One theme we’ve worked into these pages more often than any other through the past 30 months has to do with the thought that we all need to find ways to respond to the rapidly evolving market conditions in which we find ourselves. You’ve heard that message from our columnists and many of our feature writers: Across the board, they’ve argued that outlasting the recession – and, more important, coming out on the other side poised for success – is a matter of adapting and actively developing skills that make sense in light of today’s
I love tile. For years, it has pushed all my creative buttons and fired my desire to learn everything I can about all of its forms. From my first days in the business to this very day, I’ve been inspired by its beauty, its rich history, the challenges involved in installing it perfectly and the potential it has to transform spaces. And it’s no stretch to say I’ve worked with tile most of my life, reaching all the way back to when I was 12 years old, mixing mud and cleaning tools for a neighbor who was at that time a prominent tile contractor in Los Angeles and Hawaii. As a teenager, I worked weekends and summers (when the surf was low), eventually picking up what I needed to know to complete installation jobs on my own. I tried a variety of other things – been in bands and played music around the world, designed sets in Hollywood, supervised a variety of construction projects, worked in a few restaurants. But I’ve always come back to tile, started my own installation business in the early 1980s and have been at it ever since. As I’ve learned more and grown in skill, I’ve come to see tile design and installation as
Any number of the projects we've worked on through the years have given us at Root Design Company (Austin, Texas) the sense of pride and satisfaction that comes with doing the big jobs well. Only a handful, however, rise to another level and foster a sense of accomplishment, thereby making what we do both fun and entirely special. The project covered here is one of those amazing exceptions. It came to us through the architect, Arthur Andersson of Andersson-Wise Architects (also based in Austin), which is well known locally for its daring contemporary homes and commercial structures. In this case, the architect had suspended a modern home on a steep slope overlooking Lake Austin. It had a distinctly bare-bones, utilitarian look about it, distinguished mainly by an unusual, inverted-butterfly roofline. His ideas about the swimming pool were ambitious, to say the least. The drawings called for an elevated, cantilevered lap pool constructed entirely of clear panels – a bold statement that would simultaneously harmonize with the stark simplicity of the house itself. The slope on which this was to happen was quite severe, meaning the home itself is
How Much Do You Know About Frog Skin?
Compiled and Written by Lenny Giteck Ripples is pleased to present… “Wet Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous” JLo’s Toddler Poops in Family Pool — Resulting Repair Bill Is $6,000 Jennifer Lopez and husband Marc Anthony’s 3-year-old son, Max, recently deposited
Did you know that there's a strong trend toward creating ponds that are made for swimming in Germany and Austria? That revelation came by way of a terrific book I just finished — Natural Swimming Pools: Inspiration for Harmony with Nature by Michael Littlewood (Schiffer Publishing, 2004). Littlewood is an American landscape designer who
The commercial pool and spa industrywas rocked recently by the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s mandatory recall of main-drain grates — devices that had been designed, engineered and manufactured within the past two years to meet specific provisions
For generations, the rank-and-file of the pool industry has operated under the general assumption that plaster is an effective waterproofing membrane. That’s not the case: As is true of all cement-based materials, plaster is
Taking Care