Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

Leon Peirce (19) a building apprentice with Mark Fairweather Builder, works on a new house on Hagart Alexander Dr, Mosgiel. Photo by Linda Robertson.

Commenting on Statistics New Zealand's February's building consents figures, Ms Turner said the weakness in ex-apartment consents being issued was particularly concerning.

''As yet, we don't have a conclusive explanation for the current weakness. It could just possibly reflect some disruption in building demand from the summer holiday period.''

Alternatively, if construction activity was starting to trend sideways, it was possible capacity constraints were restricting further growth, she said.

Residential construction activity had increased rapidly over the past two years in Auckland and Canterbury and both regions were competing for construction resources.

Apartment consents were relatively high in both November and December and some decline from those levels was to be expected.

What was concerning was the second consecutive monthly fall in ex-apartment dwelling consents, down 1.4% in February following on from the previous month's 8% fall.

Those falls followed a couple of flat months, Ms Turner said.

Non-residential building consents bounced back in February as was usually the case given January consents were disrupted by the holiday period.

''The very lumpy profile of monthly non-residential building consents makes it a difficult series to seasonally adjust.''

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Building consents fall seen as concern

March 31, 2015 5:30 PM

Kate joined the WCCO team in April of 2013, but it wasn't her fir...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) - The warm and sunny weather had a lot of people out on rooftops and patios for the first time this spring.

Phil and his wife, Karen, have a date night at Psycho Suzis in northeast Minneapolis once a month, but on Tuesday, they made it for the lunch hour to catch some sun.

Its a beautiful, lovely day, and I have this gorgeous woman with me, said Phil, of Oak Grove.

With Tuesdays high reaching 12 degrees above average, WCCO-TVs meteorologists declared it a Top 10 Weather Day.

Just up the street from Psycho Suzis is a new restaurant from the same restaurateur. Its called Betty Dangers Country Club.

The restaurant was busy getting ready to show off its anticipated main attraction, The Mechanical Tree. Its a ferris wheel that promises to give customers the chance to dine, drink, and soak up skyline views of the city.

It opens to the public on Wednesday.

But if being on the ground is more your thing, it didnt matter if you were walking, running or biking, Minnesotans took comfort in knowing or hoping the winter weather is over.

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Minnesotans Head Out To Patios, Rooftops On #Top10WeatherDay

After a steady two-year drizzle of Chromebook releases, Google and its partners are preparing a flood of new hardware to sway consumers away from cheap Windows laptops. Chromebooks from HiSense and Haier go on sale today at $149 each, followed by the Asus Chromebook Flip, a 360-degree convertible, in the coming months.

And if a Chromebook itself is too big and bulky, then you might consider the Asus Chromebit, a Chromebook-on-a-stick that will cost less than $100. In all, 10 Chrome products will launch over the next two months, Google executives said. Besides the HiSense and Haier laptops highlighted here, youll see models from Acer, AOPEN, Asus, Dell, HP, Lenovo and LG ranging from $149 to $499.

Were very happy in that weve played a part in moving computing a little bit further, said Caesar Sengupta, the vice president of product management for Google.

The Asus Chromebook Flip will be available later this spring, executives said.

The secret behind these low-cost Chromebooks is the RK3288, a very inexpensive ARM processor from Rockchip, a Chinese chip maker thats little known outside of industry circles.

The Rockchip RK3288 is one of the first chips based on the quad-core ARM Cortex-A17architecture, which was launched in mid-2014. Because the chip can draw as little as 3 watts of power, the Chromebooks based on it are designed without fans, and can last all day on a single chargeup to 13 hours in the Asus Chromebook Flip, according to Gayathri Rajan, director of product management at Google.

The story behind the story: The essential Chromebook concept relies on the premise that a huge cross-section of users will be happy with good enough computing, especially at rock-bottom prices. The systems arent powerful enough to play hardcore games and Windows applications, but theyre good enough to browse the web and tap into Googles extensive suite of cloud servicesGmail, Drive, Maps, and so on.

However, you could argue that with fewer than25 million Chromebook sales last year (opposed to more than 302 million PC sales), Google still has work to do. And thus todays announcement. Google and its partners are lowering prices further while chasing the one commodity laptop users value most: battery life.

The basic hardware specs of the Asus Chromebook Flip, the two Chromebooks from Haier and HiSense, and the Chromebit Chromebook-on-a-stick are all nearly identical. You get the aforementioned Rockchip chip, 2GB of storage, and a 16GB SSD.

Our general belief is that you cant get to lower-priced devices by just dropping specs, Sengupta said. Users see through that. But if you keep the performance bar the same, but bring the price down, thats really how you need to go through it.

See the article here:
New Chromebooks and Chromebit stick start at $100 thanks to lower-power chips

With Easter just a few days away, Christian churches all over the south side are winding down their Lenten activities and preparing for the holiest day on the Christian calendar, Easter and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Holy Week began last Sunday with the celebration of Palm Sunday, remembering Jesuss triumphant entry into Jerusalem. As the week wears on, events get more somber, leading to Good Friday and the Crucifixion, and eventually the glory and joyous celebration of the Resurrection on Easter Sunday.

The following churches in the Fayette-Coweta area have announced their Holy Week and Easter activities:

All Saints Anglican Church will continue Holy Week with Stations of the Cross Wednesday, April 1, at 6 p.m.

Tomorrow evening, the Maundy Thursday service at 7 p.m. will feature foot washing and Holy Communion. Following the service, a 12-hour prayer vigil will be held from 8:30 p.m. Thursday until 8:30 a.m. Friday morning.

The Good Friday service will be held at 7 p.m. that evening.

Holy Saturday, April 4, will begin with morning prayer at 9 a.m., followed by an Easter egg hunt and family picnic from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m.

Easter Sunday will begin with a sunrise service at 6:30 a.m. and conclude with the Easter Sunday worship service at 10:30 a.m.

All Saints is at 149 Ebenezer Rd., Fayetteville, just east of Peachtree City. For More Information call 770-486-5374 or http://www.ptcanglican.org

Brooks Methodist Church Women will present The Seven Stations of the Cross, a time of prayer and meditation, on Saturday, April 4, from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m., in the church sanctuary.

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Fayette gets ready to celebrate Easter

Soapstone Countertops
Wayne Wanamaker of Great Mountain Soapstone extols the virtues of natural, non-porous soapstone sinks, counters and vanity tops.

By: Our Custom Build

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Soapstone Countertops - Video

From the Food Network, we know the pleasure of a tomato in close-up, the way shredded lettuce falls and bounces against the cutting board, the dim glint of steel knives on steel countertops. What we don't know is who, when there's no cameras, holds the knife.

Documentary The Hand That Feeds widens the frame from the food we eat to the people who prepare it. In Manhattan, where kitchens are tiny and time is scarce, cheap, local chain restaurants like the unfortunately named Hot & Crusty occupy a vital, fluorescent place in New Yorkers' hearts.

Unfortunately, the 24-hour bakery and caf feeds Manhattan at the expense of its employees, mostly Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador, and elsewhere often undocumented who work long hours with no breaks and are paid below the minimum wage. These complaints are common because the unethical treatment of service workers is pervasive.

Over the course of the film long for a documentary, though it doesn't feel that way Mahoma Lpez organizes with fellow restaurant workers, activists, and lawyers. Lpez is a singularly tender, compelling, and articulate campaigner in this high-stakes struggle for justice, filmed with the urgency and suspense of a Hitchcock thriller.

The way the different groups and demographics intersect, or remain ignorant of one another, is fascinating. Why didn't Lpez and his co-workers know about the Occupy movement? How can we learn to move across power structures to support one another in the fight for fairness? That's why communal, affordable meeting places like Hot & Crusty are so important. By examining huge protests at a neighborhood institution, the film suggests eating a meal together is as powerful as a walkout.

Link:
New York Food Service Workers Strike in The Hand That Feeds

Improving the availability of parking in downtown Lawrence is likely on the to-do list of the next City Commission, but candidates on Tuesday werent of the same mind on how to get the job done.

At a candidate forum hosted by Downtown Lawrence Inc., the six candidates floated ideas such as zoning changes, public-private partnerships, additional parking garages and increased availability of free parking as options.

Commissioner Terry Riordan said it may be time for the city to reconsider its zoning laws in downtown. Currently, much of downtown has a unique zoning designation that allows projects to be built without providing off-street parking. But as downtown has continued its trend of multistory office and apartment buildings, concern has grown that the district may run short of parking.

I think we have to re-look at the idea that people can put something in and not have to provide parking, Riordan said.

But Riordan said the city also should be prepared to be part of public-private partnerships that could add parking in downtown. He noted the city owns numerous surface parking lots in downtown and said the city has a lot of opportunities to be creative with that property.

Candidate Leslie Soden said she thinks an additional parking garage may be needed in downtown, but she cautioned against the public-private partnership model. Instead, she said the city could stop giving tax breaks to many of the new downtown projects and then invest a portion of those tax dollars into building new garages. She said if the city hadnt approved a tax break for a pending expansion of the Eldridge Hotel which is not providing new parking as part of its plan the city perhaps could have built a new public garage at Seventh and Vermont or perhaps Ninth and Vermont.

Then we would have public money being spent on public parking, Soden said. We need to use taxpayer dollars for straightforward public projects.

Candidate Stan Rasmussen said he expects another parking garage and perhaps additions to existing garages will be needed in the foreseeable future. But he said the city also needs to rethink its parking strategy in downtown. He said a shortage of free parking may be hurting the downtown district, especially since other shopping districts such as The Legends and Zona Rosa dont require shoppers to pay for parking.

Whenever we give someone a $3 ticket (for over-parking) we really have soured someone on their experience in Lawrence, Rasmussen said.

Candidate Matthew Herbert stopped short of saying he would support another parking garage in downtown but expressed concern about allowing development to occur without providing off-street parking.

Read the rest here:
City Commission candidates debate downtown parking issues at forum

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LEGENDARY English rockers The Darkness are gatecrashing this summer's Brownstock Festival in Essex, organisers have announced.

The event at Morris Farm in Stow Maries, near South Woodham Ferrers, has a host of new acts to add to a line-up, which already features Basement Jaxx, Example and DJ Fresh..

Amongst the plethora of dance and pop on offer at this year's Brownstock, The Darkness, complete with the resplendent high-pitched frontman Justin Hawkins, and The Hoosiers will crash the party, bringing with them a heady slice of rock and indie.

To keep the dance floor packed are yet more new names from the electronic world, including Shadow Child, Bondax, Friction, MJ Cole and more.

After a 2011 reunion, quadruple platinum selling rock outfit The Darkness returned to our stereos and stages, and now they are headed for Brownstock.

The glam four-piece, fronted by falsetto-reaching frontman Justin Hawkins have bagged BRIT, Ivor Novello and MTV EMA awards during their high-octane international career.

DJ and producer Shadow Child is known to many via his shows on BBC Radio 1 and Rinse FM.

Also appearing will be Lancashire future garage duo Bondax and Indiana, a singer making waves with her single 'Solo Dancing'.

With a number one debut album under their belts The Hoosiers will offer up indie rock to the festival's menu.

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PaulDentJones published BROWNSTOCK FESTIVAL: The Darkness and The Hoosiers added to...

Engineered Hardwood Floor Installation / Scottsdale, Arizona
Maple hardwood flooring installation Scottsdale AZ. Royal Wood Flooring LLC. 602-446-2613 Voted as one o Scottsdale Arizona #39;s best professional wood flooring company. Laminate Flooring,...

By: Royal Wood Flooring in Phoenix Arizona

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Engineered Hardwood Floor Installation / Scottsdale, Arizona - Video

Pergo Flooring Installation
Carpenter Bob Ryley joins Steve Yates (from Pergo) to learn installation tips for, and the features of, Pergo wood laminate flooring and installation tips.

By: Bob Vila

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Pergo Flooring Installation - Video