Custom touches accent Wauwatosa home

In a neighborhood full of lovely houses, the uncommon French styling of Cheri and Charlie Runge's home gives it a presence all its own.

There's the curved chimney that towers over tall, whitewashed brick walls, and small triangular sections of slate that pop ever-so-slightly from the roof over the second-floor windows like eyebrows raised in surprise, creating the tiniest of dormers. Placed on a lot that backs up against a quaint Hansel and Gretel woods, the home's exterior is enchanting.

A massive, carved wooden door with a great iron knocker embedded in the center opens to a foyer warmed by terra cotta-colored tiles and dominated by a sweeping curved staircase with an iron banister.

The home and five neighboring houses - all varied in style and built between 1941 and 1952 - are tucked away in a discreet Wauwatosa neighborhood. They will be open for visitors on Oct. 6 as part of the Wauwatosa Historical Society's "In the Shadow of Hawthorne" tour of homes.

Construction of the Runges' custom home began in 1941 but was halted by the start of World War II. Completed after the war, it had amenities unusual for its time, including an in-ground sprinkler system, a formal garden with a fountain and pond, and a sizable air conditioning unit in the basement that foreshadowed modern central air.

When the couple moved in with their two young sons, they had only a few decorating changes in mind. Thirteen years later, the couple are empty nesters. Wallpaper has given way to painted walls in buttery hues, floors have been refinished and the kitchen and patio have been redone. A dusty screen porch has been converted into a dining room and sunroom combination, with windows on three sides and a stone floor with radiant heat to make it a true four-season room.

An unexpected ceiling collapse in the former dining room/library had a happy result: the creation of a large yet surprisingly cozy family room. The dark wood shelving, trim and paneling were painted a sage green to add lightness to the room, which looks out on the woods, and a lovely box beam ceiling was created to replace the dated popcorn-stucco ceiling that Cheri is certain was applied by a sprayer.

The Runges were initially drawn to the home by its convenient but private location, the wooded lot and extra bathrooms. But their true appreciation for the house has grown as they've come to see it through the eyes of the craftsmen and decorators they've worked with over the years.

We redid the kitchen first, repainted every room in the house, reworked all the windows and resurfaced the floors. We changed the screened porch to a sunroom, landscaped the patio and the front yard.

The dining room/library was changed to a family room. Two bathrooms are above it, and the old shower pan cracked, and the whole ceiling fell down. It happened at the same time we were turning the screen porch into a sunroom, so we decided to add stereo throughout the first floor. You don't usually get to do that sort of thing in these old houses because you need ceiling access.

The floor was ceramic tile set in cement with this beautiful medallion in the center. It was the most permanent thing you ever saw, and we tried to save it, but we couldn't. It had to be jack-hammered out. What a mess! We put in a new subfloor and a wood floor.

A Map App, as Sleek as iPhone 5, Is Often Off

The GPS navigation screen was clean, bold and distraction-free. The voice instructions spoke the actual street names. The prompts gave me just the right amount of time to prepare for each turn.

There was only one problem: When the app told me that I had arrived, I was sitting in a random suburban cul-de-sac. Children were playing in the front yard, the sky was a crisp blue, and I was late for my talk.

As almost everyone knows by now, that’s not an unusual tale. Horror stories about Apple’s maps — and ridicule — are flooding the Internet.

The iPhone’s old mapping app was powered by Google. But in the new iOS 6 software for iPhones and iPads, Apple replaced Google’s maps with its own, built from scratch.

Unfortunately, in this new app, the Washington Monument has been moved to a new spot across the street. The closest thing Maps can find for “Dulles Airport” is “Dulles Airport Taxi.” Search for Cleveland, Ga., and you’ll wind up right smack in Cleveland, Tenn. Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville, Fla., is in the right place but the wrong decade; it became a Publix supermarket 11 years ago.

And on, and on, and on. Entire lakes, train stations, bridges and tourist attractions have been moved, mislabeled or simply erased. Satellite photo views consist of stitched-together scenes from completely different seasons, weather conditions and even years. The point-of-interest data, in particular, seems to be incomplete or flaky, especially overseas.

The most stunning new feature, Flyover, offers interactive, photorealistic 3-D models of major cities — but some scenes have gone horribly wrong. The Brooklyn Bridge has melted into the river, the road to the Hoover Dam plunges straight down into a canyon and Auckland’s main train station is in the middle of the sea.

In short, Maps is an appalling first release. It may be the most embarrassing, least usable piece of software Apple has ever unleashed.

Yes, it adds spoken turn-by-turn directions, auto-rerouting and a 3-D view of your route, all of which the old app lacked. Its design is elegant, smart and attractive. Flyover is neat. And Maps works beautifully with Siri; setting a destination is as easy as saying, “Give me directions to the White House,” and off you go. The spoken instructions continue even if you turn off the screen.

But Maps is missing Street View, which lets you see street-level photos of any address (it has taken Google’s photo cars five million miles of driving through 3,000 cities in 40 countries to build it). It’s also missing public transportation guidance; where Google’s maps could show you what buses or subways to take, the new app just hands you off to a list of independent bus and train schedule apps.

And while you’re navigating, you can’t zoom out from that spare, elegant routing screen to look ahead at your itinerary — to pick a better route on your own, for example. You can tap an Overview button for that kind of map, but now you’re flipping between two displays.

As the magnitude of Mapplegate became clearer, I had three questions.

First, why did Apple jettison Google’s map service, which is polished and mature? Second, how did Apple and its squad of perfectionists misfire so badly? Third, what exactly is the underlying problem, and how long will it take to fix?

First, why Apple dropped the old version: Google, it says, was saving all the best features for phones that run its Android software. For example, the iPhone app never got spoken directions or vector maps (smooth lines, not tiles of pixels), long after those features had come to rival phones.

The even greater issue may be data. Every time you use Google’s maps, you’re sending data from your phone to Google. That information — how you’re using maps, where you’re going, which roads actually exist — is extremely valuable; it can be used to improve both the maps and Google’s ability to deliver location-based offers and advertising.

Apple, of late, has been disentangling itself from Google.So when it came time to renew its contract, Apple declined. It was no longer interested in supplying so much valuable user data to its rival.

Artists embrace hexagon

Six hands join together, each grasping a neighbor’s wrist.

Peach, brown and pale yellow hues color this hexagon of disembodied appendages, some plain, some adorned with rings, others inked with flowery tattoos or the Chinese yin-yang symbol, representing the interconnectedness of opposing forces.

For Hannah Oustrich, the inspiration was simple: a photo of linked hands she saw somewhere on the Internet. Translating that image into the three-dimensional medium of glazed ceramic required the painstaking work of Oustrich’s own hands.

“It took quite a while,” art teacher Denis Yanashot said of Oustrich’s tile, describing how multiple firings and painstaking paint work was required to achieve the right effect.

That craftsmanship -- and the simple, powerful symbolism -- earned the Riverside High School student a first place award and the honor of seeing her colorful tile immortalized in print, as a featured image on the poster for this year’s Interdependence Day Hexagon Project exhibit. The showing, at the Library Express in the Mall at Steamtown, runs through Sept. 30.

Oustrich’s, whose work received a first place award for most effective piece of high school ceramics, was one of 25 Riverside students whose work appears in the exhibit, of whom more than half received awards. Exhibitors include several students who graduated earlier this year.

Interdependence Day was launched in Philadelphia on Sept. 12, 2003, the date chosen as a post 9/11 symbol of regeneration. Its goals include fostering greater harmony and tolerance throughout the world, emphasizing the interconnectedness of humankind and different cultures. Six-sided hexagons, which can so neatly nest with one another, serve as a metaphor for interconnectedness.

The Greater Scranton Interdependence Day Committee’s People’s Hexagon Project invited students in grades 5 through 12 to create hexagonal artworks interpreting the movement’s focus on global unity and tolerance. This is the art project’s six year, and organizers said more than 2,000 hexagons were submitted in the first five years. This year’s exhibit features hexagons from students worldwide, with Northeast Pennsylvania representation this year coming from Riverside, Abington Heights, Mountain View and Tunkhannock.

Riverside’s students were taught by Yanashot and Lisa Temples.

Temples said it can at first be challenging for students to represent some of the movement’s more complex issues, but that it has been rewarding “learning different ways to teach them how to express” the diverse themes.

Artistic expression and interconnectedness are themes for the Oustrich family. Hannah’s younger brother, Aaron, won a first place award for most effective piece of high school ceramics. His tile featured symbols of the Christian, Jewish and Islamic faiths together with a yin-yang.

But ceramic wasn’t the sole medium in play. High school student Keisha Buttaro won a second place for most creative expression in the high school category for two-dimensional work, honoring a collage she made that incorporated a panda bear in an ecological theme.

The Louvre’s New Islamic Galleries Bring Riches to Light

When I. M. Pei’s glass pyramid opened at the Louvre more than 20 years ago, many argued that this 70-foot-tall structure had destroyed the classical beauty of one of the world’s great museums. But today, as crowds wait on long lines outside the pyramid, which serves as the Louvre’s main entrance, what once seemed audacious has become as accepted a part of the city’s visual landscape as the Eiffel Tower or the Arc de Triomphe.

Now the museum is again risking the public’s wrath as it introduces the most radical architectural intervention since the pyramid in 1989. Designed to house new galleries for Islamic art, it consists of ground- and lower-ground-level interior spaces topped by a golden, undulating roof that seems to float within the neo-Classical Visconti Courtyard in the middle of the Louvre’s south wing, right below the museum’s most popular galleries, where the Mona Lisa and Veronese’s “Wedding Feast of Cana” are hung.

Ten years in the making, the $125 million project, which opens on Saturday, has been financed in part by the French government, along with Prince Alwaleed bin Talal of Saudi Arabia, who gave the Louvre $20 million toward the galleries, the largest single monetary gift ever given to the museum. Corporations have kicked in money too, including Total, the oil company, and the governments of countries like Saudi Arabia, Oman, Morocco, Kuwait and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

On a recent cloudless afternoon, as teams of workers were putting the finishing touches on the project, a visitor was allowed to enter the heavily guarded Visconti Courtyard, where the golden roof billows up from waist level at the edges to about 22 feet close to the center. At first glance it looks gauzy enough to blow away in a heavy wind, but according to members of the architectural team who were working at the site, it weighs 150 tons and has been painstakingly fashioned from almost 9,000 steel tubes that form an interior web, over which are a layer of glass and, on top of that, a shimmering anodized gold surface.

This deftly engineered design is the work of two architects, the Italian Mario Bellini and the Frenchman Rudy Ricciotti, who won an international competition to create the new wing in 2005.

When the plans were first unveiled, the architects said, the roof resembled a “a scarf floating within the space” — a somewhat loaded description, perhaps, considering that last year the French officially banned full veils in public places. The museum’s “luminous veil,” or “flying carpet” as it has also been called, covers some 30,000 square feet of gallery space on the ground and lower floors. The new galleries, roughly four times as large as the space previously devoted to Islamic art at the Louvre, house a collection spanning 1,200 years of history, from the 7th through the 19th centuries, and includes glass works, ceramics, metalwork, books, manuscripts, textiles and carpets.

Their opening comes 10 months after the Metropolitan Museum of Art introduced its own new galleries dedicated to the arts of Islam. The Met, in an effort to avoid defining the collection solely in terms of religion, chose an unusually long title for its spaces, “The Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia.” The Louvre, on the other hand, has taken the exact opposite approach, calling its galleries simply, “Islam.”

“This is the way the world has spoken about Islam, not only the religion but the civilization,” explained Sophie Makariou, the Louvre’s director of Islamic art, insisting that the name is not an oversimplification. “We were out to tell the history of these people. It’s as complicated as a textile. There are many different threads and a lot of different kinds of civilizations who built this world.”

And while the Met’s installation is organized mainly by geography, the Louvre has arranged its objects chronologically. The collection draws both from the Louvre’s own holdings of about 14,000 artworks and artifacts representing the breadth of the Islamic world from Spain to India and from the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, which is contributing 3,500 works on permanent loan.

Delicate manuscripts and textiles are displayed in the lower-floor galleries, where there is no natural light, while vitrines upstairs display stone sculptures, glassware and metalwork. (These angled glass cabinets — the work of the architect and museum designer Renaud Piérard — allow art and artifacts to be seen from all angles. “It is very important to have perception of objects, their shapes, their profiles and not to hang them like pictures against a wall,” Ms. Makariou said.)

When Henri Loyrette, the Louvre’s director, arrived at the museum in 2001, there was not even a separate department of Islamic art. This in spite of the Louvre owning what it calls “one of the richest collections of Islamic art in the world” — a trove large and varied enough to easily warrant a museum of its own. Still, Mr. Loyrette said recently, he did not want to create a separate museum for the Islamic works because they are “so closely linked to our collection, and to Western art, they would be sorely missed were they not part of the Louvre.”

Already the world’s most popular museum, with nearly nine million visitors in the past year alone, it is on its way to becoming even more popular, Mr. Loyrette said. “We have always been open to the world, and today, as our attendance keeps growing, our visitors are increasingly interested in the Islamic world. But many people do not know anything about it, and it is important to show them the luminous face of this civilization.”

The Islamic collection includes prized objects that have been on view at the Louvre for years, like an intricately inlaid 14th-century metal basin from the Middle East known as the Baptistery of St.-Louis, Ottoman jade bowls that belonged to Louis IV and an early-11th-century Egyptian rock crystal ewer from the royal abbey of St.-Denis.

But now there will also be scores of artworks and objects that have not been displayed before. Sitting in her office on the Rue de Rivoli, several blocks away from the Louvre itself, Ms. Makariou talked of some of the discoveries she has made over the last few years. One of the most intriguing, she said, and the one that gave rise to the most challenging undertaking of the project, was the group of some 3,000 16th- and 17th-century ceramic tiles from the Ottoman Empire that had been languishing in storage since the 1970s.

“Many of them didn’t even have accession numbers,” she said. Each tile was photographed, recorded and a database created, and then a team of curators, conservators and mount makers spent two years working every day to figure out how to arrange them in a convincing display. “It was a giant puzzle that took more than seven years to complete,” Ms. Makariou said.

Pleasant Library Reopens to Great Acclaim

Following a lengthy, multi-year design study, together with design review by the DC Historic Preservation Review Board and the federal Commission of Fine Arts, permit review by the District’s Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, an appeal to the DC Zoning Commission, litigation before the DC Court of Appeals, and with the consultation and collaboration — both contentious and constructive — of residents and immediate neighbors, city-wide activists, community groups, and two ANCs, construction has been completed on the $11.2 million renovation and expansion of the historic Mt. Pleasant Public Library.

Located in a 1925 Italian Renaissance-style building constructed of brick and Indiana limestone with a ceramic tile roof at 16th and Lamont Streets, NW, diagonally across 16th Street from the Byzantine domed Church of the Sacred Heart on a site made available to the DC Library Board by Mary Foote Henderson; it also sits directly across from the last of Mrs. Henderson’s 16th Street mansions, one which until recently housed the parks and recreation department’s headquarters. This restored, renovated, and expanded branch library will provide the nearby Mt. Pleasant and Columbia Heights residents (and others) with dramatically expanded resources and services, along with spaces appropriate for community needs and uses.

The library sits on the 16th Street boundary between these two dynamic, multi-cultural neighborhoods, both of which are experiencing explosive population growths, as are other close-by neighborhoods such as Adams Morgan. Library space for 80,000 books, multi-media publications and compilations, movie and video DVDs and music CDs all are being provided to respond to this growth. These library materials will join 40 state-of-the art public access computers in the new facility on three levels of dramatically lighted and high ceiling floors — and in roughly double the previous amount of library space.

Long a capital construction priority for the Library Board of Trustees as well as Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham (the Mt. Pleasant branch is the only public library in his ward), the library’s expanded facilities have been created through both the removal of the existing three-level cast iron library stacks and the relocation of staff support services, building mechanicals, and internal stairways and elevator from the historic structure to the new building which is accessible through the sparkling glass atrium that ties the two structures together.

This new atrium provides a single, common entrance to both the old and the new buildings, one that is easily accessible by wheelchairs, strollers, and pedestrians. These accomplishments have been among the high priorities for DCPL Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper. While the length of the elliptical walkway connecting the Lamont Street sidewalk with the consolidated library entrance remains a bone of contention with some, many others, who find the length to be acceptable, point to the attractive side yard garden space on the walkway’s left boundary and of the advantage of everyone entering the library on the first level — with the adult reading room to the left, the elevator to the upper and lower levels located on one’s immediate right, and the high ceiling multi-media auditorium and meeting space with a seating capacity of 100 straight ahead.

A further aesthetic improvement to the library has been achieved by the strategic removal of interior obstructions within the original building which has opened up dramatic sight lines on each of the three floors from one side to the other. The result is an openness not previously possible from the ground floor adult non-fiction space and its teen center, through the main level adult reading room, and to the upper level children’s room where the historic Aurelius Battaglia murals featuring circus animals playing in a band are being further restored.

Renovation work during this second and final stage of the overall effort occurred following the earlier restoration of windows, doors, and original masonry of the 1925 building during the project’s first phase.

Architectural design work for the entire effort of coordinating the renovation and restoration of the historic structure with the design and construction of the new modernist building to its rear and integrating these two into a single functioning whole with all its consequent complexities and challenges was provided by a team of architects from the CORE Group in partnership with HMA2 architects and with the direct participation of the library system’s staff manager for the project, Chris Wright.

A late morning ribbon cutting re-opening event, presided over by Mayor Gray and other dignitaries including Chief Librarian Cooper and Councilmember Graham, was heavily attended by neighbors and residents from the surrounding area on September 12th. A Grand Opening community celebration will take place on Saturday.

Trophy active in Abington

THERE’S A 15mph acceleration absolute about Abington, a abandoned affluence acreage of about 50 mansions in Malahide, Co Dublin. While signs forth the accurate grass verges appetite motorists to drive boring because accouchement are at play, this anniversary there were few signs of life; not a individual citizen walking a dog, mowing a backyard or active in or out of the development .

All was quiet abaft bankrupt cyberbanking gates afar from the babble of the Grecian-urn bubbler at the entrance. This could be an absolute resort away – bare the golf advance and acclimate – breadth premiership footballers and captains of industry sit audacity by jowl in the biggest, a lot of elaborate, bays homes.

Number 5 Abington, set on 1.2 acres, has been on the bazaar for absolutely a while but has just had a amount cut from €3.5 actor to €2.5 actor through DNG. Congenital in 2008, it has all you’d apprehend of such a mansion, including six bedrooms, a home gym, pond pool, home cinema, a across-the-board driveway. Parkway Properties congenital abounding of the houses in the affluence development but a few, including amount 5,were congenital by the owners who bought sites in the development. At 1161.3sq m it is one of the better in the acreage breadth there’s a mix of Regency and Georgian-style houses and chateaus big abundant to abode the absolute French nobility. All are about based on Auburn, the aboriginal abode in the grounds. Association cover Westlife’s Nicky Byrne and his wife Georgina Ahern and Yvonne Keating. High-profile above association included above arch controlling of Anglo-Irish Bank David Drumm, who lived in amount 20.

Number 5, congenital by developer Robbie Collins, is a bucking because there is huge absorption to detail yet some appearance are unfinished.

Every accessibility and abundance has been anticipation of including an chip lighting and complete system, annular pin and aboveboard pin bung sockets, a axial exhaustion system, geothermal underfloor heating and thermostatic controls in every room. However some fireplaces are missing gas heaters and the accomplish on the affecting wrought adamant twin-spiral amount case in the massive admission anteroom could do with carpet.

The adornment is actual chrism with able marble tiles in about every room, and panelling and adapted appliance advised with columns and pediments. Downstairs there’s a ancestors allowance and a continued sitting allowance arch to an close hall, off which there’s a dining allowance with doors to the garden, a home cinema and a amateur room.

As able-bodied as allowance for a able admeasurement snooker table, the amateur allowance has a abundant marble-top bar and doors that accessible out to the garden. At the basal of the close hall, doors advance through to a leisure breadth with a gym, two wet apartment and a appropriate sized pond basin with an atrium roof.

The allowance a lot of acclimated at the added end of the anteroom is the big Clive Christian-style kitchen cum ancestors allowance which admitting all the classical adapted appliance is a airedale space. The island countertop is fabricated from a actual absorbing slab of amber marble and has two dishwashwers underneath.

Upstairs off the capital landing are four bifold bedrooms, all with applicant bathrobe apartment of capricious sizes and en suites. The capital bedchamber has admission to a roof breadth that would charge to be railed off if there are adolescent accouchement in the house. You can ascendancy the anxiety from this allowance and there’s a agitation button.

As able-bodied as a huge applicant apparel the en apartment has a jacuzzi, wet room, and affluence of storage.

Up on the next akin there’s a big toy room, a library, and two en apartment bedrooms. It’s absolutely boundless to attending down from actuality to the admission hall.

Outside there’s a lawned and gravelled rear garden buried by trees. Two sites adjoining to amount 5 are currently on the bazaar also.

To the foreground there’s a drillmaster house-style bifold barn acclimated for accumulator and a assistant collapsed with a kitchenette and two actual apparent rooms, one of which is en suite, and like the big abode has panelling and chrism marble floors.

Movie shoot breadth became filmmaker’s home

Gerald Potterton has two cardinal passions — architecture archetypal airplanes and authoritative movies, something that becomes accessible the minute you airing into his home in Lac-Brome. The abode is abounding with miniature planes and cine posters and the bath walls (of all absurd spots) are afraid with awards from Potterton’s continued filmmaking career.Trained as an animator, Potterton, an expat Brit, formed for the National Blur Board of Canada afore aperture his own flat in city Montreal. Best accepted for the 1965 cine The Railrodder (starring Buster Keaton), he aswell formed on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine. In 1981, he directed Heavy Metal, an activated hard-rock fantasy accurate by luminaries like Al Waxman, John Candy and Eugene Levy.

Model planes are just a amusement but if he constructs them, he employs the aforementioned absorption to detail as he does if he animates his movies. He flies the mini aircraft as generally as he can, allegorical them forth a aerodrome in a acreage at the aback of his 88-hectare property.

Potterton’s home, a ancient dairy farm, dates aback to 1820, but it’s absolutely two houses in one. The foreground part, congenital by Loyalists, is archetypal of its era. Complete of brick, it has a pillared veranda, narrow, multi-paned windows, dormers and a abrupt roof. The aback allotment of the abode is “only” about a aeon old. Clad in clapboard, it was apparently acclimated for storage.

It was afterlife that brought Potterton to this website in the Eastern Townships.

“I was planning to accomplish a cine set in the Ardennes and I was on the anchor for a farmhouse and a barn,” recalled Potterton.

“The countryside about actuality reminded me of that breadth of Belgium. This abode would accept been ideal, but unfortunately, the allotment for the blur fell through.”

“After the blur was cancelled, the agriculturalist who had busy us his abode asked if I’d be absorbed in affairs it instead. At that point in my career I didn’t accept a lot of money, so I hesitated, but a brace of weeks later, I accustomed an abrupt ability cheque. That enabled me to put a down transaction on this abode and, in 1977, I confused in.”

The farmhouse was not in actual acceptable condition, abnormally the “new” part, a large, “open-to-the-elements” amplitude abounding with absurd concrete, with no insulation or avant-garde electrical wiring. There was, however, a bank and a aperture amid the aback of the architecture and the front, so for years Potterton added or beneath lived in the old Loyalist house.

He fabricated some renovations (“I advised myself a carpenter, which was antic because I wasn’t!”) such as accoutrement the admiral walls with Gyproc and architecture a bath with a window breadth there had been a “dark, horrible, space.” But in 2000, he absolutely redesigned his home, acutely transforming the autogenous and aperture up the two sections of the building. The centrepiece of the accumulated anatomy is an 1,800-square-foot open-plan living/dining/kitchen breadth on the arena floor, arch into the small, affectionate apartment of the Loyalist house.

PAGEBREAKThe added apartment in the two-in-one-house cover the aboriginal active room, two bathrooms, four bedrooms and an admiral amusement allowance breadth Potterton builds his archetypal airplanes.

The Loyalist abode has absorbing architectural appearance — low ceilings, absorbing nooks and crannies, windowpanes fabricated of wavy, handmade bottle and age-old board doors that adhere a little askew.

The new part, which has ache floors is bright, ablaze and open, with French doors arch to a patio at the kitchen end, a capital access with a mud allowance in the middle, an accessible access arch to the additional attic and a ample mirror on the far wall, encased in a huge, scallop-edged window frame. The mirror reflects the active space, authoritative it assume even larger.

Potterton didn’t apply an artist to redesign his abode but relied instead on his colour faculty and agog aesthetic eye. He did, however, accept the advice of the Albers, a father-and-son architecture aggregation whose ability was architecture barns.

“I adulation the barn artful of apparent areas with blubbery beams and top ceilings,” Potterton explained. “I aswell like lots of ablaze so if I drew up the plans, I congenital those appearance into my design.”

The architecture aggregation was able to cannibalize some of the absolute beams and move them about to actualize Potterton’s new active space. They were aswell able to antecedent some abstracts from a neighbour whose old barn had collapsed. One ample block of hemlock serves as the countertop in the kitchen.

The kitchen cupboards were custom-built by Peter Wisdom, a Knowlton-based artisan who aswell complete the floor-to-ceiling bookcases in the “Christmas room.” The kitchen adornment is ablaze and animated with agleam stainless animate appliances. The congenital units are colonial dejected with an aged accomplishment and the floors are covered with sienna-coloured bowl tiles.

“My alone affliction is that I didn’t install under-floor heating,” Potterton said. “The abode stays air-conditioned in the summer, but, unfortunately, it can aswell be a bit arctic in the winter.”

Potterton credibility out, however, that affairs were consistently an affair and installing heating would accept been an added cost. He paid $24,000 for the architecture aback in 1977, but he has angled out “many, abounding times that amount,” whipping the abode into shape. According to Potterton, it took him decades to pay off the mortgage, as able-bodied as the money he has spent on aliment and repairs.

The dining breadth is bedeviled by a anemic dejected amphitheater table, belted by Windsor chairs. It came from a abbey and seats up to a dozen people. As was the case with the table, Potterton best up a lot of of his appliance at barn sales and auctions about the Eastern Townships. Aboriginal artwork adorns the walls. Family photographs sit aloft the fireplace.

Bascom Arizona Ventures Invests in Avondale

Ascom Arizona Ventures has anew acquired Coldwater Springs Apartments, a 301-unit association amid in Avondale, Arizona for $27.2M or $90,365 per unit. Bascom Arizona Ventures formed with Brandon Smith and Brian Eisendrath of CBRE to align the costs for the purchase. The debt costs was provided by Ares Management. Jim Crews represented the client and agent in the transaction. The onsite acreage administration will be overseen by Arizona based Morrison, Ekre & Bart Administration Services (MEB). The acquirement comes on the heels of the contempo accretion of Estates at Maryland, a 330-unit "Class A" association amid in Phoenix.

Coldwater Springs was congenital in 2007, is a comfortable "Class A" acreage anchored on a all-inclusive 16.5 acreage with an boilerplate assemblage admeasurement of 956 SF. Each assemblage includes 9-ft alveolate ceilings, abounding appliances, bowl asphalt floors, clandestine balconies and patios, abounding admeasurement washer/dryers, applicant closets, and roman tubs with asphalt surround.

Community appearance include: 2 resort appearance pond pools with clandestine cabanas, billiards and bold room, abounding clubhouse, 24-hour exercise centermost and a accompaniment of the art business centermost and cine theater. Coldwater Springs aswell boasts activity able appearance such as energy-star appliances, bifold breadth low-E windows, 13 diviner heating and cooling efficiencies, and activity able lighting. The acreage is amid in the affection of the Phoenix busline area, with abutting around to the METRO ablaze rail, Downtown Phoenix, the arresting West Gate City Center, and Interstate I-10.

Mark Brotherton, Asset Manager for Bascom Arizona Ventures, comments, "After our acknowledged 12-property portfolio auction in 2007, we feel now is the best time to buy aback into the Arizona region. This will be our added acquirement in the accomplished month, and we are searching to aggrandize even added with added acquisitions slated to abutting in the next month." Bascom Arizona ahead acquired 5,174 units in the Phoenix city breadth amid 2004 and 2006. Brotherton continues, "We are searching to access assets that ambit from "A's" to "C's", finer with "in-fill" area and with a value-added component."

Bill Wright, Asset Manager authoritative renovations for Bascom Arizona Ventures, adds, "We intend to advancement assemblage interiors and bandbox up the accepted areas at both backdrop in adjustment to attempt with newer 'Class A' properties, and to aerate net able rents during the accepted bazaar recovery. We were actual acknowledged with our business plan during the endure cycle."

A clandestine disinterestedness close specializing in value-added multifamily, commercial, and non-performing loans and absolute acreage accompanying investments and operating companies. Bascom sources value-added and afflicted backdrop including abounding through foreclosure, bankruptcy, or abbreviate sales and repositions them by abacus all-encompassing basic improvements, convalescent revenue, and abbreviation costs through accomplishing of institutional-quality acreage management. Bascom has completed over $6.5 billion in multi-family and bartering value-added affairs back 1996 including added than 200 multifamily backdrop and 55,000 units. Bascom currently ranks a part of the top 50 multifamily owners in the US. Bascom's subsidiaries and collective ventures cover the Southern California Industrial Fund, Rushmore Properties, Bascom Portfolio Advisors, Shubin Nadal Associates, Spirit Investors, Bascom Northwest Ventures, Bascom Arizona Ventures, and the Realm Group. Bascom's subsidiaries aswell cover Premier Business Centers, the better abreast captivated controlling apartment aggregation in the US.

A home, a playground

Film director Hanung Bramantyo used to bring his work home, but he changed this habit after the renovation of his house was completed last year.

Some Jakartans have customized their houses to become a part of their workplace, setting up a room to bring home work, or even working from home all or most of the time.

“I use my energy outside the house, so I recharge at home. Once my battery of energy is full, I will go out to work again,” Hanung told The Jakarta Post.

Located on Jl. Ampera in South Jakarta, the two-story house has simple and minimalist lines, with a slight feminine touch on its roof and windows. Hanung, who bought the house in 2010, said he initially felt reluctant to accept the idea of renovating the house. The idea to renovate came from his wife, actress Zaskia Adya Mecca.

After some heated discussions, Hanung eventually succumbed to his wife’s strong wish to beautify the house. He entrusted the whole design and renovation process to her, saying that she was more meticulous than him.

Hanung said he was lucky to be away early in the renovation process, because he was shooting a film, ?, in Semarang, Central Java.

The most important phase of the renovation was strengthening the construction of the corners of the house, because the couple wanted to expand the main room on the second floor. The construction was not complete when he returned home, so his little family had to remain in a small room.

“I felt like we were living in a rented room, which stressed me out. We later rented a house nearby in Kemang,” he said.

The heated discussions between him and his wife continued because Zaskia wanted to change the floor tiles to marble. Again, she won the debate. However, all the disputes became history once the renovation was completed. Hanung said he was impressed with the results.

When it came to designing the interior of the house, they both agreed to fill the house with film-related furniture and decorations, so that guests could promptly realize that the owner is a filmmaker. Their selections are a combination of contemporary and antique items.

Their couch and table were custom-made, and resemble the shape of a camera, with a table as the lens.

Besides decorating a wall with a funny telephone box, they also have some antique cameras on the table, while some more are put in small hollowed-out places in the floor, and covered with glass. The couple also turned their garage into a room with the ambience of a cafe.

He hunts for non-Hollywood DVDs when he travels to Bangkok and Singapore, because the stores there have more collections than those in Jakarta.

“My first destinations when I go abroad are bookstores and DVD stores. I barely shop for clothes or other things,” said the PlayStation maniac.

Hanung still maintains his working room, but he has removed his personal computer in order to avoid bringing work home.

He says he only uses the working room for light activities, such as reading books related to films and drawing storyboards.

He said Zaskia teaches him to treat their house as a place to relax with the family. While other people go to other towns and spend nights in a fancy hotel for a vacation, Hanung says going home is a vacation to him.