Landscaping

  • EPA, Texas Builders Partner on Storm-Water Education

    Agreement provides storm-water pollution prevention training, certification to Lone Star builders.

     
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    Designing Outdoor Rooms

    Most people conceive of an outdoor room as a porch, screened or not, attached to the house. If just one side is open to the elements, it hardly feels like outdoors at all. Three open sides and we really start to feel the connection with our surroundings. We are projected out into the landscape, but...

     
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    Sketchpad: Landscape Values

    Few home remodeling projects would fail to be improved by better landscaping. This is an underappreciated aspect of construction that can quickly turn a good project into a great impression. The job really isn't done until that mess in the yard is cleaned up and the builder and the owner both look...

     
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    Window options for the home

    Windows from Simonton, RLC Technologies, YKK AP., and Marvin.

     
  • Designing your landscape

    What do we mean by the landscape of home? It's not only the gardens, but also the views and vistas, and the walkways and thresholds that let you feel at home on your land. Of course, your house is part of this landscape, too. How do you decide when to use these elements? You begin by realizing that...

     
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    Best whole-house remodeling design award

    Driven by the clients' passion for gardening and art, this home is the dazzling synthesis of a big idea and a modest slice of mid-century architecture.

     
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    House and landscape as an integrated whole

    Have you ever noticed that most houses are situated on their lots rather like vehicles that have landed from outer space? Even if there's landscaping surrounding the house, there's often little or no consideration given to whether any of it can be seen from the interior. Windows are generally...

     
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    Sketch Pad

    Archeologists may someday attribute the decline of a once-great civilization to the overabundance of suburban homes that typically feature peculiar two-story grand entry-ways that were never even used.

     
  • Useful roof stripping tools

    Speaking about roof tear-offs, roofer Pat Green of Columbia, Mo., says, “There's no replacement for plain old hard work.” Power spudders and wheeled tear-off bars are designed for flat, commercial roofs, he explains. “In residential work, there is no secret weapon.” Still, he concedes, good tools...

     
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    Final-touch services makes client satisfaction complete

    Upscale remodels must be picture-perfect the day clients move back into their space. Anything sub-par —from landscaping to lighting — will downgrade client satisfaction and endanger the possibility of repeat business. “If an owner gets a bad landscape job, it's the last thing they remember about...