Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

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By Mechele Cooper mcooper@centralmaine.com Staff Writer

PITTSTON -- The $200,000 historic restoration of Reuben Colburn's 1765 home, carriage house and barn is close to completion.

click image to enlarge

Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands historian Tom Desjardin hopes to have the restoration of the 1765 Reuben Colburn homestead in Pittston completed by June. The state has spent approximately $200,000 over the last three years repairing the historic home, barns and carriage house on the Kennebec River.

Staff photo by Andy Molloy

click image to enlarge

Tom Desjardin, historian for the state Bureau of Parks & Land, said the three-year project will end in June. Then the home of Colburn, who helped Colonel Benedict Arnold on his Revolutionary War expedition to Quebec City, will once again be open for tours in July and August.

Desjardin said it's been 30 years since anything has been done to the state's historic site.

He said workers have been putting the finishing touches on Colburn's home, including an old Greek Revival style door surround that includes door pillars and the door step.

Read this article:
Colburn house almost ready for tourists again

Otiake Wetland in the Waitaki Valley has recently undergone some much-needed restoration work thanks to funding assistance from Environment Canterbury's Immediate Steps Programme.

The restoration work is being coordinated by the Department of Conservation, which is managing the wetland in partnership with landowner Kate White.

Lorraine Cook, DOC Flora Ranger, says the wetland is one of the best remaining habitats of its type in the Lower Waitaki. "It is also home to a number of native species including longfin eel and remnant native plants such as raupo, toi toi and Carex secta."

"It has been a very amicable partnership between us and DOC," Kate White said. "We love the wetland and get a lot of pleasure out of it. There are white swans that come and go, herons and other birds including two groups of pukekos that don't mix!"

Controlling invasive willows and other weeds has been a focus of the restoration work, as well as erecting fencing to exclude stock and planting native plants.

The wetlands not only provide important habitat for native species, they also protect downstream water quality by trapping sediment and absorbing nutrients.

The project received $32,000 in Immediate Steps funding and $16,000 from DOC.

More funding available

The Lower Waitaki - South Coastal Canterbury Water Management Committee has $100,000 in Immediate Steps funding to distribute each year towards biodiversity projects in the area.

See the article here:
Otiake Wetland restoration supported

The first Indigenous woman to hold a cabinet ministry in an Australian government is retiring from the Northern Territory Parliament.

Marion Scrymgour was elected in 2001 and has been the Labor Government's deputy chief minister and held several portfolios including education minister.

She says she had been planning to run in the August election.

"I felt however the time had come for me to come back home," she said from the Tiwi Islands yesterday.

"Which is what I'm planning to do beyond August, is to come back here to this community.

"And to back who I am and work on the ground with my people which is something I've been wanting to do for some time."

She regards her work on fighting petrol and glue sniffing during her early years with the Labor government as the most important.

"I was the chair of the select committee that went around a lot of those communities when we came to government in 2001," she said.

"To see 14-year-old girls prostituting themselves in some of these communities for petrol.

"To see what was happening in some of these communities was an absolute disgrace."

Read the original:
Scrymgour to pull the plug on politics

Empty shelves at the Safeway on Shattuck which closed for remodeling on Saturday March 17. Photo: Joe Parks

Theres something almost post-apocalyptic about these photographs of Safeway on Shattuck Avenue taken just before it closed its doors on Saturday in order to undergo an expansion and complete renovation.

The bare shelves and exposed shabbiness caught the imagination of two of Berkeleysides regular contributing photographers: Joe Parks and Michael Moore.

The Safeway will be expanded as well as renovated. Photo: TheRealMichaelMoore

Corn Flakes anyone? Empty shelves and an eerie emptiness at Safeway on Shattuck Avenue. Photo: TheRealMichaelMoore

The store is scheduled to reopen in mid-September. Photo: TheRealMichaelMoore

The store is scheduled to reopen in mid-September. We just know it will look a lot more appealing then. Go toSafeway Shattuckfor full details.

Berkeleyside publishes many articles every day. To see all our stories in chronological order, and read ones you may have missed, check out ourAll the Newsgrid.

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Bleak images as Berkeley store closes for remodeling

Published: Monday, March 19, 2012 at 3:28 p.m. Last Modified: Monday, March 19, 2012 at 3:28 p.m.

WILMINGTON | Roofing company Flores & Foley LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, at 2015 Capital Drive in Wilmington, has liabilities of $3.628 million and assets of $1.165 million, according to the filing.

The company owes New Hanover County $8,264 in taxes, according to documents filed Friday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Eastern North Carolina.

Under Chapter 11 a company continues to operate while it seeks to reorganize to pay its creditors.

Wayne Faulkner

WILMINGTON | Roofing company Flores & Foley LLC has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

The company, at 2015 Capital Drive in Wilmington, has liabilities of $3.628 million and assets of $1.165 million, according to the filing.

The company owes New Hanover County $8,264 in taxes, according to documents filed Friday with U.S. Bankruptcy Court for Eastern North Carolina.

Under Chapter 11 a company continues to operate while it seeks to reorganize to pay its creditors.

Wayne Faulkner

Continued here:
Flores & Foley roofing company files for bankruptcy

The collapsed ceiling is seen through a second floor window of the house where a floor collapsed Saturday in Queens. / By Robert Mecea, AP

NEW YORK (AP) The buildings department says the three-story house in New York City where a third floor collapsed during a party was issued five violations in 2004.

According to the New York Post, the agency said the violations ranged from not having the proper permits for construction to failure to fence off the work.

Neighbors say additions were made to the house in the Queens section of the city in 2004 and 2005.

The agency says about 100 teens were attending a party at the house Saturday night when the floor collapsed. Two people were hospitalized, one with serious injuries.

The cause of the collapse is under investigation.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

See the original post:
NYC house where floor collapsed had been cited before

Apple seeded the latest version on its developer preview of Mountain Lion on Friday, and the newest additions to the OS have been detailed. There have been three new notable features added to Beta 2: Twitter integration in the Notification Center, iCloud support for tabbed browsing, and a permission request when apps access contact information.

Apple included a Notification Center in Mountain Lion, offering similar functionality to what services like Growl provide. In the first developer preview, only Apple built apps were able to make use of notifications, but now 9to5Mac have discovered that you can receive Twitter notifications for mentions and direct messages.

The second new feature is iCloud support for tabs. Mountain Lion will keep track of what tabs you have open in Safari, then upload that data to iCloud so the same tabs will be synced across other Mac machines and iOS devices. Right now you manually activate the feature with the iCloud button added to Safari.

Finally, Apple have added a warning notification when an app is trying to access user and contact information. This is most likely in response to the way iOS app Path accessed and uploaded contact information to their servers without asking permission first.

At its core, Mountain Lion has been designed to bring features from iOS over to OS X in order to unify both operating systems. Features that have been worked into Mountain Lion include tight iCloud integration, iMessage support, the Notifications Center, and Twitter integration. Check out our full Mountain Lion preview here.

[via Cult of Mac]

The rest is here:
Mountain Lion Preview 2 adds Twitter notifications and iCloud tab support

ORANGE PARK, Fla. -- Shawn Long says she managed the Orange Park office of Bayside Heating and Cooling since January.

But she abruptly closed the doors last Thursday. She says she stopped getting paid, along with service technicians and other Bayside workers in the area.

She took us back to the office Monday -- her key still works -- and discovered it cleaned out.

"They will reopen. That's their MO. Each office here in Florida has had three or four different addresses where they just close and reopen at new locations," Long said.

She has stacks of paperwork, invoices and work orders dating back to January. Check out the license number that's at the top of all the work orders and invoices from the past few weeks -- CAC1816066. That license belongs to Michael Hubbard of Kissimmee.

Only problem is Florida's Department of Business and Professional Regulation revoked his license on January 23, which means he's not allowed to operate his A/C business. State investigators determined he wasn't getting permits for the A/C and heating orders.

"I personally asked Michael Hubbard, 'do I need to pull a permit for this install?' And he said no," Long said.

We left several messages with Michael Hubbard and other officials with Bayside Heating and Cooling. No one has called us back.

But others who used to work for Bayside say something is wrong. Larry Hagadorn says he used to schedule repair work, but his last two paychecks were returned due to insufficient funds.

"I started getting suspicious in December of last year when a lot of other employees' paychecks had bounced," he said.

Go here to see the original:
Workers Say A/C Company Operated without License

PALO ALTO, Calif., March 19, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Homeowners are looking for the right professionals to help with projects ranging from gutting a kitchen to redecorating a living room, updating a bathroom, or designing a backyard landscape. Houzz, the leading online platform for residential remodeling and design, today announces the community's picks for Best Of Remodeling, a homeowner to homeowner guide to the top architects, interior designers, contractors and other residential remodeling professionals in more than 50 North American cities.

"With 3.5 million monthly unique users and 80 million monthly page views, Houzz has rapidly become the definitive resource for all things home remodeling, providing homeowners and design enthusiasts with first-hand advice from those in the Houzz community who have been through the remodeling and decorating process." said Liza Hausman, vice president of marketing for Houzz. "Chosen by the largest community of active remodelers, the winners are comprised of professionals who have exceeded homeowner expectations and those who have designed the most creative, beautiful and intelligent residential spaces."

The Best of Remodeling award is given in two categories: Customer Satisfaction and Design. Customer Satisfaction award winners are based on homeowner members who rated their experience working with remodeling professionals in 12 categories ranging from landscape architects to design-build firms. Design award winners' work was the most popular among the 1.2 million members, also known as "Houzzers," who saved more than 16.5 million professional images to their personal ideabooks via the Houzz site and iPad/iPhone app. With Houzz, homeowners can identify not only the top-rated vendors, but also those whose work visually aligns with their own design goals. Homeowners can also evaluate professionals by contacting them directly on the Houzz platform, asking questions about their work and evaluating their responses to questions from others in the Houzz community.

In addition to identifying the top-rated remodeling professionals across North America, the Best Of Remodeling 2012 serves as a qualified consumer panel, identifying decorating and remodeling trends across the country:

About Houzz

Houzz (www.houzz.com) is the leading online platform for home remodeling, providing inspiration, information, advice and support for homeowners and home improvement professionals through its website and mobile applications. Houzz features the largest residential design database in the world, articles written by design experts, product recommendations, a vibrant community powered by social tools, and information on more than 1.3 million remodeling and design professionals worldwide who can help turn ideas into reality. @houzz_inc

Continue reading here:
Houzz Unveils 2012 'Best Of Remodeling' Winners

The West Virginia Water Development Authority's new office, located on the corner of Bullitt and Spring streets, will have an entrance and exit accessibility from Bullitt Street and an exit-only onto Spring Street, said Jarrett Construction president and manager John Jarrett. The 1.7-acre site used to be a storage yard for Pfaff & Smith concrete.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- A lot once covered in gravel that served as a storage yard for a concrete plant will soon be the state Water Development Authority's $3.2 million office headquarters.

Construction of the authority's 14,000-square-foot building, on the corner of Bullitt and Spring streets, will be completed in July, said Director Chris Jarrett. Employees will move into the 17-room office building at 1009 Bullitt St. by September.

The building has an ADA-approved elevator. One hundred parking spaces will occupy the remaining outside space.

The 1.7-acre site served for many years as a storage yard for Pfaff & Smith, whose concrete plant -- now Arrow Concrete -- lies across Spring Street. Joe Fazio's restaurant is just down the street and BB&T's operations center in the former Diamond Ice building is next door.

WDA, a non-tax-supported entity, paid $450,000 for the site, Jarrett said.

WDA currently owns a condominium-style office space in the Northgate Business Park, 180 Association Drive, but they have outgrown the building, he said. The WDA shares the space with its sister agency, the state Infrastructure and Jobs Development Council, which will rent and share space in the new office building.

The group plans to sell or lease the Northgate office space to another government agency, Jarrett said.

Three years ago, WDA switched from a paper to an automated system. Officials and the public can now track a project's success at http://www.wvinfrastructure.com.

Monitoring a construction project's success online ensures that they are completed as quickly as possible, he said. The online switch increased their staff size, Jarrett said, resulting in the need for more space.

Read the rest here:
Water Development Authority building $3.2M offices on vacant lot