2013年2月3日 星期日

A spare and bright empty nest

Maybe it was because the Cruit nest had no one zip code for long. During the couple's 28 years of marriage, they have lived in Washington, D.C.; Huntington Beach, Calif.Laser engravers and laser engraving machine systems and supplies to start your own lasering cutting engraving marking etching business.; Newtown Square, Delaware County; and East Goshen, Chester County.

With life's changes so clearly and chronologically documented, the Cruits didn't need a crystal ball to get an accurate picture of the future. Their house in East Goshen was a typical suburban dwelling, with four bedrooms. Suzanne and Chuck wanted much less square footage in their new home.

"When the kids got older and we started to think about the empty nest, we knew we needed a change," says Suzanne, a director for corporate and community relations at Penn State Great Valley. "We wanted to downsize and be in a walkable town, closer to Center City."

They started looking casually when their youngest was barely in high school in Chester County. In the interim, they discovered Media.

Its navigable streets reminded the Cruits of California (they'd been able to walk to the beach in Huntington Beach), and Chuck could easily commute to his job at Boeing, where he is director of intellectual property.

But there weren't that many single homes in Media - they took some time to find. And when the Cruits did find a 1929 cottage-style house,We specializes in rapid plastic injection mould and molding of parts for prototypes and production. their youngest was still in high school, So Suzanne and Chuck, both about 50, jumped at the opportunity. They rented the place for a year, until their son graduated.

They moved into the house two years ago.

Reasons for the purchase are as different as the owners.

Says Chuck: "I love the street. It curves and drops off." He also likes how the house is perched on a hill; the backyard descends straight to a creek.

As for Suzanne, she likes how close the house is to town while still being in a quiet location. And a huge plus: the natural light that pours in through the eastern and southern exposures.

You will find no curtains in the Cruit house. "I like natural light," she says. "Curtains . . . are dust collectors."

With each change of address - this is their eighth home - Suzanne has found that she is becoming a fabric minimalist.

But this house's minimalist feel is not just the result of a lack of fabric - it's short on tchotchkes, too. There's a clean, spare feeling here, as if whoever does the dusting wants to come through and finish the job pronto.How cheaply can I build a solar power systems?

The working fireplace is fronted with teal-colored Moravian tiles. On top of the mantel is a bowling ball covered with tiny teal mosaic tiles. Tiling is a hobby of Suzanne's - you'd never know it was a bowling ball without her telling you.

"Someone was giving them away on Craigslist," she says.Whilst the preparation of ceramic and porcelain tiles are similar. "He had hundreds."

A nearby half-moon table, a thrift-store find, also has a mosaic-tile top. The colors perk up the more neutral tones of the living room.

What changes the Cruits have made - or haven't made - to their house have been carefully considered.

In the dining room, for example, the whole back wall has French-like windows, painted black, that look to the woods behind the house. The previous owners had encased the windows with what look like window boxes - but they were installed for warmth, not for flowers. The windows nearby are painted taupe.

"I like it, it works," Suzanne says. "The black has been there a long time."

But in the kitchen, the couple replaced the floor with a composite slate material. It looks like slate, but kneel down and touch it: "It feels good on your feet," Suzanne says, a change for the better.

For the countertops, "we had a blast picking out the granite" to match the existing cherry cabinets, Chuck says. There wasn't a lot to do, he adds, because the former owners took good care of the house.

Work on the $17 million project to turn the hotel, closed since 2006, into senior housing could begin within two weeks. While months of construction will pass before tenants will move into 83 apartments in the seven-story building, a new life for the downtown landmark finally seems to be on its way, The Star Press reported.

During a Friday meeting of the Muncie Redevelopment Commission, local real estate agent Ed Conatser and developer Pete Schwiegeraht of Cincinnati-based Miller Valentine Group said the launch of the Lofts at the Roberts project was imminent.

The closing on the sale of the building from Farmers Bank of Frankfort to Miller Valentine is set for Tuesday, they said. Conatser said a construction fence would go up around the property on Feb.We offers custom Injection Mold parts in as fast as 1 day. 11 "with demolition to follow immediately."

During a Star Press tour of the building — built in the 1920s, remodeled and expanded in the 1980s, shuttered by the former owner on Halloween 2006 — on Wednesday, the appearance of the city's last downtown hotel made it obvious the project was coming none too soon.

Much of the Roberts looks like it did after a previous renovation attempt, a couple of years after its closing, fell through. And some of it looks like it did the day after the last guest checked out.

The hotel room beds are long gone, many doors are off their hinges and ceiling tiles litter some hallways, but nostalgic remnants of the hotel are scattered around the building: A room service menu here, piles of bedding there. Blueprints to the building, probably generated during the 1980s renovation and addition, lie on a table not far from a jar of keys.

There's apparently been some water damage to the building over the years and a new roof is planned, to be paid for from $250,000 in facade restoration funds from the city.

"We were close to the point that the building would be lost," MRC chairman Dan Allen said Friday.

Other than some peeling paint, the former hotel looks to be, in many spots, still in good shape.

There are some horror movie aspects to a walk through the building. Besides the fact that the interior was a good 20 degrees colder than the outside air temperature on this unseasonably warm January day, guest room doorways loom on both sides of the dim hallways. The basement is a jumble of discarded lampshades and rusty equipment and the first-floor swimming pool, part of the 1980s addition, is a dark pit.

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