In the greater Portland area many homes that were built before WWII have unfinished basements. Their main function then was to accommodate furnaces, laundry areas, storage, and even sleeping. Today, remodelers receive calls to convert these spaces into more modern usage such as family rooms, entertainment areas, bedrooms, and bathrooms, plus storage/utility areas. In writing this article I had the opportunity to interview two other local remodelers to get their insights as to what they experienced... more

What goes around comes around. It’s an old saying, and these days it applies to youthful homeowners and apartment dwellers alike who are seeking to re-capture the moment when I Love Lucy ruled the airwaves and foil-wrapped TV dinners — served on TV trays — were an amazing innovation. For baby-boomers who grew up with the eye-jarring bubblegum pink bathrooms of the 1950s or the soothing lines of minimalist furniture that distinguished the 1960s, this fashion re-run is inexplicable. But the look... more

There are many ingredients that make a kitchen overhaul or update successful, and texture tops the list. “I look at texture as the performance of a well-coordinated drill team; you want all the selections to coordinate in some way so they each play off each other,” explains Sandy Hendricks, owner of Ovation Design-Build, based in Lake Oswego, OR. Above kitchen design by Stephanie Johnson of Arciform LLC. A kitchen can be monochromatic and still be rich in texture, with its dram a drawn from the... more

Growing plants from seed brings out everyone’s nurturing side and is about as close to magic as we can get. More pragmatically, starting seeds indoors lengthens the growing season, provides a pest-free growing atmosphere, saves money, guarantees that plants are grown chemical-free, and allows you to choose from a huge selection of seeds. If you work quickly, you can still grow plants for this year. Figure 1: Fill and level containers and lightly compact. Figure 2: Sow fine seed by pressing... more

No gadget column worth its salt can ignore the burgeoning field of cool flashlights, so at the risk of repeating myself, I’d like to revisit the increasingly “enlightened” category of portable illumination. The LED (light emitting diode) is actually a semiconductor — think transistor — that emits light, and it’s the future of flashlight applications. The reasons are simple. Your batteries last substantially longer, light intensity is greater, and the LED’s themselves last thousands... more

As much as we want our painted surface to last forever, paint does crack, flake, peel, and blister. Flexibility Water-based or latex paints that are made with 100 percent acrylic resin (not a vinyl or vinyl-acrylic blend) have the greatest “elasticity”: The flexibility to expand and contract with surface and temperature changes. Latex paint also “breathes.” This allows moisture to escape through the latex paint. Oil-based paint forms a moisture resistant film with little flexibility that... more