Top 5 Dallas Remodeling Project Resolutions for 2013

Happy New Year friends & neighbors!

We all come into the New Year with important resolutions for ourselves and our families, for improving our health, our and for enjoying our lives a little more.

Since your home factors into everything from your sanity to the loving times you spend with family, address your home’s needs than now. To help you narrow your focus, these are the projects your neighbors in Dallas are prioritizing in 2013.

1. Update the Kitchen

This project substantially improves your home’s value, your enjoyment of your home, its functionality, and your ability to entertain guests. How you redesign your kitchen is up to you; you may want to expand your cooking or dining area, addpliances. You could incorporate seating in the kitchen or a multi-purpose desk/study all kitchen renovations is an integrated gathering hub for family and guests.

2. Update the Bathroom

Today’s bathrooms are designed to be sanctuaries of relaxation and decompression. Fixtures are gorgeous, and the ambience is luxurious. Showers that massage your body from different angles, mood in sculpture museums, and bathtubs that encourage you to light candles and make it an evening in. You’ll reap more than what you invest with a bathroom model, especially if reducing your stress level is a top priority in 2013.

3. Adding Footage

Adding footage may be a functional necessity or it may be a way to increase your home’s value, or your feeling of space within it. The possibilities include adding an extra room, converting empty to usable square footage, or adding closet space. Call us if you’re wondering about a

4. Updating Windows & Doors and doors can increase your energy bills by as much as replacing them would cost, in just a short period of time. Many of our customers and neighbors are replacing outdated windows and doors now.

5. Garages & Roofs

These projects tend to get delayed for the same reason: they’re both on the exterior aren’t enjoyed as much as with interior projects. But the necessity is just as great. In our neighborhood, many roofs still have not been replaced after this year’s hail storm. Please be aware that roofs that aren’t replaced in time pose threats to the home in terms of water, air, and energy leaks, as well as mold issues. Many of this area’s residents are replacing or repairing garages that don’t accommodate their needs.

Let us help you with your 2013 Resolution

If you would like more information about the remodeling projects you need to accomplish in 2013, give us a call at (214) 823-0033. We’re your neighbors and we’re here to help.

artist in residence: Brian Maupin

The words of Alice, “curiouser and curiouser,” come to mind as one gains up-close access to Brian and Sarah Maupin’s conventional-looking Lake Highlands home. As in Wonderland, things are much more fantastic here than they initially seem. The red pickup truck out front, for example, runs on used vegetable oil rather than gasoline. The living room looks normal — a comfy sofa, bookshelves, two resting charcoal Labradors — but metallic art pieces, a charming lug-nut giraffe for example, hint at something extraordi- nary. Old arcade games including a completely refurbished Space Invaders and Spy Hunter line a room that opens up to the garage, where the magic happens. Here, Brian keeps his welding machine and torch, a gift from Sarah, and his current project, a life-sized man made of salvaged metals. He doesn’t have a name yet, but don’t call him “Robot Man.” “It’s more fun when you don’t look at him as a machine,” Brian says. His feet are heavy, crude, concrete-like and rooted in the ground. His legs look like DNA strands, and a cross-like structure at his heart represents spirituality, Brian says, turning the metal man’s moveable hands upward. It is all about about using everything to the fullest. That applies to objects and people alike, he says. “I just want to bring the most out of everything. Like the beauty in the architecture of old circuit boards,” he says, and produces one of the many clocks he has fashioned from e-waste. An object might reach a point where its usefulness is purely aesthetic, says Brian, who took a welding class after gleaning inspiration years ago from the White Rock Lake Artists’

Studio Tour. Take the computer server that once held the entire AT&T marketing database, which he used to create the impressive Dallas skyline hanging in his front room: “The guys at work joked that when they retired the server, they would give it to me for my art,” says Brian, who works in marketing for AT&T. “When it hit the end of life, they sent it to me and billed me $1. Now you have this scene of technology bursting out of this urban landscape.”

—Christina Hughes Babb

Jeffrey M. Thurston, M.D

David M. Bookout, M.D.

Julie M. Hagood, M.D.

James K. Richards, M.D. (center row)

Jennifer Muller, M.D.

John D. Bertrand, M.D. (front row)

Jane E. Nokleberg, M.D.

Hampton B. Richards, M.D.