Everyone knows how devastating a lightning strike can be. Protecting your home from a powerful lightning strike could save your life, the lives of your family members, your home, its' contents and electrical components that keep it up and running. How do you prevent a lightning strike on your home? The answer is..."you can't prevent a lightning strike", but you can certainly nullify or minimize the damaging effects of a lightning strike by having a lightning protection system professionally installed in your home.

Why Am I Talking About Lightning Protection?

I've made another visit to the Victorian Queen Anne that I'm covering and my timing couldn't have been much better. They happened to be installing the lightning protection system and the owner/master installer/designer, Christian Wolf of Wolf Lightning Protection Corp., made himself available to answer a number of my questions. I learned quite a bit and you probably will too if you "read more".

Bathroom furniture vanities are a great way to add a custom touch and personality to an otherwise basic bathroom.

The furniture vanities I'm about to show you are all from the model home that was built in Summerlyn, a craftsman style home subdivision that I wrote about recently. Co-developer, LaVaughn Johnson, explained that the homes he is building don't have to have these particular furniture vanities. The buyer is offered a myriad of choices to suit their own style and needs. Flexibility is just one of the keys to new home sales and Summerlyn has it.

Today I stray ever so slightly from the homebuilding topic, although it relates to a post in which I wrote about tree faces some time ago. That particular article has been a fairly popular post over a long period of time for a number of different reasons. Tree faces make great year-round landscape decorations and folks like to go crazy with them in some very creative ways around the Halloween season, too.

Am I out of my mind?! ....well, let's move on. I know it may seem a bit odd that I'm writing about tree faces and Halloween in late April but I happened to see something this past weekend that you don't see every day that made it relevant.

The Fun Times Guide To Homebuilding reader, CA, asks:

RE: Coffered Ceilings with an Angled Ceiling

Is it possible to have a coffered ceiling finish on an angled ceiling?

I have a home with a 33 year-old A frame addition. The height of the ceiling is 14 feet from the floor to the highest point. Half the room is for the family room The other half is used for office space pantry and a full bath with tub. The office side has a 7 foot ceiling with a loft above that is also 7 feet high. The space is open except for the bath and pantry. I have lots of white space on the ceiling where the
the family room is. I was wondering if coffered ceilings is an appropriate solution to the white space or might there be other options / recommendations? We are planning to paint the entire room because we had several windows replaced. We are looking at what to do with the ceiling so we can do it now in one project. Your help / thoughts would be much appreciated.

Warm regards,

CA

I'm not a home builder or a contractor but I promised 'CA' an answer once I had an opportunity to talk to a contractor (Michael: Site Supervisor @ the Victorian Queen Anne home I'm covering) and here's what he suggested you try:

I've revisited the Victorian Queen Anne house that's under construction and there is so much to report that I will need to take baby steps to get things started. That having been said, I think a good place to start would be the oval-shaped, iron foundation / crawl space vents that lace the front porch masonry below the porch.

They are unusual, to say the least, but well within keeping of the Victorian Queen Anne architectural style of the house (and they look fantastic). They were suggested to the owners by the builder and I've got a good feeling that they'll be glad they were persuaded to have them installed. Personally, I think they look great and add to the Victorian feel of the home as you approach the (soon to be built) front steps.

This blog is primarily about my (our) experiences when we visit new homes, mainly on our home turf, and all of the new and interesting things that home builders choose to do with these new homes. But I can't always make the spur of the moment trips that we make around the corner (and further...sometimes much further) to see the newest homes. That's where my 12 y.o. son, Tristan, comes in. He likes to go with my wife, Sandy, and I to look at houses for fun, too. His favorite thing to do when we're looking at houses is to pick out which bedroom would be his. Same thing goes for my daughter.

Tristan and Sandy returned from their trip where they visited several homes in different subdivisions. He was very excited to show me that he had taken his own pictures of things that were interesting to him and some details that he thought I would have wanted to see had I been there. Very sweet...very thoughtful. And then it dawned on me that we had created a monster...a home-stalking monster. Without any direction from Sandy, Tristan discovered a laundry chute in one of the homes they visited and took some photos from some very smart angles and what follows are his photographic results. After a total of only 244 pictures later of some of the other homes they visited, he was ready to head back home. Thank God for digital.

Is there no limit to the level of stupidity of products that inventors come up with? Most likely not. Case in point...the TwoDaLoo.  Break it down by syllable and what you have is a double-sided toilet where you can chat it up with your mate while you both...'go'...at the exact same time...side-by-side...facing one another. Well intentioned as it may have been at that "Eureka" moment for the inventor, it's a bit unseemly for the general public, in my humble opinion.

They say that love is blind, and for you to consider this dual-toilet option maybe love would also be deaf and you'd have anosmia. What's a little dueling tinkles between lovers? And when you're through discussing your plans for the evening you can both flush in unison. What a concept.

"On 3......1...2 annnddd 3."