Pride Of Home Ownership By Ricky Perrone For more than 32 years my family’s passion has been building high end custom homes in the Sarasota area. I’ve grown up learning what makes a home special, the aspects and features in a home that lead to pride of ownership and when the time comes, a quicker and higher resale value next to comparables. I’d like to share some of my insights with you
Wednesday, January 4, 2012
The Birth of ReStore By Mark Miller Westwater Construction Approximately ten years ago the concept of ReStore was born. It all started one day as I walked through Westwater’s warehouse.
Monday, March 14, 2011
Design Lines The Sarasota School Of Architecture By Pamela Hughes In our last column, I wrote about Modern Design, so I thought it might be interesting to further the discussion and specifically focus on Sarasota itself and “The Sarasota School”. It is interesting to recall that this “modernism” is now more than 50 years old! While that is certainly true, it is also true that as one drives around Sarasota and occasionally sees these houses and buildings from that time, they retain a freshness and originality that is still stunning and inspiring. In an earlier time, Sarasota was a beautiful, […]
Monday, March 14, 2011
Seeing Red By John and Rose Brasgalla JRB Group General Contractors When the owners of this West of the Trail home purchased the property, they knew they were getting a great deal. Of course, buying a home for the price of the lot alone is an even better deal if the house is worth keeping. Updating a 60 year-old house is challenging enough, but it is even more work to fix a place that has had decades of experimental projects and repairs. Having done a loft in Boston as a DIY project, the owners knew that this job required professional […]
Monday, March 14, 2011
Does Your House Need A Trusted Advisor? By John Lambie The big ticket items for most people are houses and cars. Most of us have, or wish we had, a trusted mechanic. Your mechanic knows how your car operates, keeps your service record and lets you know when maintenance is needed and what to do in the event of a fender bender or mechanical breakdown. And for improving on the original, only real “gear heads” dig in to their own cars to improve performance. But What About Your Home? Most homeowners were not involved in the design and construction of […]
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
Don’t Let Them Practice On Your Home By Robbie Brown How true? I believe all of us, at one time or another, has experienced paying a so called professional for work that we are far from being satisfied with. Some have even fallen victim to home scams! Over the years as a consultant/builder/roofer, I spend more and more time trying to teach people “How not to get ripped off in Florida”. So what steps can a home owner or business owner take to assure his or her selection of a contractor is the right selection? Here are some steps in […]
Monday, October 25, 2010
View From The Top: Passion And Excellence By Robbie Brown Can anyone really say they set out from the start to be mediocre? I mean how many stories do you hear or read about where the contractor or skilled professional has left such a mess for a home owner that regulatory boards and legal entities have stepped in. I understand the different budgeting involved in low income and high income projects, but as a skilled craftsman couldn’t a builder say “I built that house to the best of my ability with attention to detail.” Since 1980 Anmar Builders/Green Roofing Technologies […]
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
Outdoor Living Design By Steve Murray For the majority of people moving to Florida, drinking a cocktail and flipping the steaks on the barby whilst looking out over their pool or bayfront view is their idea of utopia. Every day begins and ends the same way….enjoying their outdoor living space. As a result, over the years we have seen a trend in how homes have integrated lanais, covered decks and pool areas into the overall flow of the home. Homes built inland typically have more land and are less restricted on lot coverage allowing large living and eating areas under […]
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
A No Non-Sense Approach to Green Building By Mark Miller Everyone today is talking about “Green” from your neighbor next door to the President of the United States. With the topic on so many minds one would think that everyone has a good understanding of what the term green means. Who should we turn to for information on what it means to build “green”? Should we turn to our government for that answer? It wasn’t too long ago when it became news that ethanol production, which was supposed to be “green,” used more fossil fuel than it yielded. Even worse, […]
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Out With The Old, In With The New By Steve Murray For as long as I have been building in Sarasota, stretching back to 1995, architectural trends have been fairly staid and proponents of “evolution” rather than “revolution”. The “Spanish-Med” style that has adorned so many of our new subdivisions and neighborhoods has finally been laid to rest. Almost. There are still some models and new construction homes that display the applied foam trim, earthy colors and Corinthian columns that is the hallmark of that style of architecture. But there is a new movement in Sarasota being facilitated by our […]
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Why Build Now? By Steve Murray It was about three years ago that I began to notice….there were less speculative phone calls from people asking about building new custom homes on the waterfront. At the time we were really busy, but in construction the long lead time means that if you are not getting the phone calls today, then you are not going to be busy in a year’s time. In addition, we began to get more calls for remodeling or renovating existing houses which is typically due to the fact that people are not moving, are not buying lots […]
Monday, March 1, 2010
Historic Versus Old By Steve Murray There is something about a historic car, boat or house that triggers the romantic in most of us…a 1956 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing, a 1933 J-Class America’s Cup yacht or an 1850’s restored row house. Yet, “old” does not necessarily mean “good”. There are many old cars out there that you wouldn’t want to own, many boats that should probably be put out of their misery and there are certainly many old houses that would be best taken down rather than renovated. However, as with cars and yachts, certain houses that were designed and built […]
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Are You Protecting Your Home? By Steve Murray As we enter into the cooler weather and with it the end of the hurricane season, we can be thankful for a quiet year during 2009. Not once this year did we have to stop work at our job sites and prepare the half-built structures for a possible “big wind”. Not only is this good news for our tourist trade and local economy, but it allows the CAT Fund, underwritten by Florida taxpayers, to carry over to next year without paying out for a natural disaster. Yet more importantly, it is good […]
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Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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