Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

By Scott Van Voorhis

Boston.com Correspondent | 01.13.15 | 3:54 PM

Marble, quartz, and honed granite, as well as more neutral color design patterns, are the hot tickets now in home design when it comes time to sell, experts say.

The changing tastes come amid an uptick in spending on home renovations (including kitchen revamps), a brightening economy, and rising home prices.

Home renovation spending was on track for a record year in 2014. Home and kitchen upgrades were expected to surpass the $145 billion tallied in 2006, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

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But while spending on home renovations are back, new styles and tastes are taking hold over the excesses of the irrationally exuberant bubble years. Crazy expensive customized kitchens are definitely out.

I think there is a decrease in excitement about granite everywhere, said James Roche, chief executive of Houseplans.com, which tracks building design trends across the country. The idea of covering everything in granite is equated with the Baby Boom McMansion phase. I dont think people like that aesthetic.

Homeowners who went nuts building over-the-top custom kitchens in the 1990s and 2000s learned the hard way, with the new owners often ripping things out and starting over, notes Neda Vander Stoep, a top agent in the Back Bay office of Coldwell Banker Residential Mortgage.

Some examples include crazy ornate backsplashes, black appliances, ornate floor tiles, customer, custom cabinets with ornate detail and overly customized cabinet hardware, she said. Instead, while owners still want great looking kitchens, they also want to ensure they are making a wise investment as well, she added.

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Home Renovations Bounce Back With Neutral Colors

The cause of a devastating fire that destroyed a business remained under investigation Wednesday morning in Armstrong County.

Blume's Solid Surface on Freeport Road in South Buffalo Township went up in flames around 6 p.m. Tuesday. The company specializes in kitchen countertops and has been in business for 25 years.

VIDEO: Watch Amber Nicotra's report

"I've never quite worked for a company like this," said employee Bob Waltz. "Coming here and seeing this, I liked working for this place. They were great owners, great people to work for. They went above and beyond everything."

When firefighters arrived, flames were shooting from all sides of the building. They encountered water issues when hydrants were frozen due to the extreme cold.

Several hours and more than 100 firefighters were needed to get the four-alarm blaze under control. Nobody was hurt in the fire.

The entire facility was destroyed, except for a few walls that are still standing.

South Buffalo Township Fire Chief Randy Brozenick says the fire appears to have started when an engine block heater caught fire in a truck that was parked behind the building in a loading area.

A state police fire marshal was investigating the fire, which spread rapidly in part because materials used to finish the countertops also burned.

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Fire engulfs, destroys countertop business

Riding a wave of increasing demand for fire arms, high-end gun clubs are popping up across the country to cater to a new generation of shooters. They're called "guntry clubs" and they are full of luxury. (Gabe Silverman/The Washington Post)

Blake Vaught and Alex Williamson, buddies in their late 20s, were having a cognitive dissonance moment.

This place is like a country club, Vaught said, looking at a concierge desk, granite countertops and sleek black couches.

Or like a really nice steakhouse, Williamson said.

They were not at a country club. They were not at a steakhouse. They were at Elite Shooting Sports, a new gun range in Manassas, Va., that, like a wave of other new ranges around the country, is targeting a new breed of shooter younger, more affluent, style-focused, increasingly female and even environmentally conscious.

The gun industrys term for these shooting retreats: Guntry Clubs.

In Miamis arts district, a new high-end club attracts celebrities such as LeBron James who shoot fully automatic machine guns, then chill in VIP lounges. A Texas range features gun valets. A Colorado club offers custom-fitted earplugs, apps to reserve shooting lanes and chess sets. Membership fees at these new ranges are sometimes hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Cigar lounges yes. WiFi of course. There is lots of leather.

The high-end ranges come as the $15billion gun industrys sales have more than doubled since 2005. Fears of regulations with a Democrat in the Oval Office have juiced much of that growth, which is now leveling out. But experts also say an industry shift away from hunting culture has helped spawn a new generation of firearms enthusiasts buying up sleekly designed handguns and AR-15 rifles for tactical shooting practice.

The average age of new target shooters is 33, while 47percent live in urban or suburban areas, and 37percent are female, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association for the firearms industry. Shooters spend $10billion a year on target shooting, including the cost of firearms, ammunition and range fees.

Those demographics and economics are attracting investors without firearms industry backgrounds; they see ranges as a new place to employ their cash. Elite Shooting Sports, a nearly $14million project, has investors from the electronics industry. Real estate, finance, hotel and auto industry executives have backed other new ranges.

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Guntry clubs target a new breed of shooter: younger, more affluent and female

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Business News of Wednesday, 14 January 2015

Source: Graphic Online

After years of innovations, experiments and exhibitions, the Great Kosa Automobile Company Limited is set to begin commercial production of vehicles in Ghana.

The company, which is owned by renowned Ghanaian industrialist, Apostle Kwadwo Safo, the founder of Kristo Asafo Mission, has successfully put its new automobile assembling plant to test.

Seven sleek Kantanka-branded vehicles three 4X4 Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and four pick-ups produced from the assembling plant at Gomoa Mpota in the Central Region, are set to hit the roads as the company stands ready to begin commercial automobile production.

According to an interior decorator of the company, Mr Kwasi Frimpong, who conducted a Daily Graphic team round the assembling plant, at the moment, the facility could produce four 4X4 SUV and four pick-up vehicles daily.

But officials of the company say in the long term, the assembling plant will produce at least 20 vehicles daily.

The assembling plant was installed in April 2014, following a collaboration with a Chinese investor.

Currently, it operates two lines one for SUV vehicles and the other for pick-up vehicles.

Mr Frimpong says there are plans to establish another plant for the production of saloon cars in the near future.

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Kantanka to begin commercial production of vehicles

Call Karen and Jack! Former costars Debra Messing and Eric McCormack are planning a Will & Grace reunion.

The two actors will appear on television together for the first time since Will & Grace aired its series finale in May 2006. McCormack, 51, is set to appear in an upcoming episode of the NBC dramedy The Mysteries of Laura, which is led by Messing.

PHOTOS:Costars Reunited

The Smash actress, 46, stars as Detective Laura Diamond in the new series. Her character is a homicide detective with the NYPD who faces additional challenges in her personal life as her ex-husband (Josh Lucas) is now her boss in the force, and she must balance work with raising their twin boys.

McCormack will make his debut in The Mysteries of Laura as Dr. Andrew Devlin, Deadline reports. His heart surgeon character is suspected of homicide after his ex-wife dies. To make things more complicated, Detective Diamond and Dr. Devlin were once engaged.

Eric McCormack as Will Truman, Debra Messing as Grace Adler in "Will & Grace" Credit: Bill Reitzel/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank

PHOTOS:'90s TV Stars: Then & Now

McCormack and Messing starred opposite one another for eight years on Will & Grace. Joined by Megan Mullally as Karen Walker and Sean Hayes as Jack McFarland, the two stars played Will Truman and Grace Adler, respectively.

Messing's Grace was a lovable interior decorator with a less-than-successful dating life, who lived with her best friend, McCormack's gay lawyer character Will.

PHOTOS: Debra Messing at the Emmys

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Debra Messing, Eric McCormack Have Will and Grace Reunion on Mysteries of Laura: Details

Previously, I talked about the homes where Walt lived in and around Hollywood. For this column, I am going to share the locations of the various Disney Studios where Walt worked.

Again, let me remind readers that these are privately owned places, not tourist locations, even though two of them gladly welcome customers.

Uncle Robert Disneys Garage, 4406 Kingswell Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90027

In September 1923, Walt was living with his Uncle Robert (the younger brother of Walts father, Elias) and was unable to find any type of work at the Hollywood live action motion picture studios.

Frustrated, Walt decided to try to get back into doing animation as he had in Kansas City.

Walt bought an old used camera that was not in the best of shape, for $200 from a local Los Angeles camera shop.

His older brother Roy had given Walt $10 to make up some business cards and letterhead paper proclaiming Walt Disney, Cartoonist and using Uncle Roberts address as the location for his art studio.

Walt asked Uncle Robert if he could set up his studio in the garage adjoining the house. Robert charged Walt an additional $1 a week to use the garage, in addition to the $5 a week rent.

Walt had to tear up dry-goods boxes and find spare lumber to build a very crude camera stand and animation set-up. The equipment would not accommodate anything more complicated than the simplest of animation.

Walt went to see Alexander Pantages, who owned a theater named after him, the Pantages, in downtown Los Angeles, as well as several other theaters. Walt pitched the idea of doing a series of short 30-second joke reels, like the Laugh-O-grams he had done for the Newman theaters in Kansas City. These reels would be weekly exclusives to run during the newsreel that would help publicize Pantages theaters.

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Walt Disney's Hollywood Studios

A New Farm house in Queensland by Vibe Design Group. Photo: William Long

From a design business based in Melbourne, and in the first commission to renovate one of those traditional weatherboard Queenslanders that make the period suburbs of Brisbane so attractive, building designer Michael O'Sullivan has completed a project that has made the old house look more like its old self than it has for decades.

His New Farm clients had sought Vibe Design's input and out-of-towner status with the specific brief that they wanted a different story to what Brisbane-based architects were generally doing to update Queenslanders.

"They wanted a different interpretation," he says.

An original Queenslander in New Farm. Photo: William Long

What they have got in an addition that includesa new kitchen, master bedroom, several studies, and a stunning timber internal staircase that has enabled the removal of the front-of-house stairs, is a clarified and freshened frontage, albeit with an interesting new bracketing roof structure rising on the eastern side.

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O'Sullivan says this open-ended, squared-roof profile has several effects.

One is a "cradling" of the existing house, and the other is to allow the elegant lines of the original roof "to continue".

A stylish take on a Queenslander design. Photo: William Long

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A new take on an old Queenslander

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