House Renovations Quotes

I fought a killer and didn’t even smudge my makeup.

I’d find someone else. No distractions. Men get in the way of ambition. Plus, they laugh at you when you fail

All white people are born with a singular mission in life in order to pass from regular whitehood into ultra-whitehood. Just as Muslims have to visit Mecca, all white people must eventually renovate a house before they can be complete.

Now if you're not „hot”, you are expected to work on it until you are. It's like when you renovate a house and you're legally required to leave just one of the original walls standing. If you don't have a good body you have down to a neutral shape, then bolt on some breast implants, replace your teeth, dye you hair, and call yourself the Playmate of the Year. How do we survive this? How do we teach our daughters and our gay sons that they are good enough the way they are? We have to lead by example.

A home is never finished, it’s only saved from decay.

The house was literally perfect now. Instead of being thrilling, that suddenly seemed depressing.

It was a renovated train station housing galleries of famous French impressionists and other artists of the period. Van Gogh’s Starry Night over the Rhone, my favorite of them all, was . . . here.

After the wink, his head moved down and his eyes made a beeline to my chest. Ugh. The old man felt me up with his eyes. Men really are all just alike—no matter the age. He was a flirtatious old fossil.

But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realised was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage.

Understand that you are ready to do the biggest things your soul came here to do. You don’t need to lose weight, get another degree, renovate your house, or have the perfect marriage before you can start achieving.

The second concerns the dangerous event of change, whether it’s our house, job, or behavior. Here, everything is stable, everyone behaves as expected. Please don’t try to be different or suddenly reinvent yourself, because you’ll be threatening our whole society. This country worked hard to reach its “finished” state; we don’t want to go back to being “under renovation.

Think of renovating a house like operating the federal government. You start with a budget and the revenue to finance it. Then the special interests keep adding items to the list; you have to end the war between the interior decorator and the electrician, so you pump in more money to buy peace; and by the time you’re done, you’re $16 trillion in debt and having to borrow money from the Chinese.

They were Chinese vampires. They were discovered during renovation work at the Bok Kai Temple in Old Sacramento. One of the priests there told his brother about them. The brother's whatever the Chinese version of mobbed up is. Alex here thinks he's using them to distract the Nortenos and the Black Dragons long enough to take over the marijuana trade in Sacramento using the stuff they're making in a bunch of grow houses in Elk Grove." Ted stared at me. "And will the Chinese vampires be joined by legions of Korean werewolves who have been cooking meth in trailer parks in Truckee? "No. The werewolves are refusing to get involved. Trust me, I've tried to talk them into helping. They'll have nothing to do with it.

He like both types of conversation with Willem, but he appreciates the mundane ones more than he'd imagined he would. He had always felt bound to Willem by the big things -love, trust- but he likes being bound to him by the small things as well: bills and taxes and dental checkups. He is always reminded of a visit to Harold and Julia's ....(they) had begun talking about the Truro house's kitchen renovation. He half dozed, listening to their quiet talk, which had been so dull that he couldn't follow any of the details but had also filled him with a great sense of peace: it had seemed to him the ideal expression of an adult relationship, to have someone with whom you can discuss the mechanics of a shared experience.

But Jane had tried that with Mothers Group and failed. She just couldn’t relate to those bright, chatty women and their bubbly conversations about husbands who weren’t “stepping up” and renovations that weren’t finished before the baby was born and that hilarious time they were so busy and tired they left the house without putting on any makeup! (Jane, who was wearing no makeup at the time, and never wore makeup, had kept her face blank and benign, while she inwardly shouted: What the fuck?)

When I started in real estate, I considered renovating old houses instead of tearing them down, but it didn’t make sense. Nigerians don’t buy houses because they’re old. A renovated two-hundred-year-old mill granary, you know, the kind of thing Europeans like. It doesn’t work here at all. But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.

The pharaonic era of the country-house technocrats. The dream of an electronic control of things runs up against the traditional stupidity of the masses. Collective demand has never been so elicited, forced or violated as it has in the field of computing. The clash between a philosophical and metaphysical exigency and a present which is no longer in the least philosophical and metaphysical. The clash between a system of representation and a system of simulation. The clash between a thinking of difference and a thinking of indifference. What is the power of indifference? What would an analytics of indifference be like? Torn between a radical indifference and a radical seduction. Postmodemity is the simultaneity of the destruction of earlier values and their reconstruction. It is renovation within ruination. In terms of periods, it is the end of final evaluations and the movement of transcendence, which are replaced by 'teleonomic' evaluation, in terms of retroaction. Everything is always retroactive, including - and, indeed, particularly including - information. The rest is left to the acceleration of values by technology (sex, body, freedom, knowledge).

Aren’t the trunks stupid?” she whispered. “He says it gives the place a little authenticity. He didn’t like the renovation.” So the house had been a compromise: The husband wanted vintage, Susan wanted new, so they thought this outside/inside split might settle things. But the Burkes ended up more resentful than satisfied. Millions of dollars later, and neither of them were happy. Money is wasted on the rich.

One of the reasons that the area would never be renovated, however, was the council’s insistence that each house had three large plastic trash-bins on wheels, each a bright color: green for the bottles left over from last night’s drunken orgy, red for stolen goods now surplus to requirements, purple for dead bodies and used syringes, all in fact that a modern British urban household needs to disembarrass itself of.

I live in the big house we’ve owned since David was a boy. I renovate when the whim takes me, and it takes me often, and the renovations are expensive. I get my hair done every fortnight, and I buy premium brands and I never, ever have to worry about how to pay the bills. Maybe I gave up some things to stay with Wyatt, and maybe even once he was an adult, I did it for David. I just don’t kid myself any more that there isn’t something in this life for me too.

That Saturday evening, they had watched a movie together, and at one point Harold and Julia had begun talking about the Truro house's kitchen renovation. He half dozed, listening to their quiet talk, which had been so dull he couldn't follow any of the details but had also filled him with a great sense of peace: it had seemed to him the ideal expression of an adult relationship, to have someone with whom you could discuss the mechanics of a shared existence.

Of course, human tissue completely It's unlikely that scar was composed of the same molecules. Do you think it is really appropriate to consider people to be the same entity they were seven years earlier? Because, physically, they're not. They're connected but every part has changed. Like a renovated house. It seems like after seven years you should not be liable for things you did before. Why should a man be imprisoned for a crime committed by a different physical entity? Should we expect a couple to stay married when they barely share a molecule with the people who said 'I do'? I don't think so.

The third acquisition was a big single-family house. I found an architect, a small local general contractor, and we created a design for four separate units. Then I went to the bank and got loans to do the renovation. I was twenty-three, with a BA in political science. I didn’t know anything about financing. But it never crossed my mind that I might be too young to start an investment business or that I couldn’t do it. I didn’t know any better, but was able to sell the banks on my ability to get it done. Our management company took over the property, did the renovation, and rented the units. The asset did very well.

Somewhere the help don’t quit as soon as the boss walks out the door. I’m gonna need a dozen clean pens.” The lambing barn had four rows of pens against the long walls and back-to-back in the middle. At any one time the pens could hold eighty ewes and their lambs. When things went well, a ewe came into the barn on Monday and left on Thursday, and after her apartment was renovated the shepherd could install a newcomer. When a ewe had trouble – mastitis, milk fever, pneumonia, blue bag – the pens filled with sick sheep and the sheep housing stock shrank. Penny spent a couple hours examining the ewes in the barn, medicating those that needed it, turning others with their lambs out into the sunshine. She slipped bands on lambs’ tails, checked new mothers for milk supply, milked out ewes for their colostrum, ear notched bad mothers so they could be culled.

Stately and commanding, the house I found on Sacramento Street, in Lower Pacific Heights, was an architectural jewel; tour buses drove down the street several times a day and the guides pointed out our Victorian “painted lady” not just for its curb appeal but also for its lucky survival of the earthquake. Meticulously renovated, the house had a layout that I was sure would work perfectly: a three-room suite on the lower level with a bathroom and laundry room for my mother, living space on the next level, and, on the top floor, bedrooms for Zoë and me. The master bedroom was large enough to double as my office. Moreover, it seemed symbolic that we should find a three-story nineteenth-century Victorian, whose original intention was to house multiple generations. My mother couldn’t have been more pleased. She started calling our experiment “our year in Provence.” In the face of naysayers, I chose to embrace the reaction of a friend who was living in Beijing: “How Chinese of you!” she said upon hearing the news. When I told my mother, she was delighted. “What have the Chinese got on us?” she declared. And I agreed. The Chinese revere their elderly. If they could live happily with multiple generations under one roof, so could we.

Jack renovated the cabin without being asked, while I stayed at Doc’s house,” Mel said. “About the time I was going to make a break for it, he showed it to me. I said I’d give it a few more days. Then my first delivery occurred and I realized I should give the place a chance. There’s something about a successful delivery in a place like Virgin River where there’s no backup, no anesthesia… Just me and Mom… It’s indescribable.” “Then there’s Jack,” Brie said. “Jack,” Mel repeated. “I don’t know when I’ve met a kinder, stronger, more generous man. Your brother is wonderful, Brie. He’s amazing. Everyone in Virgin River loves him.” “My brother is in love with you,” Brie said. Mel shouldn’t have been shocked. Although he hadn’t said the words, she already knew it. Felt it. At first she thought he was just a remarkable lover, but soon she realized that he couldn’t touch her that way without an emotional investment, as well as a physical one. He gave her everything he had—and not just in the bedroom. It was in her mind to tell Brie—I’m a recent widow! I need time to digest this! I don’t feel free yet—free to accept another man’s love! Her cheeks grew warm and she said nothing. “I realize I’m biased, but when a man like Jack loves a woman, it’s a great honor.” “I agree,” Mel said quietly. *

Here and there, a few drops of this freshness were scattered on a human heart, and gave it youth again, and sympathy with the eternal youth of nature. The artist chanced to be one on whom the reviving influence fell. It made him feel — what he sometimes almost forgot, thrust so early as he had been into the rude struggle of man with man — how youthful he still was. “It seems to me,” he observed, “that I never watched the coming of so beautiful an eve, and never felt anything so very much like happiness as at this moment. After all, what a good world we live in! How good, and beautiful! How young it is, too, with nothing really rotten or age-worn in it! This old house, for example, which sometimes has positively oppressed my breath with its smell of decaying timber! And this garden, where the black mould always clings to my spade, as if I were a sexton delving in a graveyard! Could I keep the feeling that now possesses me, the garden would every day be virgin soil, with the earth’s first freshness in the flavor of its beans and squashes; and the house! — it would be like a bower in Eden, blossoming with the earliest roses that God ever made. Moonlight, and the sentiment in man’s heart responsive to it, are the greatest of renovators and reformers. And all other reform and renovation, I suppose, will prove to be no better than moonshine!

Simi Chopra, will you marry me?" He opened the blue velvet box in his hand and showed me a beautiful sapphire ring surrounded by diamonds. My mouth opened, but all that spilled out was, "My brain..." A frown creased Jack's brow. "Not really the answer I was expecting." "I can't..." I shook my head. "You organized all this? Chloe? The dress? The car? Trey and all the renovations were real? When did you buy this house? It had to be after I told you I wanted to take a break." "Yes, it was." "But how did you know we'd get back together?" "Because if we weren't meant to be together, I would never have been in the bushes the night you tried to save Chloe in the museum. I wouldn't have held you in my arms and known deep in my bones that I'd met the woman I'd been waiting for all my life... a woman who is intelligent and beautiful and brave and loyal, who has a secret love of adventure and a wicked sense of humor, a woman who lights up every room she walks into and can take a group of misfits and turn them into a family. A woman I want to call my wife." He took the ring out of the box and slid it on my finger. "This was my mother's ring. It is the only thing I have left to remember her by, and there is no one else I have ever wanted to give it to but you." I looked at the ring and then at the man who had stolen my heart. "Yes, Jack, I'll marry you.

We did every part of this renovation together with our bare hands. Chip restored all of the wood floors, all the tile work--everything. I was learning as we went, but I definitely did my part. That house was gorgeous. Jo did an awesome job helping fix it up, and her ideas were great. There was a moment in the kitchen when I smarted off, though. I don’t even remember what I said, to be honest, but Jo got real mad and started yelling. She was carrying this five-gallon bucket of primer. She slammed it down on the ground to make a point, and it splashed right back up in her face. It was dripping off her eyelashes and her nose. Whenever something like that happened in my family, we’d all just laugh, you know? So I laughed, even though she was mad at me, and that made her even angrier. She started yelling again with the primer dripping all over, and I just had this moment where I looked at her and everything seemed to be going in slow motion and I thought, I love this woman. She is tough! Oh, this is gonna work. That was our first real “fight,” and even now we both agree it was our biggest. Chip had smarted off about something, so my blood was already boiling, but when I slammed that bucket down, Chip says I became a ninja--the kind you don’t want to mess with. Yet he still laughed, against his better judgment. We joke about it now, like, “Well, I’m mad, but I’m not primer-in-the-face mad.

Soon it was time for us to leave; the clock had struck midnight, and we had miles to go before we slept. After throwing my bouquet and saying good-byes, Marlboro Man and I ran through the doors of the club and climbed into the back of a smoky black limousine--the vehicle that would take us to the big city miles away, where we’d stay before flying to Australia the next day. As we pulled away from the waving, birdseed-throwing crowd at the front door of the club, we immediately settled into each other’s arms, melting into a puddle of white silk and black boots and sleepy, unbridled romance. It was all so new. New dress…new love…a new country--Australia--that neither of us had ever seen. A new life together. A new life for me. New crystal, silver, china. A newly renovated, tiny cowboy house that would be our little house on the prairie when we returned from our honeymoon. A new husband. My husband. I wanted to repeat it over and over again, wanted to shout it to the heavens. But I couldn’t speak. I was busy. Passion had taken over--a beast had been unleashed. Sleep deprived and exhausted from the celebration of the previous week, once inside the sanctity of the limousine, we were utterly powerless to stop it…and we let it fly. It was this same passion that had gotten us through the early stages of our relationship, and, ultimately, through the choice to wave good-bye to any life I’d ever imagined for myself. To become a part of Marlboro Man’s life instead. It was this same passion that assured me that everything was exactly as it should be. It was the passion that made it all make sense.

to say that I saw ways to connect with Americans that Barack and his West Wing advisers didn’t fully recognize, at least initially. Rather than doing interviews with big newspapers or cable news outlets, I began sitting down with influential “mommy bloggers” who reached an enormous and dialed-in audience of women. Watching my young staffers interact with their phones, seeing Malia and Sasha start to take in news and chat with their high school friends via social media, I realized there was opportunity to be tapped there as well. I crafted my first tweet in the fall of 2011 to promote Joining Forces and then watched it zing through the strange, boundless ether where people increasingly spent their time. It was a revelation. All of it was a revelation. With my soft power, I was finding I could be strong. If reporters and television cameras wanted to follow me, then I was going to take them places. They could come watch me and Jill Biden paint a wall, for example, at a nondescript row house in the Northwest part of Washington. There was nothing inherently interesting about two ladies with paint rollers, but it baited a certain hook. It brought everyone to the doorstep of Sergeant Johnny Agbi, who’d been twenty-five years old and a medic in Afghanistan when his transport helicopter was attacked, shattering his spine, injuring his brain, and requiring a long rehabilitation at Walter Reed. His first floor was now being retrofitted to accommodate his wheelchair—its doorways widened, its kitchen sink lowered—part of a joint effort between a nonprofit called Rebuilding Together and the company that owned Sears and Kmart. This was the thousandth such home they’d renovated on behalf of veterans in need. The cameras caught all of it—the soldier, his house, the goodwill and energy being poured in.

So, you want to improve your home like you have some knowledge and respect for the endeavor, yes? Very well. First, you need to know the basics associated with it to showcase what type of knowledge you actually have about it. If that is not enough, try reviewing the article listed below to assist you. Home improvement is often a daunting task. This is because of the time and the amounts of money required. However, it doesn't have to be so bad. If you have several projects in your house, divide them up into several smaller DIY projects. For example you may want to redo the entire living room. Start simple, by just replacing the carpet, and before you know it, your living room will be like new. One great way to make the inside of your home sparkle is to put new molding in. New molding helps create a fresh sense in your living space. You can purchase special molding with beautiful carvings on them to add a unique touch of elegance and style to your home. When it comes to home improvement, consider replacing your windows and doors. This not only has a chance of greatly improving the value of the home, but may also severely decrease the amount of money required to keep your house warm and dry. You can also add extra security with new doors and windows. Change your shower curtain once a month. Showering produces excessive humidity in a bathroom that in turn causes shower curtains to develop mold and mildew. To keep your space fresh and healthy, replace your curtains. Don't buy expensive plastic curtains with hard to find designs, and you won't feel bad about replacing it. Sprucing up your walls with art is a great improvement idea, but it doesn't have to be a painting. You can use practically anything for artwork. For instance, a three-dimensional tile works great if you contrast the colors. You can even buy some canvas and a frame and paint colored squares. Anything colorful can work as art. If you are renovating your kitchen but need to spend less money, consider using laminate flooring and countertops. These synthetic options are generally much less expensive than wood, tile, or stone. They are also easier to care for. Many of these products are designed to closely mimic the natural products, so that the difference is only visible on close inspection. New wallpaper can transform a room. Before you add wallpaper, you need to find out what type of wall is under the existing wallpaper. Usually walls are either drywall or plaster smoothed over lath. You can figure out what kind of wall you are dealing with by feeling the wall, plaster is harder, smoother, and colder than drywall. You can also try tapping the wall, drywall sounds hollow while plaster does not. Ah, you have read the aforementioned article, or you wouldn't be down here reading through the conclusion. Well done! That article should have provided you with a proper foundation of what it takes to properly and safely improve your home. If any questions still remain, try reviewing the article again.

When the routines and circumstances of your life are set up so that your lifestyle is a good fit for your natural preferences, it can give you a feeling of being in equilibrium. This will help prevent you from getting overwhelmed by anxiety on a regular basis. And by arranging your life to suit your temperament, you’ll have the time to process and calm down from life events that make you feel anxious. Some areas in which you can set up your life to fit your temperament are: --Have the right level of busyness in your life. For example, have enough after-work or weekend activities to keep you feeling calmly stimulated but not overstimulated and scattered. Note that being understimulated (for example, having too few enjoyable activities to look forward to) can be as much of a problem as being overstimulated. --Pick the physical activity level that’s right for you. Fine-tuning your physical activity level could be as simple as getting up from your desk and taking a walk periodically to keep yourself feeling calm and alert. Lifting things (such as carrying shopping bags up stairs) can also increase feelings of alertness and energy. Having pleasurable activities to look forward to and enough physical activity will help protect you against depression. --Have the right level of social contact in your life, and have routines that put this on autopilot. For example, a routine of having drinks after work on a Friday with friends, or attending a weekly class with your sister. Achieving the right level of social contact might also include putting mechanisms in place to avoid too much social interruption, like having office hours rather than an open-door policy. --Keep a balance of change and routine in your life. For example, alternate going somewhere new for your vacation vs. returning to somewhere you know you like. What the right balance of change and routine is for you will depend on your natural temperament and how much change vs. stability feels good to you. --Allow yourself the right amount of mental space to work up to doing something—enough time that you can do some mulling over the prospect of getting started but not so much time that it starts to feel like avoidance of getting started. --If coping with change sucks up a lot of energy for you, be patient with yourself, especially if you’re feeling stirred up by change or a disruption to your routines or plans. As mentioned in Chapter 2, keep some habits and relationships consistent when you’re exploring change in other areas. --Have self-knowledge of what types of stress you find most difficult to process. Don’t voluntarily expose yourself to those types without considering alternatives. For example, if you want a new house and you know you get stressed out by making lots of decisions, then you might choose to buy a house that’s already built, rather than building your own home. If you know making home-improvement decisions is anxiety provoking for you, you might choose to move to a house that’s new or recently renovated, rather than doing any major work on your current home or buying a fixer-upper. There’s always a balance with avoidance coping, where some avoidance of the types of stress that you find most taxing can be very helpful.

Never underestimate the value of gorgeous when it comes to keeping a place clean. Beauty motivates when nothing else will. That doesn’t mean you have to do a complete renovation. It is just a reminder that attractive spaces are more likely to stay clean than unattractive ones.

Arguably, the Malecón is the most photographed street in Havana. It lies as a bulwark just across the horizon from the United States, which is only 90 treacherous miles away. It is approximately 5 miles long, following the northern coast of the city from east to west. This broad boulevard is ideal for the revelers partaking in parades and is the street used for Fiesta Mardi Gras, known in Cuba as Los Carnavales. It has also been used for “spontaneous demonstrations” against the United States. It runs from the entrance to Havana harbor at the Morro Castle, Castillo del Morro, alongside the Centro Habana neighborhood to the Vedado neighborhood, past the United States Embassy on the Calle Calzada. Since 1977, the renovated Embassy building has housed the United States Interests Section in Havana. The Malecón is also known as a street where both male and female prostitutes ply their trade. At the present time, most of the buildings that line this once magnificent coastal boulevard are in ruins, which doesn’t stop it from being a spectacular and popular esplanade for an evening walk by residents and tourists alike.

That picture of the soldiers? Miranda’s right. I’m sure that’s Hayes House in the background.” Without a word, everyone looked warily toward the front door, as if half expecting the house to come alive. “Why didn’t you say something before?” Miranda glared at him. “‘Cause I needed to think about it. And”--he hesitated, almost sheepish--“I didn’t want you freaking out any more than you were already.” “I’m more freaked out that you didn’t say anything.” “Sorry. But it is the same house--the way it was originally.” Now it was Parker who groaned. “Oh, don’t tell me. The house contacted you. You talk to dead houses.” “The thing is,” Etienne continued, unfazed, “I’ve worked plenty construction, and I’ve done plenty work on this house--I know good renovation when I see it.” Roo cast Miranda a bland look. “Construction sites are popular in this town. A chance to see Etienne Boucher without his shirt on. Very hot.” The others could hardly keep from laughing.

The thing is,” Etienne continued, unfazed, “I’ve worked plenty construction, and I’ve done plenty work on this house--I know good renovation when I see it.” Roo cast Miranda a bland look. “Construction sites are popular in this town. A chance to see Etienne Boucher without his shirt on. Very hot.

The question that has puzzled Kremlin rulers since 1953 is how to perpetuate the house Stalin built without acquiring Stalin’s evil reputation. Unwilling to forfeit their control over Russian society, and unable to fully appreciate the devilish efficacy of arresting and executing millions arbitrarily, the Soviet ruling class charted a middle path that would pacify the West without losing the essential components of empire. This middle path, which brings us to Vladimir Putin, combines low profile red-brown totalitarianism with lip service to democracy and free markets. It is a case of power retained. Instead of genuine democracy, Russia is guided by secret totalitarian structures that govern through fictitious political fronts. In essence, there has been no capitalism in Russia since 1991. There has been no democracy. It was all an elaborate KGB hoax. The mask that hides the totalitarian face of Russia isn’t perfect. It has fooled the experts and pundits only because they wanted to be fooled. The inhumanity of Stalin’s regime was so great, its injustice so mind numbing, that good people don’t want to believe that Stalin’s system was and is a work in progress. We don’t want to admit that Stalin’s murder machine is undergoing renovation, that we ourselves may be included among its next victims. Such an admission would turn our world upside down, and such a turning is not at all desirable – especially when we consider that Stalin saw Hitler as “the icebreaker” of the Revolution. This leads us to the unpleasant possibility that Putin may see Osama bin Laden as an “icebreaker” as well.

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Danny would have been on his tablet right now, tapping out a to-do list for renovations in Evernote.

He had always seemed so in charge, but when she passed, it was clear that she had been his compass, his touchstone.

Castro’s revolution, with all of its supposedly good intentions, put a stop to the growth of Havana. Of course it put an end to the Mafia controlling the casinos and entertainment, but for them it was a minor setback. They just packed their bags and went to Las Vegas where they expanded and developed “The Strip!” Batista and his followers fled Cuba for the Dominican Republic, Europe and South Florida. Many Cubans lost everything they had but others fled taking their wealth with them. The upheaval in 1959 marked the beginning of austerity for this former freewheeling city. The communistic de-privatization of all businesses, along with the embargo imposed by the United States, created a serious decline in Havana’s economy. The constant pressure to nationalize, as well as the severe crackdown by the régime to keep people in line, curtailed growth and placed an enormous hardship on the Cuban people. Since the Castro Revolution, the people of Havana have been severely affected, because of the absence of commerce with its former trading partner, the United States, located only 90 miles to the north. In all Havana has taken a severe toll economically, with its dilapidated houses, and the pre-1959 cars on the streets of the city being a testimony to the bygone era. It is only now that with the hope of normalization between the governments of Cuba and the United States that perhaps the people will benefit. For the greatest part, the Port of Havana has also been bypassed, chiefly due to the restrictions placed on them by the United States. However, the Cuban government is now attempting a comeback by attracting tourism from Canada, Mexico, the Bahamas, Latin America, Asia and Europe. The city of Havana has renovated the Sierra Maestra Cruise Port, but only very few cruise companies consider Havana a port of call. Slowly, German and British ships started to arrive, including the Fred Olsen Cruises and Carnival Cruise Line. Technically Real Estate Brokers and Automobile Dealers are illegal in Cuba, although real-estate offices and car dealerships are blatantly open for business. The buying and selling of real estate and cars, which was forbidden for many years, can now be done because of some changes brought about by Raúl Castro, but only by full-time residents of Cuba. However, gray market sales are thriving through the use of friends and family as proxies.

The disturbances in the country grew not out of anything republican, but out of slavery, which is a part of the system of hereditary wrong; and the expulsion of this domestic anomaly opens to the renovated nation a career of unthought-of dignity and glory. Henceforth our country has a moral unity as the land of free labor. The

It interests me that there is no end of fictions, and facts made over in the forms of fictions. Because we class them under so many different rubrics, and media, and means of delivery, we don't recognize the sheer proliferation and seamlessness of them. I think at some level of scale or perspective, the police drama in which a criminal is shot, the hospital in which the doctors massage a heart back to life, the news video in which jihadists behead a hostage, and the human-interest story of a child who gets his fondest wish (a tourist trip somewhere) become the same sorts of drama. They are representations of strong experience, which, as they multiply, began to dedifferentiate in our uptake of them, despite our names and categories and distinctions... I say I watch the news to "know". But I don't really know anything. Certainly I can't do anything. I know that there is a war in Iraq, but I knew that already. I know that there are fires and car accidents in my state and in my country, but that, too, I knew already. With each particular piece of footage, I know nothing more than I did before. I feel something, or I don't feel something. One way I am likely to feel is virtuous and "responsible" for knowing more of these things that I can do nothing about. Surely this feeling is wrong, even contemptible. I am not sure anymore what I feel. What is it like to watch a human being's beheading? The first showing of the video is bad. The second, fifth, tenth, hundredth are—like one's own experiences—retained, recountable, real, and yet dreamlike. Some describe the repetition as "numbing". "Numbing" is very imprecise. I think the feeling, finally, is of something like envelopment and even satisfaction at having endured the worst without quite caring or being tormented. It is the paradoxically calm satisfaction of having been enveloped in a weak or placid "real" that another person endured as the worst experience imaginable, in his personal frenzy, fear, and desperation, which we view from the outside as the simple occurrence of a death... I see: Severed heads. The Extra Value Meal. Kohl-gray eyelids. A holiday sale at Kohl's. Red seeping between the fingers of the gloved hand that presses the wound. "Doctor, can you save him?" "We'll do our best." The dining room of the newly renovated house, done in red. Often a bold color is best. The kids are grateful for their playroom. The bad guy falls down, shot. The detectives get shot. The new Lexus is now available for lease. On CNN, with a downed helicopter in the background, a peaceful field of reeds waves in the foreground. One after another the reeds are bent, broken, by boot treads advancing with the camera. The cameraman, as savior, locates the surviving American airman. He shoots him dead. It was a terrorist video. They run it again. Scenes from ads: sales, roads, ordinary calm shopping, daily life. Tarpaulined bodies in the street. The blue of the sky advertises the new car's color. Whatever you could suffer will have been recorded in the suffering of someone else. Red Lobster holds a shrimp festival. Clorox gets out blood. Advil stops pain fast. Some of us are going to need something stronger.

I wanted to live in a clean, renovated Victorian house full of books, not a rough-hewn, unfinished industrial loft. I wanted to raise bright, good kids, to write bright, good novels in a quiet study, to cook wholesome meals and listen to Bach. He wanted to play loud amplified music, sleep late, drink tequila, and travel. It seemed to me that we didn’t want to be the people we’d married each other for.

According to Appleton, humans are most comfortable in situations where they can observe (prospect) and feel safe (refuge) at the same time. A window seat is a classic example—enclosed and part of the house, but with a view of what is outside—an architectural re-creation of the experience of being held in a mother’s arms.

We’d brought with us the small closet door on which we’d measured our children as they grew, and now we hung it on the wall just inside our back door, so the kids would greet us every time we walked in.

Ever since the year we’d cooked a Thanksgiving dinner for Italians in Bergamo—spreading the table with turkey and stuffing and mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans and creamed onions and cranberry sauce, and then watching their eyes fill with politely disguised horror at the cacophony of so many dishes coming out all at once

Having come this far, exposed and candid, perhaps I can find sanctuary behind one incontestable truth pervading operating rooms across the country – the reality of everyday miracles. From time to time the inexplicable and the impossible happen. Behind a paper mask and under artificial lights I get to perform surgery on an unconscious body, the physical part of what we think of as a pet. Essentially I’m working construction. I’m the guy splicing wires, welding pipes, shoring up support beams, and generally renovating the house. All the other stuff, the important stuff, I cannot influence. These are the intangibles, the memories, the history, the bonds, the things that make a difference between a house and a home, the things that make the difference between a body covered in scales or feathers or fur and our pet. It is this everything else that eludes me. This everything else is the spirit of the animal. Under anesthesia, it might move out for a while, but when the surgery is done and the gas turned off, it comes back. In our worst-case scenario, regardless of whether it returns or not, it doesn’t cease to exist. Anesthesia is just a training run for the soul.

Omaha native Paul Stratman spent forty-four years in the electrical trade, laying wire, managing people, and eventually doing 3D modeling. Then he retired. Dissatisfaction soon set in. “My wife had a long list of things she wanted done around the house,” Paul said, “but that took me less than a year to complete. And I certainly didn’t want to just sit around the house doing nothing for the rest of my life. I wanted to help people.” About this time, he heard about a group of retired tradesmen in the Omaha area who call themselves the Geezers. Several times each week, for a half day at a time, a group of five to ten Geezers meets in North Omaha (a poorer part of town) to rebuild a house for later use by a nonprofit. “Currently, we’re rebuilding a home that will house six former inmates,” Paul told me. “We’re providing the home, and the nonprofit will provide the mentorship when the gentlemen move in.” The goal is to help formerly incarcerated people build better lives and stay out of jail. The rate of recidivism in the United States reaches as high as 83 percent.[12] “Our goal is zero percent among the men who will occupy this home when we are finished,” Paul said. On a previous occasion, after the devastating 2019 midwestern floods, Paul was working as a volunteer in the area to restore electricity to many of the homes when he received an urgent phone call concerning a couple in their fifties whose home had been destroyed in the flood. The couple were living in a camper with their teenage daughter and three grandkids (whose mother was unable to take care of them) while they tried to get enough money to fix their house. Six people in a tiny camper! The couple were worried because they had been informed that someone from Nebraska’s Division of Children and Family Services would be coming to inspect the living conditions for the three grandkids. The couple feared their grandkids were going to be taken from them. They were almost frantic to prevent that. Would Paul help? Paul went right to work. He completed the electrical wiring and safety renovations inside the flood-damaged home, free of charge, in time for it to pass inspection by CFS. The family stayed together. Reflecting on this experience, Paul said, “When you can help people that are so desperate, and can make a little difference in their lives—people who have put their lives on hold to care for the needs of someone else—it is moving. That was one of the most emotional experiences I’ve ever had and some of the most meaningful work I’ve ever accomplished.” Paul has retired from his job, but he hasn’t stopped working for others.

it is the presence of respect and an abiding willingness to support each other, more than romance, that indicates whether a marriage will last. Couples that exhibit these qualities tend to stay together, creating the marital equivalent of firmitas.

The structure did not fail in any technical sense, but its excessive utility at the expense of beauty created its demise.

Many of us had eldest children in middle school, and after years in the tunnel of raising young offspring, for the first time we were having a chance to look up and around. The partner many saw across the dinner table was not always the person they remembered falling in love with. Or perhaps it was their own needs that had changed.

During my frequent house-moving, I came to understand how this city has no patience for those who cannot, or do not wish to, acclimatise to change. You like old neighbourhoods, un-renovated housing, nature growing wild? Good luck. You want to live a simple life outside of cheques and balances? Just try. Technology will urge itself into your pockets. Highways will encroach upon your gardens. Luxury housing will impress itself upon your land and upon the cemeteries of your ancestors. Prices will skyrocket out of your control and if you're not working, always working, urge you back into your parents' homes, or out into the streets.

It clicks, finally: Elena Anderson, wife of the notorious doctor who owns part of Aplana Island. His house, a renovated hotel on the south side, is a piece of property Daddy’s tried to obtain for years, with the intention of turning it commercial, but Dr. Anderson’s resolve is unwavering.

Caretaking in a relationship is not flowers or date night—necessary as these are, they are the equivalent of a new color painted on your walls. Delightful, but not structural. Structural is unloading the dishwasher when it’s your partner’s turn, or making sure whoever gets home last from work is greeted with dinner. It’s learning about mushroom hunting or musical theater or rugby because your spouse loves it. It is talking about the best of your partner in public, not the worst. It’s listening to stories we have heard a hundred times before as if they are new. Often, it is just listening, period. My father always washed the car by hand before he took my mother out on a date, even after they were married. He would say he wanted it clean “for his girl.” That is the part she remembered, not where they went or what they did. As psychologist John Gottman, who has studied countless married couples, will tell you, it is the presence of respect and an abiding willingness to support each other, more than romance, that indicates whether a marriage will last. Couples that exhibit these qualities tend to stay together, creating the marital equivalent of firmitas.

He said that it was strange it had taken us so long to meet: in fact it was almost exactly a year to the day since we had been – albeit briefly – introduced by a mutual friend. Since then, he had asked the mutual friend several times for my number; he had attended parties and dinners where he had been told I would be present, only to find that I wasn’t there. He didn’t know why the mutual friend resisted putting him directly in touch with me, if it was anything so deliberate as resistance. But one way or another, he had been obstructed; until – again without knowing why – be had recently asked the mutual friend once more for my number and promptly been given it. I said that my current feelings of powerlessness had changed the way I looked at what happens and why, to the extent that I was beginning to see what other people called fate in the unfolding of events, as though living were merely an act of reading to find out what happens next. That idea – of one’s own life as something that had already been dictated – was strangely seductive, until you realised that it reduced other people to the moral status of characters and camouflaged their capacity to destroy. Yet the illusion of meaning recurred, much as you tried to resist it: like childhood, I said, which we treat as an explanatory text rather than merely as a formative experience of powerless. For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only though absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realised was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage.

The officials told Gehry that they wanted a building that could do for Bilbao and the Basque Country what the Sydney Opera House had done for Sydney and Australia: put them on the map and bring back growth.

Many of my parents’ friends own more than one house, sometimes so many that whole dwellings sit unused and empty for years. And so it’s an odd contradiction that they often seem to get stuck on the most minute details when it comes to renovations. My hypothesis is that this is a way to feel the thrill of ownership come to life again. It’s polishing the already gilded lily.

If we see technology this way, it is clear that, other things being equal, project planners should prefer highly experienced technology for the same reason house builders should prefer highly experienced carpenters. But we often don’t see technology this way. Too often, we assume that newer is better. Or worse, we assume the same of something that is custom designed, which we praise as “unique,”“bespoke,” or “original.” If decision makers valued experience properly, they would be wary of a technology that is new, because it is inexperienced technology

We’re not a house that needs to be torn down, but we are a house that needs serious, serious renovation. We need the renovation of words—the encouragement and rebuke of friends.

Two of the most widely known catalysts for a haunting are the renovation of an old house and the moving out of a person’s possessions. Both disrupt the known world for the spirit, and may even seem criminal to the ghost if he doesn’t know he is dead.

The Segue Institute was the preeminent research organization for all things paranormal and it was housed in a haunted, renovated turn of-the-century hotel. The place was supposedly loaded with what the scientists there called Shadow, capital S, a scary word for magic. Dark magic.

Nigerians don’t buy houses because they’re old. A renovated two-hundred-year-old mill granary, you know, the kind of thing Europeans like. It doesn’t work here at all. But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past.

Money Saver's experts have checked the best home insurance and health insurance plans to help you stay stress free about the costly medical bills or house renovation charges in New York.

The man who had just bowed and greeted Father said he would put in a bridge over the sewer creek, pave the streets, and renovate the houses in our neighborhood. Taking our cue from the adults, we clapped loudly, very loudly. The next man quoted the previous one's promise to put in a bridge and pave the streets, and said we should put that man to work for the district chief; he, on the other hand, promised to do this and that on behalf of the nation and asked for our support. Once again the grown-ups clapped. And once again we followed their lead. Until I myself was grown up I often thought of that incident. My impression of those two was deeply embedded in my mind. I hated them. They were liars. They had such fantastic plans. But plans were not what we needed. A lot of people had already made many plans. But nothing had changed. And even if those people had achieved something, we wouldn't have been affected. What we needed were people who could understand our suffering and take it upon themselves. (Cho 2006: 54-55)

He pulled her upright and they stood facing each other, her hands in his. Again with the held breaths, the locked gazes. Twice in a row. It was almost too much! And Jane wanted to stay in that moment with him so much, her belly ached with the desire. “Your hands are cold,” he said, looking at her fingers. She waited. They had never practiced this part and the flimsy play gave no directions, such as, Kiss the girl, you fool. She leaned in a tiny bit. He warmed her hands. “So…” she said. “I suppose we know our scene, more or less,” he said. Was he going to kiss her? No, it seemed nobody ever kissed in Regency England. So what was happening? And what did it mean to fall in love in Austenland anyway? Jane stepped back, the weird anxiety of his nearness suddenly making her heart beat so hard it hurt. “We should probably return. Curtain, or bedsheet, I should say, is in two hours.” “Right. Of course,” he said, though he seemed a little sorry. The evening had pulled down over them, laying chill like morning dew on her arms, right through her clothes and into her bones. Though she was wearing her wool pelisse, she shivered as they walked back to the house. He gave her his jacket. “This theatrical hasn’t been as bad as you expected,” Jane said. “Not so bad. No worse than idle novel reading or croquet.” “You make any entertainment sound like taking cod liver oil.” “Maybe I am growing weary of this place.” He hesitated, as though he’d said too much, which made Jane wonder if the real mad had spoken. He cleared his throat. “Of the country, I mean. I will return to London soon for the season, and the renovations on my estate will be completed by summer. It will be good to be home, to feel something permanent. I tire of the guests who come and go in the country, their only goal to find some kind of amusement, their sentiments shallow. It wears on a person.” He met her eyes. “I may not return to Pembrook Park. Will you?” “No, I’m pretty sure I won’t.” Another ending. Jane’s chest tightened, and she surprised herself to identify the feeling as panic. It was already the night of the play. The ball was two days away. Her departure came in three. Not so soon! Clearly she was swimming much deeper in Austenland waters than she’d anticipated. And loving it. She was growing used to slippers and empire waists, she felt naked outside without a bonnet, during drawing room evenings her mouth felt natural exploring the kinds of words that Austen might’ve written. And when this man entered the room, she had more fun than she had in four years of college combined. It was all feeling…perfect.

He kicked off his boots before walking through the living room. Day’s house was very nice. It had been his grandmother’s and she’d left it for him in her will. Day made a lot of renovations on the three-bedroom, two-story home, and God found himself wishing he had a family to share that type of home with. He could see himself sitting on the large leather sofa in the den with Day snuggled up next to him. His mom baking them raisin bread and Genesis upstairs blasting his music too loud. God shook his head at the nonsense and went to find the one thing he had in his life that was real in the kitchen. Day loved him, and as far as he was concerned, that would be enough for him.

These mortgages, which typically cost less per month than paying rent, were directed at new single-family suburban construction.c Intentionally or not, the FHA and VA programs discouraged the renovation of existing housing stock, while turning their back on the construction of row houses, mixed-use buildings, and other urban housing types. Simultaneously, a 41,000-mile interstate highway program, coupled with federal and local subsidies for road improvement and the neglect of mass transit, helped make automotive commuting affordable and convenient for the average citizen.

On February 11, 1998, the Sunday Times reported that ten bodies were dug up from beneath Benjamin Franklin’s home at 36 Craven Street in London. The bodies were of four adults and six children. They were discovered during a costly renovation of Franklin’s former home. The Times reported: “Initial estimates are that the bones are about two hundred years old and were buried at the time Franklin was living in the house, which was his home from 1757 to 1762 and from 1764 to 1775. Most of the bones

Four men went fishing. After an hour of sitting on the riverbank, one said, “You won’t believe what I had to do to get permission to come away fishing this weekend. I had to promise my wife that next week I’d redecorate every room in the house!” The second man said,“That’s nothing! I had to promise my wife I’d turf the whole of the back garden and build swings and a slide for the kids.” Man number three smiled. “You don’t know when you’re well off!” he exclaimed. “I had to promise my partner I’d renovate the whole of the kitchen for her and build a pergola in the garden!” They continued to fish in silence. Then they realized the fourth man hadn’t spoken. “Hey, Jerry!” said the first man. “What did you have to do to be able to come away fishing?” Jerry shrugged casually. “I just set my alarm for five-thirty,” he said. “When it went off, I turned it off, cuddled up to my wife, and asked, ‘Fishing or sex?’ She turned over and said, ‘Don’t forget your jacket.

Always,’ said Evie and Max together. Points for harmony. In truth, in the six years she’d known him, Max had barely mentioned his mother other than to say she’d never been the maternal type and that she set exceptionally high standards for everything; be it a manicure or the behaviour of her husbands or her sons. ‘No engagement ring?’ queried Caroline with the lift of an elegant eyebrow. ‘Ah, no,’ said Evie. ‘Not yet. There was so much choice I, ah...couldn’t decide.’ ‘Indeed,’ said Caroline, before turning to Max. ‘I can, of course, make an appointment for you with my jeweller this afternoon. I’m sure he’ll have something more than suitable. That way Evie will have a ring on her finger when she attends the cocktail party I’m hosting for the pair of you tonight.’ ‘You didn’t have to fuss,’ said Max as he set their overnight cases just inside the door beside a wide staircase. ‘Introducing my soon-to-be daughter-in-law to family and friends is not fuss,’ said Max’s mother reprovingly. ‘It’s expected, and so is a ring. Your brother’s here, by the way.’ ‘You summoned him home as well?’ ‘He came of his own accord,’ she said dryly. ‘No one makes your brother do anything.’ ‘He’s my role model,’ whispered Max as they followed the doyenne of the house down the hall. ‘I need a cocktail dress,’ Evie whispered back. ‘Get it when I go ring hunting. What kind of stone do you want?’ ‘Diamond.’ ‘Colour?’ ‘White.’ ‘An excellent choice,’ said Caroline from up ahead and Max grinned ruefully. ‘Ears like a bat,’ he said in his normal deep baritone. ‘Whisper like a foghorn,’ his mother cut back, and surprised Evie by following up with a deliciously warm chuckle. The house was a beauty. Twenty-foot ceilings and a modern renovation that complemented the building’s Victorian bones. The wood glowed with beeswax shine and the air carried the scent of old-English roses. ‘Did you do the renovation?’ asked Evie and her dutiful fiancé nodded. ‘My first project after graduating.’ ‘Nice work,’ she said as Caroline ushered them into a large sitting room that fed seamlessly through to a wide, paved garden patio.

House Hunters Renovation

Jane had tried that with Mothers Group and failed. She just couldn't relate to those bright, chatty women and their bubbly conversations about husbands who weren't "stepping up" and renovations that weren't finished before the baby was born and that hilarious time they were so busy and tired they left the house without putting on any makeup! (Jane, who was wearing no makeup at the time, and never wore makeup, had kept her face blank and benign, while she inwardly shouted: What the fuck?)

It is not the practice of liberation to ignore and silence the voices of our sisters and brothers when they disagree with us. Such a response to dissenting or other voices constitutes a deployment of the master’s tools,277 and will never dismantle the master’s house, but merely constitutes a renovation of old structures.

Pity," he said, with a rueful little smile, still gazing at the conflagration.  "But I suppose that part of the house was due for renovation anyhow.  I think I shall have it redone in the new classical style . . . what do you think, Major?" "I think that's the last ball of yours I will ever attend." "Now really, Charles.  You wound me."  He knelt down, and, lifting one of Charles's hands, turned it palm upward, shaking his head as he examined the blistered red flesh through the burned-out glove.  "And you have wounded yourself.  How fortunate that you have someone to take such good care of you."  His black eyes, which gave away nothing, found Amy's as he stood up.  "You will take care of him, won't you, my dear?" "Oh, I'll take care of him, Your Grace," she vowed, tenderly smoothing Charles's singed wet hair from his face.  "After all, I've done it before, haven't I, Charles?" "You certainly have."  He shut his eyes, pulled her head down to his, and found her lips in a deep, searching kiss.  And when he finally broke it and looked up, there was everyone gazing down at him, grinning so fiercely he thought their faces would split.  Lucien, one brow raised, but otherwise as composed as ever.  Gareth and Juliet, standing arm and arm, their eyes shining.  A battered Andrew, Nerissa, Perry, Chilcot, the villagers, and everyone else whom Lucien must have used — either directly or indirectly, knowingly or unknowingly — to prove to Charles that he was not only forgiven, but loved, respected and admired. 

Then, one night, while daughter Margaret played the piano upstairs, the floor indeed gave way and the piano crashed through, sending plaster and rotted wood onto the executive mansion’s first floor below. The subsequent extensive and high-profile restoration provided the perfect cover to install a secret bomb shelter. On August 1, 1950, Truman’s naval aide, Robert Dennison, wrote a memo to the renovation team, explaining, “The President has authorized certain protective measures which include alterations at basement level in and adjacent to the wings of the White House.” The renovation had originally called for two basement levels of various utility and storage rooms. Instead, Dennison, aide David Stowe, and the project architect sketched out a large, heavily fortified facility

Truman’s farewell address on January 15, 1953, delivered five days before he left the renovated White House, is to this day one of the best speeches of the Cold War, containing insightful analysis and a prediction of how, decades later, it would end. “I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the ‘Cold War’ began to overshadow our lives,” he told the American people, speaking late at night from the Oval Office. Winning the Cold War wouldn’t be easy—or fast—but the United States, he firmly believed, would win simply by holding the line.

To distract herself, she turned on the TV and watched the Property Brothers renovate an entire house for what it cost her just to install a kitchen countertop. The show was about as realistic as an episode of Star Trek. She turned off the TV in disgust

I hate the Hudson Valley. Everyone loves it now, the artsy shops and rambling farmhouses occupied by Brooklynites making their own artisanal beer, jam, and pickles. That would have been Harry if he were alive, not in Brooklyn but in some run-down upstate town, making the cider vinegar he was so excited about. There’s a particular sadness lurking beneath the surface of those towns. Take a step back from the charming renovated main streets with their cafés and knitting shops and you’re in the heart of meth-land, of derelict textile mills and workers’ housing, sagging porches and weeds as tall as children. The shiny artisanal present is nothing more than a hasty coat of paint. And the past is heavy with decayed trappings of an American dream, textile fortunes made and lost, middle-class towns established and extinguished in only a few generations. I had a friend who studied Native American history and she wouldn’t set foot in that part of the world. “You can still smell the slaughter,” she’d said.

While renovating her house, everyday she asked the same question. 'Who's paying for all that?' I said, 'You are so cheer up, you might have to go back to work.

And, if Avery was honest, sometimes Chiti's caretaking felt claustrophobic. In Avery's least generous moments, she saw it as Chiti's way of gaining control and making others dependent on her so she could protect herself from the same abandonment she had experienced with her mother. Even the act of buying a house in the neighborhood Avery wanted to live in so quickly after they first met was a kind of coercion. Avery may pay half the mortgage and have covered much of the renovations since, but she could never have afforded this house back then. By giving Avery what she always wanted - space, security, a place of her own- Chiti made sure she would never leave.

In relative valuation, you price an asset based on how similar assets are priced in the market. A prospective house buyer decides how much to pay for a house by looking at the prices paid for similar houses in the neighborhood. In the same vein, a potential investor in Twitter's IPO (initial public offering) in 2013 could have estimated its value by looking at the market pricing of other social media companies. The three essential steps in relative valuation are: Find comparable assets that are priced by the market; Scale the market prices to a common variable to generate standardized prices that are comparable across assets; and Adjust for differences across assets when comparing their standardized values. A newer house with more updated amenities should be priced higher than a similar-sized older house that needs renovation, and a higher growth company should trade at a higher price than a lower growth company in the same sector. Pricing can be done with less information and much more quickly than intrinsic valuations, and it is more likely to reflect the market mood of the moment. Not surprisingly, most of what passes for valuation in investment banking and portfolio management is really pricing.

It’s clear he’s had this house renovated to his specifications, the sneaky bastard. But he’s right—our apartment is nice, but it’s not a home. This is. With Little Bird.

Instead of moving house to gain extra space why not consider an extension to give you the living space you require without leaving the home you love. We specialise in building extensions and loft conversions and have a great deal of experience in making your house the home of your dreams. When you require builders for an extension, renovation or the development of your property, you only need make one call to us and our experts will work with you to make it all become a reality.

A thorough flip budget includes: • Investment property purchase price and settlement costs • Loan costs (such as application fees, points, and lifetime interest) • Repair and renovation costs (based on estimates from experienced contractors) • Inspection fees • Staging costs • Selling costs (including real estate agent commission and other closing costs) • Professional fees • Insurance • Property and school taxes • Utilities • Income tax provisions

Unlike the house you live in, practically every expense attached to your rental property counts as a deductible business expense for tax purposes. Expenses to deduct include: • Mortgage interest • Property taxes • Insurance • Homeowners association dues • Advertising (to fill a vacancy) • Utilities • Repairs and maintenance • Pest control • Landscaping • Trash pickup • Depreciation What doesn’t count as an expense? Any major repairs or renovations you perform count as capital expenditures that get added to the cost basis of the property, effectively reducing your taxable income when you eventually sell.

In that moment on the deck, I watched the sun rise high and illuminate my neighborhood, and I realized that restoring the Maple house was no longer just a renovation, but an opportunity for renewal.

She remains intent on renovating the old, historic house her great-aunt left her and giving it a new life as a B&B.

A bathroom in good condition will raise the value of the house. Therefore, our renovation experts have enlisted some top reasons why you need bathroom renovation.

but they would have anyway, no matter what he drove. “I have the day off tomorrow. And there are some other things I want you to see. I have a surprise.” He was trying to organize her introduction to Nashville, while keeping a hand in his work. And she knew they were playing a concert in six days. It had been sold out for months. He left her in the lobby, and she heard the Corvette roar off two minutes later, as she went upstairs. She had had a fabulous day so far, thanks to Chase. She changed into jeans and comfortable clothes for their time in the studio that night. And he said there would be plenty of food for everyone to eat. She couldn’t wait to see his house. She knew how much he loved it, and how important his home was to him. He talked about it a lot, and what a job it had been to renovate it. It was an old Colonial mansion on extensive grounds. It was part of an old plantation that had been divided into lots years before, and he had the main house and gardens closest to the house. The old slave quarters had been torn down when the property had been split up. She hardly had enough time to check her e-mails and change her clothes before it was time to pick her up. One of

He said that it was strange it had taken us so long to meet: in fact it was almost exactly a year to the day day since we had been – albeit briefly – introduced by a mutual friend. Since then, he had asked the mutual friend several times for my number; he had attended parties and dinners where he had been told I would be present, only to find that I wasn’t there. He didn’t know why the mutual friend resisted putting him directly in touch with me, if it was anything so deliberate as resistance. But one way or another, he had been obstructed; until – again without knowing why – be had recently asked the mutual friend once more for my number and promptly been given it. I said that my current feelings of powerlessness had changed the way I looked at what happens and why, to the extent that I was beginning to see what other people called fate in the unfolding of events, as though living were merely an act of reading to find out what happens next. That idea – of one’s own life as something that had already been dictated – was strangely seductive, until you realised that it reduced other people to the moral status of characters and camouflaged their capacity to destroy. Yet the illusion of meaning recurred, much as you tried to resist it: like childhood, I said, which we treat as an explanatory text rather than merely as a formative experience of powerless. For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only though absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry. I had started to desire power, because what I now realised was that other people had had it all along, that what I called fate was merely the reverberation of their will, a tale scripted not by some universal storyteller but by people who would elude justice for as long as their actions were met with resignation rather than outrage.

the commonly used term housekeeper morphed into housewife. The shift was subtle, but the change in connotation was profound: a woman no longer managed her home; she was married to it.

Whether you are painting the interior of your home, the exterior, or both, Northern Beaches House Painting offers a premium painting service at a cost efficient price that is guaranteed to please the most discerning homeowner. You might be renovating your home, your paintwork may be a little tired, it may be cracking or peeling, or perhaps you are looking to refresh the colours of your walls or facade – whatever your situation, we are here to help.

Midnight's Toll by Stewart Stafford As the lungs of our world burn, SS Nero crashes on plastic rocks, Kamikaze Captain Mann at the helm, Safety is beyond our salvation. As a loved one cruelly disfigured, By a crazed passerby in the street, The house we once loved as life, Now a distant, renovated stranger. Midnight's toll becomes due, The malicious piper paid in full, Only desolation, bones and dust, Our necropolis legacy to the future. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

We had come without knowing it to our inevitable place. —Robinson Jeffers

After I finished university the house underwent a renovation, and the newly fixed doorsill was now higher by one inch. I can’t tell you how many times I tripped on that one inch. I know very well that the sill is now higher, but even when I lift my step I still trip on it.

These homes were affective spaces suffused with many references to the dead in objects and pictures. The presence of the dead was sometimes most marked by their absence from spaces that had earlier resonated with their presence, such as the doorway the son used to walk through when he came home on leave or the courtyard where he would sit on the charpai and eat peanuts. In one of these initial encounters, a mother kept staring at a fixed spot on the floor; she then told me her son used to put his army boots there when he came home on leave. There were no boots there today, yet as she spoke of her son, her eyes stared fixedly at that space. These spaces were also haunted in more concrete ways, because many of these houses had been renovated using compensation money received from the military, so the brick and mortar bore testament to the loss endured.

Studies suggest that Scots spend less on home décor than anywhere else in the UK, but what we do spend big on is renovating and converting our properties instead of moving houses. Instead of moving home and incurring extra tax, it appears homeowners prefer to line the pockets of Scotland's architects. This suggests that instead of seeing the politics of home ownership and house building as a problem, we are choosing to turn it into an opportunity. This shift in thinking an help us live more comfortably, be more in touch with our individual needs, and in turn support Scottish practitioners.

Beth taught me this lesson too, years ago, when she developed another important list (she loves lists), this one being her “list of interests.” She came up with this concept after she got tired of people asking her if she was going to renovate her house. She worked out the best way to shut down these conversations was simply to say: “Renovation is not on my list of interests.” It wasn’t figurative. She actually created a list of interests so “home renovation” could, specifically, not be on it.