A couple from the Chicago area created a home they can enjoy and reconnect with their fully grown sons and expanding families, to fish and ski. Reclaimed post and beam barn from Vermont as the primary focus with extensions leading to a master suite; garage and artist’s studio. A four bedroom home with ample space for entertaining with surrounding patio with an exterior fireplace Reclaimed board siding; stone and metal roofing

Example of a 1960s family room design in San Francisco

This project won in the 2013 Builders Association of Metropolitan Pittsburgh Housing Excellence Award for Best Urban Renewal Renovation Project. The glass bowl was made in the glass studio owned by the owner which is adjacent to the residence. The mirror is a repurposed window. The door is repurposed from a boarding house. George Mendel

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For independent garden centers, choosing which soil products to carry is about more than filling shelf space. Customers come through the door with different plants, growing conditions, and gardening goals. One may be starting vegetable seeds; another may be building a raised bed, while someone else may need soil for flowers in containers. The challenge is making sure the soil selection can meet those different needs while making it easy for customers to understand which product is right for their project. A thoughtfully selected soil assortment can help independent garden centers do both. Dirty Dirt Soil Company brings more than 50 years of independent garden-center experience to its soil products, with purpose-driven blends for seed starting, containers, raised beds, landscape beds and soil conditioning, along with composted topsoil and high-quality mulch. The philosophy is straightforward: different gardening jobs call for different soil solutions, and giving retailers thoughtfully crafted options helps them give their customers better answers.

For independent garden centers, choosing which soil products to carry is about more than filling shelf space. Customers come through the door with different plants, growing conditions, and gardening goals. One may be starting vegetable seeds; another may be building a raised bed, while someone else may need soil for flowers in containers. The challenge is making sure the soil selection can meet those different needs while making it easy for customers to understand which product is right for their project. A thoughtfully selected soil assortment can help independent garden centers do both. Dirty Dirt Soil Company brings more than 50 years of independent garden-center experience to its soil products, with purpose-driven blends for seed starting, containers, raised beds, landscape beds and soil conditioning, along with composted topsoil and high-quality mulch. The philosophy is straightforward: different gardening jobs call for different soil solutions, and giving retailers thoughtfully crafted options helps them give their customers better answers.

For independent garden centers, choosing which soil products to carry is about more than filling shelf space. Customers come through the door with different plants, growing conditions, and gardening goals. One may be starting vegetable seeds; another may be building a raised bed, while someone else may need soil for flowers in containers. The challenge is making sure the soil selection can meet those different needs while making it easy for customers to understand which product is right for their project. A thoughtfully selected soil assortment can help independent garden centers do both. Dirty Dirt Soil Company brings more than 50 years of independent garden-center experience to its soil products, with purpose-driven blends for seed starting, containers, raised beds, landscape beds and soil conditioning, along with composted topsoil and high-quality mulch. The philosophy is straightforward: different gardening jobs call for different soil solutions, and giving retailers thoughtfully crafted options helps them give their customers better answers.

For independent garden centers, choosing which soil products to carry is about more than filling shelf space. Customers come through the door with different plants, growing conditions, and gardening goals. One may be starting vegetable seeds; another may be building a raised bed, while someone else may need soil for flowers in containers. The challenge is making sure the soil selection can meet those different needs while making it easy for customers to understand which product is right for their project. A thoughtfully selected soil assortment can help independent garden centers do both. Dirty Dirt Soil Company brings more than 50 years of independent garden-center experience to its soil products, with purpose-driven blends for seed starting, containers, raised beds, landscape beds and soil conditioning, along with composted topsoil and high-quality mulch. The philosophy is straightforward: different gardening jobs call for different soil solutions, and giving retailers thoughtfully crafted options helps them give their customers better answers.

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Every year, the same thing happens. The first real snowfall arrives, demand for de-icing materials spikes overnight, and the businesses that waited too long find themselves scrambling for supply at the worst possible moment. Facility managers, property owners, contractors, and municipalities all depend on a steady supply of salt and ice melt to keep their properties safe and operational through winter. The ones who plan ahead sail through. The ones who don't pay more, wait longer, and take on real risk. Sourcing de-icing materials well is not complicated, but it does require thinking ahead and understanding the options. The choices you make about what to buy, how to buy it, and who to buy it from have a direct effect on your costs, your reliability, and your ability to keep people safe when conditions turn dangerous. This article lays out what matters. Why Your Choice of Supplier Matters More Than You Think It is easy to treat de-icing material as a commodity, something you grab whenever you need it without much thought about where it comes from. That works fine until the moment it doesn't, usually in the middle of a storm when everyone needs supply at once and the casual sources have run dry. At that point, the relationships you built before the season become the difference between staying stocked and being stuck. Reliable supply is the whole game in winter operations. A property that runs out of ice melt during a storm faces safety hazards, liability exposure, and disruption, none of which can wait for a back-ordered shipment. This is why establishing relationships with dependable rock salt suppliers before the season starts is one of the smartest moves a facility manager or contractor can make. It locks in supply, often locks in better pricing, and removes a major source of mid-winter stress. The lesson here is to treat sourcing as a planning decision rather than a last-minute errand. The businesses that come through winter smoothly are almost always the ones that secured their supply chain early, chose suppliers who could actually deliver when it counted, and never had to gamble on finding material during a shortage. Reliability bought in advance is far cheaper than scarcity paid for in a crisis. Bagged or Bulk: Matching the Material to the Job One of the first practical decisions is whether to buy de-icing material in bags or in bulk, and the right answer depends entirely on the operation. Each format has clear advantages, and many operations end up using both for different purposes. Bagged material offers convenience, control, and easy storage. It is simple to handle, easy to distribute to different locations or crews, straightforward to store without special equipment, and convenient for spot application by hand. It suits smaller properties, businesses without bulk storage, and situations where portion control and tidiness matter. Bulk material, on the other hand, tends to make sense for large operations that go through high volumes, where buying in quantity lowers the per-unit cost and the operation has the equipment and space to store and handle it. The tradeoff is between the convenience and flexibility of bags and the volume economics of bulk. For many operations, the right approach is a mix: bulk for the high-volume core of the work and bags for flexibility, spot treatment, and locations where bulk handling is impractical. The key is to match the format to how the material will actually be stored, moved, and applied, rather than defaulting to one or the other out of habit. Thinking this through in advance avoids both the waste of over-buying bulk you can't handle and the expense of relying entirely on bags for a large operation. Rock Salt Is Not Your Only Option Rock salt, or sodium chloride, is the workhorse of winter de-icing for good reason. It is effective, widely available, and cost-efficient, which makes it the default choice for most operations most of the time. But it has limits, and understanding the alternatives helps you choose the right material for the conditions you actually face. The most important limitation is temperature. Rock salt becomes less effective as temperatures drop, and in genuinely cold conditions it can struggle to do the job at all. This is where alternatives come in. Calcium chloride, for instance, works at much lower temperatures than rock salt and acts quickly, which makes it valuable when conditions are severe or when fast melting matters. Operations that face hard freezes or need dependable performance in extreme cold often keep calcium chloride for sale on hand for exactly those situations, using it alongside rock salt rather than instead of it. The practical approach is to understand the conditions your property faces and stock accordingly. For many operations, rock salt handles the bulk of the work while a faster, colder-rated material like calcium chloride covers the extreme days when ordinary salt falls short. Matching the material to the temperature and the urgency of the situation is what separates an operation that stays ahead of winter from one that is constantly reacting to it. Securing Your Supply Before the Season Knowing what to buy is only half the equation. The other half is making sure you can actually get it when you need it, which means securing your supply before winter arrives rather than after it has already started. Timing is one of the most underrated factors in winter operations. The logic is simple. Demand for de-icing materials is highly seasonal and spikes sharply during storms, when everyone needs supply simultaneously. Prices and availability both move against the buyer at exactly those moments. By contrast, planning ahead, estimating your needs and arranging supply before the season, puts you in a far stronger position. Working with established rock salt suppliers ahead of time means your material is accounted for before the rush, often at better pricing and with the confidence that it will be there when the first storm hits. This kind of planning also lets you think clearly rather than react under pressure. You can estimate your seasonal needs based on your property and past winters, decide on the right mix of materials and formats, and arrange storage in advance. Operations that do this consistently spend less, worry less, and never find themselves making frantic calls during a storm. The effort of planning ahead is modest, and the payoff in reliability and cost savings is substantial. Storing and Handling What You Buy Securing supply is not much use if the material degrades before you can use it, which makes proper storage and handling an important and often overlooked part of the equation. De-icing materials are sensitive to moisture, and poor storage can turn a good supply into a clumped, hardened mess that is difficult to apply. The fundamentals are straightforward. Keep material dry and protected from moisture, since salt and ice melt readily absorb water and can harden if exposed. Store it in a way that suits the format, whether that means a proper bulk storage area or a dry space for stacked bags. Keep it accessible, so crews can get to it quickly when a storm hits and time is short. And handle it with the right equipment for the format and volume, which protects both the material and the people working with it. None of this is complicated, but neglecting it can undermine even a well-planned supply. Good storage practices protect the investment you made in securing supply early. There is little point in arranging your materials ahead of the season only to have them degrade before use. Treating storage and handling as part of the overall plan, rather than an afterthought, ensures that the material you secured is actually usable when the moment comes. It is the final link in a supply chain built to perform under winter conditions. Estimating How Much You Actually Need One question trips up operations of every size: how much de-icing material to buy. Order too little and you risk running short during a storm. Order too much and you tie up money and storage space in material you may not use. Getting the estimate reasonably right is a meaningful part of sourcing well. Several factors shape the answer. The size and type of the areas you treat, sidewalks, lots, entrances, and drive lanes, set the baseline for how much material each application consumes. The local climate matters too, since colder regions and those with frequent snowfall go through far more material than milder ones. Application frequency depends on how often storms hit and how quickly surfaces need to be cleared, which varies with the kind of property and the expectations of the people who use it. And the type of material plays a role, since different products are applied at different rates. Past experience is often the best guide. Operations that track what they used in previous winters, adjusted for the size of the property and the severity of the season, can estimate their needs with reasonable confidence. For newer operations without that history, it helps to plan conservatively and to work with a supplier who can replenish stock reliably, so that a low estimate does not turn into a mid-storm shortage. The goal is not perfect precision but a sound, slightly cautious estimate paired with a dependable supply relationship. That combination lets an operation keep enough material on hand to handle the season without over-committing to volume it cannot store or use. Thinking this through before winter, rather than guessing during it, is one more way that planning ahead pays off when the snow starts to fall. The Bottom Line Sourcing de-icing materials well comes down to a few straightforward principles: plan ahead, choose reliable suppliers before the season, match your materials and formats to your actual needs and conditions, and store what you buy properly. The operations that follow these principles move through winter with confidence, while those that improvise pay more and take on needless risk. Winter is predictable in one respect: it arrives every year, and demand for de-icing material spikes the moment it does. The businesses that prepare for that reality, rather than being surprised by it, are the ones that keep their properties safe, their costs controlled, and their operations running no matter what the season throws at them. A little foresight before the first snowfall pays off through every storm that follows.

Smart Movers Surrey – Your Local and Long Distance Moving Experts in British Columbia When it comes to relocating your home or business, choosing the right moving company can make all the difference. Whether you're moving across town or across the country, you need a team you can trust. That’s where Smart Movers Surrey comes in—a top-rated moving company proudly serving Surrey and the surrounding areas with reliable, affordable, and professional moving solutions. Who We Are Smart Movers Surrey is a team of trained, experienced, and dedicated professionals committed to making your move smooth, safe, and stress-free. With years of experience in the moving industry, we have built a solid reputation as one of the most dependable Surrey movers for both residential and commercial relocations. Our company motto says it all: “Smart Movers – the Smartest Way to Move.” We believe that every move should be handled with precision, care, and professionalism—whether it’s a small apartment move or a large-scale corporate relocation. What We Offer At Smart Movers Surrey, we offer a complete range of moving services tailored to meet your unique needs. Our service offerings include: Local Moving Services If you’re moving within Surrey or the Lower Mainland, our team of local movers is ready to assist. We know the area well and understand the challenges that come with navigating city traffic, building access, and timelines. From packing to loading, transportation, and setup, we handle every detail so you don’t have to. Long Distance Moving Relocating across British Columbia or to another province? We provide secure, efficient long distance moving services designed to give you peace of mind. Our trucks are fully equipped to keep your belongings safe during transport, and we always stick to agreed schedules for timely delivery. Cross Border Moving Smart Movers Surrey is also experienced in cross border moving. Whether you're heading to the United States for work, school, or a fresh start, we make international moves simple and straightforward. We handle the logistics and paperwork so you can focus on the excitement of your next chapter. Piano and Pool Table Moving Large, heavy, and delicate items require special handling—and we’ve got it covered. Our team is trained in piano moving and pool table transportation, using the proper tools and techniques to protect your investment every step of the way. Packing Services and Supplies Need help packing? We offer full and partial packing services, using high-quality materials to ensure your items are safe and organized. From fragile items to bulky furniture, we have the right supplies and skills to pack it all with care. Why Choose Smart Movers Surrey? There’s no shortage of moving companies in Surrey, but here’s why Smart Movers stands out: Licensed and Insured: Your belongings are protected, and your peace of mind is our priority. Trained Professionals: Our movers are experienced, courteous, and committed to delivering top-notch service. Fully Equipped Trucks: We bring everything needed for a safe and efficient move. Affordable Rates: Get premium service without the premium price tag. Flexible Scheduling: We work around your schedule—even weekends and evenings. Local Expertise: As a Surrey-based company, we understand the local landscape and community. Contact Smart Movers Surrey Today If you’ve been searching online for “movers near me” or “Surrey moving companies”, your search ends here. Smart Movers Surrey is ready to help you plan and execute your move from start to finish—with care, transparency, and professionalism. Smart Movers Surrey Tagline: Smart Movers – the Smartest way to move Location: 10289 133 St #109, Surrey, British Columbia, V3T 0B1 Phone: 236-263-3918 Website: https://smartmoverssurrey.ca Email: info@smartmoverssurrey.ca Business Hours: Monday to Sunday, 9:00 a.m. – 9:00 p.m. Payment Options: Cash, Visa, MasterCard Let us take the stress out of moving. Call Smart Movers Surrey today to request a free quote and discover why we’re considered the smartest choice for moving services in Surrey.

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Whon Photography
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Gorgeous master bath with dramatic retro "wave" tile. Peak Photography
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Door #10 FP3190 Flat 3 Panel Interior Door with Farmhouse Sticking Solid Poplar stiles and rails MDF panels Painted White 1 x 4 door casing 1 x 6 baseboard Bravura 336B door knob Call us for a quote on your door project 419-684-9582 Visit https://www.door.cc

Photo: A Darling Felicity Photography © 2015 Houzz
Example of a mid-sized country porcelain tile mudroom design in Seattle with green walls