Home Builder Developer - Interior Renovation and Design

It may be one of the smallest elements in a kitchen or bath design, but grout can make a big difference in the overall appearance of the space. Grout really tops off your installation, said Joshua Levinson, president of Artistic Tile wholesale. In a lot of respects, its a great equalizer, covering up imperfections and inconsistencies. When joints are filled and packed properly with grout, it can even out lippage and variations in the height of materials.

So how can you make grout do its best work? Follow Levinsons advice for grout selection and installation and your tile projects will reach perfection.

1. Choose the right type of grout. Grouts typically are cement-based products and are available as sanded or unsanded, said Levinson. Sanded grout is specified for joint sizes of 1/8 inch or more, while non-sanded grout is best for joints of less than 1/8 inch. Sand is there to provide additional body to the grout in a large joint to prevent shrinking, sagging and cracking, he said.

If the joint size requires sanded grout, pay attention to the possibility of scratching glass or polished stones, warned Levinson. Sand is quartz- and silica-based and often higher on the Mohs Scale than many limestones and marbles, so scratching is a consideration in design and installation, he said. The joint size between surfaces that could be scratched should be designed to be less than 1/8 inch so unsanded grout may be used.

While historically grout would be mixed on site, adding in the amount of sand and color needed, today, grout is usually supplied in pre-mixed bags. Latex additives can be mixed in with the grout to reduce absorbency, thereby increasing stain resistance and improving color retention. Some grout manufacturers include latex additives in their pre-mixed grout, while others require they be added separately. Some manufacturers also add anti-fungal and mildew-resistance additives. After installation, silicone sealers also can be applied to grout to prevent staining.

Epoxy grout is an alternative to cement. Made with epoxy resins and a hardener mixed just prior to installation, this waterless grout is extremely stain and mildew resistant and does not require additional sealers. While epoxy grouts can be more difficult to work with, harsh when contacting the skin and harder to clean up, recent improvements have addressed these issues. Epoxy grouts have certain limitations, typically including the inability to be used with glass tile, as they restrict movement to a large degree, said Levinson. Epoxy grouts are typically chosen when stain resistance is desired.

The newest option is StarQuartz urethane grout, which is touted as having the benefits of epoxy with an installation as easy as cement. It is more stain resistant and requires no sealer, said Levinson. Until the most recent formulation, StarQuartz had challenges in wet installations.

Grout-free installation is only an option with products that have a very tight joint in dry areas, such as a mosaic fireplace. I dont recommend it in wet areas, said Levinson. Without the grout, the joint is just opening to the substrate.

Grout color selection is also important in terms of its longevity. A white-colored grout in a high-traffic area, ultimately its going to stain and be dirty, said Levinson. Even if you clean it right, it will darken. Therefore it might be best to choose a darker cementitious grout, or an epoxy or urethane grout, that will stay truer to its color over time.

While each manufacturer offers its own palette of colors, custom color selection is not yet an option. You could mix two grouts for a custom color for a certain effect, he said, but make sure its mixed properly and that you mix enough for the whole batch. You dont want the color to vary. Even when using one color grout, Levinson suggested getting enough of one lot to do the entire job to avoid color variations.

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5 Steps to Grout Greatness

Tile pieces joins San Clemente's colorful mosaic of public art

Brian Morales, and Layla Morales, 4, look at the new tile art piece on Del Mar of the Hanson Beach Club. Layla Morales is the granddaughter of one of the artists, Michael King. ///ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: 1121.spn.TILEMURALS 11/14/14 NICK AGRO, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER At 4 p.m. Friday, dignitaries unveil the fourth in a series of tile murals at bench seating areas along Avenida Del Mar. The SC Historical Society, Downtown Business Association and city partner in the project. Each site actually has two tile murals, a floor mural and a wall mural depicting some historic sites around town. This new one featues the Ole Hanson Beach Club and an elegant blufftop home that no long exists (known as the Bartow home). We can also get fresh art of the other murals along the block (they are easy to find, just up teh street from this one, on both sides of the street at bulb-outs). This will be the Sun Post centerpiece for next Friday and should be colorful and catchy. We have file art of other murals around town, but if you'd like to shoot fresh art, I can suggest several sites One is a tile mural at the entrance to the pier that Paul Bersebach shot in 2001. Another is a tile mural at the Mariposa beach access along the Beach Trail (I think Paul shot that one too). There is a beautiful tile bench along the beach trail just north of the access to Riviera Beach. There are some nice non-tile murals around town including one in the parking lot behind Starbucks (300 S. El Camino Real) and one on an alley behind 1502 N. El Camino Real. We do have file art of most of these, but if you'd like to get fresh, that's fine too. .

NICK AGRO , STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

"We're looking at (art) guidelines right now, but because we have been so lucky to get so much art in just letting the community express itself with such great quality pieces, there just isn't any direction to pursue (an ordinance) right now.

"We just did a study session at the Planning Commission that showed that when you have high vandalism graffiti that drops by 98 percent, nationwide, once you put a mural up.

"The City Council waived the fee a couple of years back in order to encourage murals in the community. There is still a discretionary review process, but it's pretty minor."

Source: Amber Gregg, city of San Clemente

Michael Kaupp of the Downtown Business Association and Mike Cotter of the San Clemente Historical Society are the visionaries behind "Landmarks on Del Mar."

The artwork is done by Jay Fisher and translated into tiles by Michael King. Both artists, Cotter said, are world-famous in their fields. They met while working on a hotel for Steve Wynne.

King said he takes special care to create tiles and scenes that look like they are from an earlier time.

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Tile pieces joins San Clemente's colorful mosaic of public art

Van West Great Home for Sale | Arbutus area | $2,210,000
5 bedrooms Den, 5 Washrooms. Quality custom built home has been totally renovated within 2 years in the most prestigious Arbutus area. 1 minute walk to school. Current owner added new sprinkler.

By: Lin Gina

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Van West Great Home for Sale | Arbutus area | $2,210,000 - Video

URBANA An agency that provides emergency care for children from families in crisis temporarily closed on Thursday after a water pipe broke.

Crisis Nursery Executive Director Stephanie Record said that either a sprinkler system or a pipe in a wall burst at the facility at about 2:45 p.m.

We are waiting for the folks from FE Moran to assess the situation because they are involved with the sprinkler system, Record told The News-Gazette. We have people working here to clear the water.

Record said that seven children and 15 staff members were at the Crisis Nursery at the time of the incident. Nobody was hurt.

We followed our evacuation procedures and took all the children to the Presence Covenant Medical Center emergency room, Record said. Then we contacted the families. Everybody has been reunited with their families.

As a result of the water pipe burst, the Crisis Nursery will be closed until at least 4 p.m. Friday. At that time, a decision will be made about reopening the facility for the weekend.

The Crisis Nursery is dedicated to the prevention of child abuse and neglect. It provides 24-hour emergency care and shelter for children from birth to age six in crisis situations. The facility cared for 850 children in 2013.

What should parents do if they find themselves in a crisis during the next 24 hours while the facility is closed?

They can still call our crisis line, 337-2730, and we can problem solve with them, Record said.

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Crisis Nursery temporarily closes after water pipe breaks

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Reese Witherspoon can rock a red carpet like no one else, but as she shows in Wild, she's more than just a pretty face. The Devil's Knot actress, 38, got down and dirty both literally and figuratively for her new movie, an adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's best-selling memoir of the same name. Us Weekly has an exclusive clip from the film, which is due to hit theaters on Dec. 5.

PHOTOS: Reese's style through the years

In the clip, a makeup-free Witherspoon sits talking with a fellow hiker on the Pacific Crest Trail, quietly contemplating the beauty of her surroundings and the life she left behind. It's an intimate, tranquil moment on a difficult, often perilous journey.

PHOTOS: Stars without makeup

Witherspoon dug deep to play Strayed, who embarked on the 1,100-mile trek after her mother (played in the movie by Laura Dern) died of cancer. At times during filming particularly while shooting the scenes involving sex and drugs the Legally Blonde actress was pushed nearly to her limits.

Credit: Anne Marie Fox/Fox Searchlight

"It was really hard to do it," she admitted during a Q&A on Nov. 11. "I didn't want to do any of it. I really didn't want to do the sex scenes. I really didn't want to do the heroin scenes."

PHOTOS: Reese's best hairstyles

She did them, she said, because she wanted to be faithful to Strayed's story. "I just knew that Cheryl had told the whole truth and I had to be brave enough as an artist to tell the whole truth, too," she explained.

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Reese Witherspoon Sheds Hollywood Glamour for Stripped-Down Role in Wild: Watch an Exclusive Clip

Cousins Properties Incorporated ( CUZ ) sold five shopping centers, spanning about 486,000 square feet, for $79.5 million to a single buyer. With the sale completion of the properties, which were anchored by Publix, Cousins Properties successfully fulfilled its retail ownership divestiture goal.

This real estate investment trust (REIT) reaped net proceeds of around $34.5 million from this divestiture. As a matter of fact, the company owned the vended assets in two joint ventures with Watkins Retail Group.

We are encouraged with this transaction as it will provide dry powder to Cousins Properties to shape its business on a simpler platform by specifically targeting trophy assets and opportunistic investments.

Notably, Cousins Properties primarily focuses on investing in the properties that are primarily concentrated in high-growth Sun Belt markets. Accordingly, earlier this month, the company inked a joint venture deal with Hines - a Houston-based real estate investor - for constructing a trophy office tower named 'Victory Center' in the Uptown Dallas submarket of Texas (read more: Cousins-Hines Team Up to Build Victory Center in TX ). Moreover, subsequent to end of the third quarter, the company acquired a 1.5 million square foot Class-A office asset - Northpark Town Center - in Atlanta for $348 million. Such deals promise strong growth prospects.

In the previous month, Cousins Properties reported third-quarter 2014 results with FFO (funds from operations) of 20 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by a penny and easily surpassing the year-ago figure of 9 cents. Robust revenue growth aided the 81.8% year-over-year rise in FFO per share (read more: Cousins Properties Q3 FFO and Revenues Beat )

Cousins Properties currently holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). Other better-ranked REITs are Duke Realty Corp. ( DRE ), EastGroup Properties Inc. ( EGP ) and Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. ( ARE ). All stocks have the same rank as Cousins Properties.

Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income.

DUKE REALTY CP (DRE): Free Stock Analysis Report

COUSIN PROP INC (CUZ): Free Stock Analysis Report

ALEXANDRIA REAL (ARE): Free Stock Analysis Report

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Cousins Vends 5 Properties, Fully Sheds Retail Ownership - Analyst Blog

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

20-Nov-2014

Contact: Tona Kunz tkunz@anl.gov 630-252-5560 DOE/Argonne National Laboratory @argonne

A new discovery about the atomic structure of uranium dioxide will help scientists select the best computational model to simulate severe nuclear reactor accidents.

Using the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, researchers from DOE's Argonne National Laboratory and Brookhaven National Laboratory, along with Materials Development, Inc., Stony Brook University, and Carnegie Institution of Washington, found that the atomic structure of uranium dioxide (UO2) changes significantly when it melts.

UO2 is the primary fuel component in the majority of existing nuclear reactors, but little is known about the molten state because of its extremely high melting point. Until now, the extremely high temperature and chemical reactivity of the melt have hindered studies of molten UO2. This lack of fundamental information has made it difficult to evaluate issues associated with the interaction of molten UO2 with a reactor's zirconium cladding and steel containment vessel.

The research team found that when uranium dioxide melts, the number of oxygen atoms around uranium changes from eight-fold to a mixture of six- and seven-fold, which changes the way it interacts with other materials. Many existing models, however, do not account for this change in structure or the rapid oxygen dynamics that occur at high temperatures.

"Determining the behavior of UO2 under extreme conditions is essential to enhancing our understanding of reactor safety during severe accidents," said Mark Williamson of Argonne's Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division.

"Very few places in the world have the capability to safely measure the structure of molten UO2 at 3,000 degrees Celsius without introducing contamination from the container that holds the melt," added Chris Benmore of Argonne's X-ray Science Division.

Researchers studied the UO2 in the hot crystalline and molten states. In this experiment, researchers relied on the APS's high-energy synchrotron X-ray beam to study a bead of UO2 that was aerodynamically levitated on a stream of argon and heated with a laser beam.

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Discovery sheds light on nuclear reactor fuel behavior during a severe event

Written by Gary Simeone, oysterbay@antonnews.com Thursday, 20 November 2014 00:00

What better way to celebrate a 100th birthday than by having a new room inauguration filled with local residents, live music and cocktails and scrumptious hors doeuvres. That is what happened at the Locust Valley Library Sunday evening, Nov. 9, as the community room was officially renamed the Matinecock Neighborhood Association Community Room. Proceeds from the event went to the restoration of the new room.

Speakers at the centennial celebration included Library Board of Trustees President Charles Brisbane, Library Administrative Director Kathy Smith, Locust Valley Historical Society President Herb Schierhorst and Matinecock Nation Chief Little Running Fox.

Its been 100 years since the Matinecock Neighborhood House was built through gifts of money from local residents, said Brisbane, who is also president of the Matinecock Neighborhood Association. The building featured a theater, an infirmary and there was a kitchen and a bowling alley in the basement. The basement also housed the Locust Valley Fire Department at that time.

In 1923, local resident Frank Doubleday added a library wing to the building and in 1936 the Matinecock Neighborhood Association turned over the building and grounds to the Locust Valley Library.

Brisbane said that people are making the library their neighborhood house once again.

The library offers multiple programs for people of all ages, was a place of refuge and a gathering place after Superstorm Sandy and the newly renamed community room attracts a couple of thousand people a year for events, said Brisbane.

Smith said that the people of the Matinecock Nation have been very generous with the library over the years.

They have done a lot of nice things as far as helping with the upkeep of the library and recently donated $25,000 for the renovation of this room, said Smith.

There are big plans in the librarys second century for renovations that will help to continually improve the look of the buildings interior and exterior.

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Library Celebrates 100th Birthday

A Bayonne man with a history of stealing packages from people's porches has been arrested after being caught in the act yet again, according to Bayonne police.

Yesterday at 3:34 p.m., an off-duty Bayonne police officer saw Damien L. Baker, 45, removing a package from the porch of a home on Avenue A in Bayonne, Bayonne police Lt. Janine Foy said.

While walking away from the home, Baker opened the package, took out an energy drink that was inside, discarded the packaging and continued on his way, Foy said.

The officer, who was familiar with Baker from previous arrests, then arrested him for theft, she said.

Upon searching Baker, the officer found items that police believe to be from other people's packages, including a sweatshirt with a tag still on it and a pair of earrings, Foy said. It's not known who those items belong to, she said.

While Baker was in custody, the officer also discovered that he had an outstanding warrant for a theft reported Nov. 14 by another Bayonne resident living on Avenue A, whose package was also stolen.

In that incident, the homeowner had a security camera that captured footage of Baker removing the package, which police used to obtain a warrant, Foy said.

Baker was charged with two counts of theft and taken to the Hudson County jail in Kearny on a $15,000 bail with a 10 percent option. He made his first court appearance today at Central Judicial Processing in Jersey City.

Foy said he was arrested four separate times in Bayonne between January and March this year for taking packages off people's porches.

Baker did not steal from any one neighborhood in Bayonne, Foy said, adding that one theft took place on 35th Street, another one took place midtown on Avenue C and two took place "all the way" downtown.

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Man with record of stealing packages from porches in Bayonne strikes again: police

The flow of the mighty Cocasset River under West Street afforded early pioneer settlers yet another opportunity to harness the river as a source of power to turn the wheels of industries.

They seized the moment in ways as varied as the imaginations of the dreamers who saw potential for success in making needed goods, creating industry in a farming community, and moving beyond dependence upon the land.

The challenge was unique, but no match for their creativity in taming the land and maximizing the utilization of raw materials they knew and respected.

There in that wooded area where they built a dam to impound water to ensure a continuous stream to power the mill, they found a creative solution for most every problem.

Cocasset River

The Cocasset River is a wonder unto itself, rising from a deep bed of peat across Route 1 from the Lafayette House that would be like liquid gold when used to power many early industries in a town that had only one natural pond, the original Shepards Pond, now Lake Mirimichi.

An early use of the Cocasset River was a dam on what was then Granite Street (now Lakeview Road) which filled Carpenter's Pond (now Lakeview) and a second dam upstream would fill Upper Dam to ensure an even more abundant supply of water for power.

The dam at Water Street was authorized to fill what was called Factory Pond to a depth of 14 feet and that body of water, now Cocasset Lake, was in continual demand for a series of various manufacturing operations.

As Cocasset River continued downstream, another dam created Foundry Pond from which a portion of the outflow was directed into Foxborough Foundry to cool the large iron castings such as sections of the Common Fence that were created there.

One more opportunity remained, and that was where the Cocasset River would fill yet another pond before passing under West Street. After filling five ponds for industrial purposes, the mighty river that started in Foxborough when it rose out of a bed of peat ended here in town as well, flowing into Wading River.

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HIDDEN HISTORY: West Street mill site a tribute to Yankee ingenuity, determination