Celebrating 15 Years!

On April 11th, we celebrated 15 years of beautiful houses and wonderful clients. The party was at Community Q BBQ in Decatur and 50 of our favorite people turned out to join the fun. For more pictures, check out the "Celebrations" section under "About Us" on our website, http://www.hawthorninc.com/

What's next in residential energy efficiency?

Here's what we need: a little gizmo that will allow us to monitor energy use in our homes. This is among the suggestions from the U.S. Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-chu/energy-efficiency-achievi_b_501263.html

Featured Kitchen

One of our kitchens was recently featured in Better Homes and Garden Kitchen and Bath Makeovers

HGTV Comes to Our House

Here is our kitchen from the same view as in the post about surviving a renovation. In the earlier view, we were looking at our temporary blue wall, which divided the kitchen and allowed carpenters to work while we continued using the space.

In this view, we have a camera crew from HGTV filming for the show Bang for Your Buck. They were comparing three Atlanta kitchens in the same approximate price range. When the show airs, I expect we'll find that they've been tough on us, because we're in the business. But it was fun. It will (I think) be the 6th episode in the new season, which begins in September.

FYI, Vern Yip is as nice as everyone says he is.

Bathroom Design on How Stuff Works

It's been a crazy spring, and I apologize for the dearth of posts. But I do want to show you a link to an article on http://www.howstuffworks.com/ (part of the Discovery Channel) - because I was interviewed for it and quoted in it. Try:
http://home.howstuffworks.com/home-improvement/decorating/10-mistakes-in-bathroom-design.htm

Family Life: The Birthday Week

I had a birthday recently, and I celebrated with our family’s custom: the birthday week. This is a tradition that really works, and I recommend it.

Almost everyone, from the teenage years on, has had at least one birthday that was a crushing disappointment. No one paid much attention that year for some reason; or you didn’t get the one present you were hoping for, or – if you’re a teenager – a fight with your parents destroyed the whole day. Magic solution: the birthday week.

During the birthday week, you designate seven full days to be nice to yourself. Other people aren’t really part of this: it's not a week of tyranny over your family and friends. Maybe they’ll let you out of doing the dishes a few times, but in general, this is a week in which you take responsibility for making yourself happy.

You allow yourself some of the little treats that you’d ordinarily skip. An affordable luxury – like a book or a sweater – that you’ve been wanting to buy, but haven’t? Buy it. Making time for lunch with a friend, even though you’re busy? Do it. Coffee and a magazine for half an hour after lunch, even though you have work to do? Make it happen.

In our family, we find that the birthday week gets us out of that whiny, “Does anyone really love me?” state of mind that birthdays seem to engender. So when the actual day rolls around, somewhere mid-week, whatever your family and friends choose to do for you is nice, but not the whole story. You’re having a good time before the day even starts.

And when the birthday week is over, you’re ready to admit that you’ve had your fun and that normal life can resume.

Surviving a Renovation

I came across some pictures you might enjoy. These are from a project we did on our own house two years ago, and they show how helpful site preparation is when you’ve got workers in your house. We do site preparation like this on every job – as needed -- when people are living in the house.

Our project included custom cabinet work in the family room. Carpentry is messy and takes up a lot of space, so you have to plan for it. Often, the carpenters do most of the work in their own space off-site, but in this case the guys we were using live far away, so it was easier to give them space in the house.

We started by building a temporary wall out of two-by-fours and blue foam board.

The wall divided our kitchen from the breakfast / family room, and it had a door cut into it (the hinges were just made of tape.) Just for fun, we made a poster-sized picture of a familiar water view, and we taped the picture to the blue wall. Not beautiful, but cheerful in a goofy kind of way.

On the other side of the temporary wall, the carpenters worked all day. Their conversation and power tools seemed slightly distant from the kitchen, since we couldn’t see each other. We never allow radios on any of our jobs, so that wasn’t a problem.

Here’s the workers’ side of the room. The view below is actually of the breakfast table area, temporarily filled with tools.

The next is of the cabinets in progress....

and the last is the finished work.