Longer Time - Photos & Ideas

After many years of having no outdoor living space and dealing with overgrown plants and trees the owner’s decided it was time to revitalize their backyard. They knew they wanted a large sitting area with a wood burning fireplace, room for outdoor dining and a place for the grill. A connecting walk would be needed to get guests from the driveway to the outdoor space. Last but not least, the owners wanted the ability to and a reason for stepping out of their unusable patio doors. The designers decided from the start the fireplace would be the prominent feature and focal point for the entire project. A large fireplace accented with sitting walls and arbors was positioned to anchor the corner of the patio. Stone was chosen to set the fireplace apart as its own element. Brick was used for the sitting walls and brick accents were added to the fireplace to tie into the house. An inlaid herringbone brick detail was incorporated above the stone mantle to simulate artwork which is typically found above indoor fireplaces. Flagstone was used for the wall caps and hearth to match the patio and thicker flagstone tread stock was used for the mantle and top. The arbors were added to visually balance the pergolas at the opposite side of the patio. For the patio the designers created a series of offset spaces to help subtly divide the space into two areas, sitting and dining. Two large existing trees also help dictate the shape of the patio. Cut flagstone was chosen for the surface bordered by a double soldier edge of brick. The brick edging also surrounds a decorative gravel area topped with an urn fountain which provides a secondary focal point and the sound of water. Large flagstone treads were used for the steps leading to the previously unused patio doors. Opposite the fireplace a short walk leads to a square transition area with a statue chosen by the owner. The statue provides a strong focal point when entering from the driveway. A longer walk leads from this space along the house to the driveway. The pergolas and arbors were designed by the landscape designer as part of this project but were ultimately contracted separately by the owner. The larger square pergola was intended as an area for a bench or two separate from the main patio. The longer pergola was added later in the design phase to help provide shade to the interior of the house. The arbors at the fireplace were added to balance out the wood elements at the opposite side while adding additional architectural interest to the fireplace. While this project was predominantly hardscaping, planting and lighting were also incorporated into the design. Several large existing trees were retained and serious of smaller understory trees were added to help enclose the space. The designer’s took advantage of the large trees to place down lights on the branches to achieve a moonlight effect at night. Additional lighting was used on the pergola, to accent focal points, to up light the smaller trees and around the patio. Massed planting of Japanese forest grass provides bold foliage color for the shady garden. A mulch path leads off behind the fireplace to another garden and a secluded area ideal for a bench or small table and chairs. Additional plantings were added along the rear property line to screen and unsightly fence. This project has obviously completely changed the way the owners use their backyard. They now have a seamless transition from indoors to outdoors with the use of the patio doors. The large patio allows for entertaining small gatherings outdoors for the first time. The fireplace has definitely become the primary gathering place for family and friends.

Hurricane Sandy Project

Paul Lopa Designs

See what our client say about Paul Lopa Designs: It went as smooth as it possibly could go. The only bumps in the road was with what we found during demolition, you never know what your gonna run into when all the walls, floors and fixtures come out. Paul had explained to us that depending on what we found under all the out dated stuff it might take a little longer. Paul was there doing the work with his workers he showed up on time and finished on schedule. It was no problem being in touch with Paul because he answered his phone or got back to us in a timely fashion. He has an excellent sense of design he knows what goes well together and makes the house flow with comfort and usability. Paul Lopa designs,inc

High End Transformation in Record Time

Lowell Custom Homes

www.lowellcustomhomes.com - This beautiful home was in need of a few updates on a tight schedule. Under the watchful eye of Superintendent Dennis www.LowellCustomHomes.com Retractable screens, invisible glass panels, indoor outdoor living area porch. Levine we made the deadline with stunning results. We think you'll be impressed with this remodel that included a makeover of the main living areas including the entry, great room, kitchen, bedrooms, baths, porch, lower level and more!

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Black Banks Plantation

Envision Web

Stuart Wade, Envision Virtual Tours The second-largest and most developed of Georgia's barrier islands, St. Simons is approximately twelve miles long and nearly three miles wide at its widest stretch (roughly the size of Manhattan Island in New York). The island is located in Glynn County on Georgia's coast and lies east of Brunswick (the seat of Glynn County), south of Little St. Simons Island and the Hampton River, and north of Jekyll Island. The resort community of Sea Island is separated from St. Simons on the east by the Black Banks River. Known for its oak tree canopies and historic landmarks, St. Simons is both a tourist destination and, according to the 2010 U.S. census, home to 12,743 residents. Early History The earliest St. Simons Island Village record of human habitation on the island dates to the Late Archaic Period, about 5,000 to 3,000 years ago. Remnants of shell rings left behind by Native Americans from this era survive on many of the barrier islands, including St. Simons. Centuries later, during the period known by historians as the chiefdom era, the Guale Indians established a chiefdom centered on St. Catherines Island and used St. Simons as their hunting and fishing grounds. By 1500 the Guale had established a permanent village of about 200 people on St. Simons, which they called Guadalquini. Beginning in 1568, the Spanish attempted to create missions along the Georgia coast. Catholic missions were the primary means by which Georgia's indigenous Native American chiefdoms were assimilated into the Spanish colonial system along the northern frontier of greater Spanish Florida. In the 1600s St. Simons became home to two Spanish missions: San Buenaventura de Guadalquini, on the southern tip of the island, and Santo Domingo de Asao (or Asajo), on the northern tip. Located on the inland side of the island were the pagan refugee villages of San Simón, the island's namesake, and Ocotonico. In 1684 pirate raids left the missions and villages largely abandoned. Colonial History As Fort Frederica early as 1670, with Great Britain's establishment of the colony of Carolina and its expansion into Georgia territory, Spanish rule was threatened by the English. The Georgia coast was considered "debatable land" by England and Spain, even though Spain had fully retreated from St. Simons by 1702. Thirty-one years later General James Edward Oglethorpe founded the English settlement of Savannah. In 1736 he established Fort Frederica, named after the heir to the British throne, Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, on the west side of St. Simons Island to protect Savannah and the Carolinas from the Spanish threat. Between 1736 and 1749 Fort Frederica was the hub of British military operations along the Georgia frontier. A town of the same name grew up around the fort and was of great importance to the new colony. By 1740 Frederica's population was 1,000. In 1736 the congregation of what would become Christ Church was organized within Fort Frederica as a mission of the Church of England. Charles Wesley led the first services. In 1742 Britain's decisive victory over Spain in the Battle of Bloody Marsh, during the War of Jenkins' Ear, ended the Spanish threat to the Georgia coast. When the British regimen disbanded in 1749, most of the townspeople relocated to the mainland. Fort Frederica went into decline and, except for a short time of prosperity during the 1760s and 1770s under the leadership of merchant James Spalding, never fully recovered. Today the historic citadel's tabby ruins are maintained by the National Park Service. Plantation Era By the start of the American Revolution (1775-83), Fort Frederica was obsolete, and St. Simons was left largely uninhabited as most of its residents joined the patriot army. Besides hosting a small Georgia naval victory on the Fort Frederica River, providing guns from its famous fort for use at Fort Morris in Sunbury, and serving as an arena for pillaging by privateers and British soldiers, the island played almost no role in the war. Following the war, many of the townspeople, their businesses destroyed, turned to agriculture. The island was transformed into fourteen cotton plantations after acres of live oak trees were cleared for farm land and used for building American warships, including the famous USS Constitution, or "Old Ironsides." Although rice was the predominant crop along the neighboring Altamaha River, St. Simons was known for its production of long-staple cotton, which soon came to be known as Sea Island cotton. Between Ebos Landing the 1780s and the outbreak of the Civil War (1861-65), St. Simons's plantation culture flourished. The saline atmosphere and the availability of cheap slave labor proved an ideal combination for the cultivation of Sea Island cotton. In 1803 a group of Ebo slaves who survived the Middle Passage and arrived on the west side of St. Simons staged a rebellion and drowned themselves. The sacred site is known today as Ebos Landing. One of the largest owners of land and slaves on St. Simons was Pierce Butler, master of Hampton Point Plantation, located on the northern end of the island. By 1793 Butler owned more than 500 slaves, who cultivated 800 acres of cotton on St. Simons and 300 acres of rice on Butler's Island in the Altamaha River delta. Butler's grandson, Pierce Mease Butler, who at the age of sixteen inherited a share of his grandfather's estate in 1826, was responsible for the largest sale of human beings in the history of the United States: in 1859, to restore his squandered fortune, he sold 429 slaves in Savannah for more than $300,000. The British actress and writer Fanny Kemble, whose tumultuous marriage to Pierce ended in divorce in 1849, published an eyewitness account of the evils of slavery on St. Simons in her book Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 (1863). Another Retreat Plantation large owner of land and slaves on St. Simons was Major William Page, a friend and employee of Pierce Butler Sr. Before purchasing Retreat Plantation on the southwestern tip of the island in 1804, Page managed the Hampton plantation and Butler's Island. Upon Page's death in 1827, Thomas Butler King inherited the land together with his wife, Page's daughter, Anna Matilda Page King. King expanded his father-in-law's planting empire on St. Simons as well as on the mainland, and by 1835 Retreat Plantation alone was home to as many as 355 slaves. The center of life during the island's plantation era was Christ Church, Frederica. Organized in 1807 by a group of island planters, the Episcopal church is the second oldest in the Diocese of Georgia. Embargoes imposed by the War of 1812 (1812-15) prevented the parishioners from building a church structure, so they worshiped in the home of John Beck, which stood on the site of Oglethorpe's only St. Simons residence, Orange Hall. The first Christ Church building, finished on the present site in 1820, was ruined by occupying Union troops during the Civil War. In 1884 the Reverend Anson Dodge Jr. rebuilt the church as a memorial to his first wife, Ellen. The cruciform building with a trussed gothic roof and stained-glass windows remains active today as Christ Church. Civil War and Beyond The St. Simons Island Lighthouse outbreak of the Civil War in 1861 put a sudden end to St. Simons's lucrative plantation era. In January of that year, Confederate troops were stationed at the south end of the island to guard the entrance to Brunswick Harbor. Slaves from Retreat Plantation, owned by Thomas Butler King, built earthworks and batteries. Plantation residents were scattered—the men joined the Confederate army and their families moved to the mainland. Cannon fire was heard on the island in December 1861, and Confederate troops retreated in February 1862, after dynamiting the lighthouse to keep its beacon from aiding Union troops. Soon thereafter, Union troops occupied the island, which was used as a camp for freed slaves. By August 1862 more than 500 former slaves lived on St. Simons, including Susie King Taylor, who organized a school for freed slave children. But in November the ex-slaves were taken to Hilton Head, South Carolina, and Fernandina, Florida, leaving the island abandoned. After the Civil War the island never returned to its status as an agricultural community. The plantations lay dormant because there were no slaves to work the fields. After Union general William T. Sherman's January 1865 Special Field Order No. 15 —a demand that former plantations be divided and distributed to former slaves—was overturned by U.S. president Andrew Johnson less than a year later, freedmen and women were forced to work as sharecroppers on the small farms that dotted the land previously occupied by the sprawling plantations. By St. Simons Lumber Mills 1870 real economic recovery began with the reestablishment of the timber industry. Norman Dodge and Titus G. Meigs of New York set up lumber mill operations at Gascoigne Bluff, formerly Hamilton Plantation. The lumber mills provided welcome employment for both blacks and whites and also provided mail and passenger boats to the mainland. Such water traffic, together with the construction of a new lighthouse in 1872, designed by architect Charles B. Cluskey, marked the beginning of St. Simons's tourism industry. The keeper of the lighthouse created a small amusement park, which drew many visitors, as did the seemingly miraculous light that traveled from the top of the lighthouse tower to the bottom. The island became a summer retreat for families from the mainland, particularly from Baxley, Brunswick, and Waycross. The island's resort industry was thriving by the 1880s. Beachfront structures, such as a new pier and grand hotel, were built on the southeastern end of the island and could be accessed by ferry. Around this time wealthy northerners began vacationing on the island. Twentieth Century The St. Simons Island Pier and Village opening in 1924 of the Brunswick–St. Simons Highway, today known as the Torras Causeway, was a milestone in the development of resorts in the area. St. Simons's beaches were now easily accessible to locals and tourists alike. More than 5,000 automobiles took the short drive from Brunswick to St. Simons via the causeway on its opening day, paving the way for convenient residential and resort development. In 1926 automotive pioneer Howard Coffin of Detroit, Michigan, bought large tracts of land on St. Simons, including the former Retreat Plantation, and constructed a golf course, yacht club, paved roads, and a residential subdivision. Although the causeway had brought large numbers of summer people to the island, St. Simons remained a small community with only a few hundred permanent residents until the 1940s. The St. Simons Island outbreak of World War II (1941-45) brought more visitors and residents to St. Simons. Troops stationed at Jacksonville, Florida; Savannah; and nearby Camp Stewart took weekend vacations on the island, and a new naval air base and radar school became home to even more officers and soldiers. The increased wartime population brought the island its first public school. With a major shipyard for the production of Liberty ships in nearby Brunswick, the waters of St. Simons became active with German U-boats. In April 1942, just off the coast, the Texas Company oil tanker S. S. Oklahoma and the S. S. Esso Baton Rouge were torpedoed by the Germans, bringing the war very close to home for island residents. Due in large part to the military's improvement of the island's infrastructure during the war, development on the island boomed in the 1950s and 1960s. More permanent homes and subdivisions were built, and the island was no longer just a summer resort but also a thriving community. In 1950 the Methodist conference and retreat center Epworth by the Sea opened on Gascoigne Bluff. In 1961 novelist Eugenia Price visited St. Simons and began work on her first works of fiction, known as the St. Simons Trilogy. Inspired by real events on the island, Price's trilogy renewed interest in the history of Georgia's coast, and the novelist herself relocated to the island in 1965 and lived there for thirty-one years. St. Simons is also home to contemporary Georgia writer Tina McElroy Ansa. Since Epworth by the Sea 1980 St. Simons's population has doubled. The island's continued status as a vacation destination and its ongoing development boom have put historic landmarks and natural areas at risk. While such landmarks as the Fort Frederica ruins and the Battle of Bloody Marsh site are preserved and maintained by the National Park Service, and while the historic lighthouse is maintained by the Coastal Georgia Historical Society, historic Ebos Landing has been taken over by a sewage treatment plant. Several coastal organizations have formed in recent years to save natural areas on the island. The St. Simons Land Trust, for example, has received donations of large tracts of land and plans to protect property in the island's three traditional African American neighborhoods. Despite its rapid growth and development, St. Simons remains one of the most beautiful and important islands on the Georgia coast.

Flush Wood Plus

Fireplace Xtrordinair

The high-performance heat and superior design of this wood fireplace insert are truly out of the ordinary. Our exclusive flush-to-the fireplace design enhances the beautiful lines of a traditional fire place and provides modern heating efficiency. The huge view of the fire through our large, single rectangular door remains clear thanks to our air wash system. The Flush Wood Plus Arched wood insert also features a variable speed, high volume blower which can utilize the hard-wiring option kit to preserve the classic good looks of your existing fireplace without a power cord showing on the hearth. Heat a room or a home up to 2,000 square feet with less wood and longer burn times. The Flush Wood Plus Arched is designed to be installed in both masonry and zero clearance wood burning fireplaces.

Lothbrok - the "B" side - Windham, New York

Wake Up Windham

Lothbrok is tucked into the woods, in a quiet neighborhood and minutes away from Windham Mountain. The owners kept some of the charm of the 70's and brought the house into this century by making it look brand new again. “Wake Up Windham recently took wonderful photos of my Airbnb that has gotten me more bookings, and I could not be happier! He was so easy to work with and had some great suggestions. I sent him a list of the shots I wanted and his photos exceeded my expectations. His turn around time was quick and his photos paid for themselves immediately. I'm having him take photos of my other two Airbnb as well. Great photos make a big difference. No longer do I hear from guests, "your place looks better in person." Now I hear, "your place looks just as beautiful as your photos."“ - Mary

Simple Pleasures

Insight Creative Solutions, llc.

The Simple Pleasures project required macro shots of all the things I love. This emphasized the simplicity of each subject and how they effortlessly manifest gratification. Unique angles, clarity and details were among my main objectives. Ultimately, my goal was to convey this fundamental lesson of simple pleasures in a creative photographic message in hopes of illustrating the value of this explainable phenomenon. I chose items that most of us walk by most of the time without much thought. As a result, this project is a pictorial representation of some of the amazing inexpensive sources of joy in my world. Photography is one way for me to express the way I think, feel, and love. What I have captured with my camera last longer then the fleeting moments of bliss. These images help me think of the little things, long after they have vanished. ©Christina Hankinson