity, these sorts of outages could become more common between now and 2017, when the Muskrat Falls hydroelectic dam is built.

There's a critical period that we need to get through until we have a new source of power, new infrastructure, and more than anything else we have redundancy, she told reporters Sunday afternoon. After 2017 hopefully we'll never find yourself in this kind of circumstance again because of the redundancy that will be built into the system.

Dunderdale tied the current outages directly to the Muskrat Falls project, saying that the failure at Holyrood proves that the aging power plant has outlived its usefulness and needs to be replaced by Muskrat Falls.

We've talked incessantly, it seems to me, over the last number of years about the aging facility in Holyrood and the fact that that facility needed to be replaced, she said.

Despite insisting that there was no crisis, Dunderdale flanked by electrical utility brass and ministers begged the people of the province to do everything in their power to conserve electricity, or risk further blackouts.

Everybody has a role to play in this, Dunderdale said. You know, if you're not using a room in a house, turn off the heat, turn off the lights. You know, you might want to do your dishes by hand over the next few days.

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UPDATED: Premier insists province isn't in crisis

Kathy has spent many years in decorating, taking an ordinary living space and transforming it to be extraordinary and beautiful. Decorating in various and exceptional forms has been one of her passions since childhood. Long before the terms "redesign" and "staging" were popular, it has been a love and way of life for Kathy. She has combined her professional experiences, attention to detail, talents and creativity, along with her passion for decorating to offer a unique blend of services. Kathy has the ability to take a room that seems dull, uncomfortable or uninteresting and create an inviting and comfortable room. Out of necessity and experience, she has found that one does not need a lot of expensive things to make a room beautiful and desirable. Those who have benefited from Kathy's talents have often said that she can take an ordinary space and make it a retreat that you never want to leave! She can turn the unorganized into functional, the disaster into a showpiece and the lifeless into a vibrant reflection of your personality!

After college, Kathy and her husband lived in the Midwest, where they raised 3 children. Kathy and her husband have lived in South Jersey for over 10 years. Having worked in the corporate world and non-profit sector for several years, Kathy recognizes that your surroundings reflect who you are and who you will become. She has the ability to discover the unseen potential in a space and then create a positive and fresh look for it.

Kathy is certified in interior redesign and real estate staging with The DSA (The Decorating and Staging Academy) and ODDAA (One Day Decorating Alumni Association). She is also a member of RESA, (Real Estate Staging Assocation) and The Interior Design Society and The Interior Redesign Directory.

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Interior Decorator - Kathy Cortner, Cherry Hill, NJ

Dear Jim: My utility bills are high and often I'm chilly. I know electric resistance heating is expensive to operate, but I like the idea of infloor heating. Does it only work in tile or can it be used under carpet? - Ron A.

Dear Ron: In general, electric resistance heating is expensive to use for heating a house. This is why most homes which have all-electric heating use heat pumps, which can be several times more energy efficient than resistance heating. Resistance heating is basically a big toaster with a blower.

Electric infloor heating is technically no more efficient than an electric resistance furnace, but, because it improves comfort dramatically, it can be much less expensive to operate.

A house will use several percent less electricity for each degree the thermostat is set lower. With improved comfort from infloor heating, you should be able to lower the thermostat setting and not feel chilly. With infloor heating, you can have a separate computerized thermostat for each room so you can heat a room only when you need it.

Instead of heating the room air, a warm floor radiates heat upward to your body, making you feel warmer. When one's feet are warm, the entire body feels warm. Infloor heating reduces the extent of heat stratification where the hot air from a furnace naturally collects up near the ceiling.

Infloor heating is most efficient in a concrete slab or in a tile floor with high thermal mass, but some types are specifically designed to be used under carpeting, hardwood or laminate flooring. It can actually provide better comfort under carpet or hardwood because their low thermal mass allows the floor temperature to respond faster to the wall thermostat.

In a concrete slab or under a tile floor, electric heating cable is usually laid in a serpentine pattern in the concrete or thinset. For use with carpeting, thin mats or sheets are placed on the floor before the carpeting is laid. The manufacturer can calculate the amount your rooms need. Some of the systems are designed for do-it-yourself installation.

Dear Jim: My house is only about six months old. The interior side of the band joist feels damp, but I cannot find any leaks from the exterior. Where should I check to find the source of the dampness? - Kyle J.

Dear Kyle: You probably do not have a leak in the exterior envelope of your house. If you did, the band joist would be more than just damp and you would likely see a puddle somewhere.

Since your house is new, the moisture you feel on the interior surface is just from excessive humidity inside your house. New building materials often contain a lot of moisture and it can take a year or more to air out. Since the band joist gets cold, you notice the dampness there.

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Columnist: Heat from below will warm you all over

Even after the windfall of the Getty's Pacific Standard Time Presents series of exhibitions in 2013, there's still a significant list of postwar Los Angeles architects and designers whose careers remain underexplored.

Among the most intriguing is the designer Deborah Sussman, whose work with Jon Jerde on the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics made a cameo last summer in "Overdrive," PSTP's anchor show at the Getty Museum.

Now Sussman, still working at age 82 at Sussman/Prejza, the firm she founded in 1980 with her husband, Paul Prejza, is getting a solo spotlight in "Deborah Sussman Loves Los Angeles," an exhibition running through Jan. 19 at Woodbury University's WUHO Gallery in Hollywood.

GRAPHIC: Best of 2013 | Entertainment and culture

It is a modest but charismatic show. And a timely one, since the role of female architects and designers and how they've been overshadowed by their male collaborators and clients has been much debated in recent months.

Sussman's body of work isn't as vast or significant as that of Denise Scott Brown, the architect excluded from the Pritzker Prize given her husband and partner Robert Venturi in 1991 or Julia Morgan, who last month won the American Institute of Architects' Gold Medal in hyper-posthumous fashion, more than 55 years after her death.

But it is more than rich enough to sustain an exhibition like this one, filling the narrow WUHO Gallery with photographs, wall graphics and items under glass.

And in the end, the show's most meaningful themes aren't limited to gender or the nature of creative partnerships. They also include the way Sussman helped graphic design take on a bigger, quasi-architectural scale in the 1970s and 1980s and how the cultural identity of Los Angeles was forged in those decades.

Sussman's work, in that sense, provided a bridge between two definitions of graphic design one about text and the other about the city as well as between two eras in L.A. design history.

PHOTOS: Hawthorne's best architecture moments of 2013

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Review: A timely look at L.A. designer Deborah Sussman