Winter 1999 Remodeling Tips   Select an Issue Spring 2002 Winter 2002 Fall 2001 Summer 2001 Spring 2001 Winter 2001 Fall 2000 Summer 2000 Spring 2000 Winter 2000 Fall 1999 Summer 1999 Spring 1999 Winter 1999 Fall 1998 Summer 1998 Spring 1998 Winter 1998 Fall 1997 Summer 1997 Spring 1997 Winter 1997 Coastal Builders Celebrates 10th Anniversary Have You Seen Us in Your Neighborhood? The Ambiance of a Fireplace Architectural Styles: Pre-Revolution Colonial Heritage Our Customers Write... A Question of Cabinets Coastal Builders Celebrates 10th Anniversary February 1999 marks tenth anniversary of Coastal Builders, Inc. You don’t get to be ten years old in the remodeling business without doing a lot of things right. Our commitment to producing top quality projects that meet the needs of our clients has really paid off. Many of our clients have come back to us for additional projects after their first one, some as many as three times! The questionnaires we send to our clients after a project is completed are consistently returned with high marks for top notch designs, high quality of work, low impact on the homeowners during the project, and the ease of working with our Lead Carpenters. Many of our clients have referred us to their friends and family when they were looking for a remodeler. On the back page we have listed some of the neighborhoods we have worked in over the years, most likely yours is in the list. Thanks for making our first ten years a success, and we hope to continue serving the community for many, many more.   To Top Have You Seen Us in Your Neighborhood? If you live in Howard County or western Baltimore County, it’s a pretty good bet that you’ve seen our signs in your neighborhood sometime during the years we’ve been in business. Here are some of the neighborhoods and projects we have completed over the years, do you see any of your neighbors here? The names marked with an asterisk (*) represent those clients who have come back to Coastal Builders for multiple projects. We would like to thank them and all of our many clients for making our first ten years a success. Dunloggin - Blankenship Addition, Foster Addition, Pearce Basement, Hanneman Bathroom, Hauser Bathroom, Grube* Bathrooms, Phelan Addition, Schmitt Custom Home, Hull Kitchen, Whitney Laundry, Dupski Doors, Grey Rock - Hansen Addition, Pumphrey Basement, Freeman Portico, Robinson Bathrooms, Hendrix Portico, Markowski Addition, Klein Bathrooms, Bauder Addition, Robinson Bathrooms Brampton Hills - Krause Addition, Sharpe Addition, Moran* Addition, Basement, Holmes Basement, Fox Addition, Conroy Addition, Farside - Peay* Basement Patuxent Overlook - Taylor Basement, Barnes* Bathrooms, McMahon* Screened porch, Bath, Windows, Kane* Addition, Kitchen Mount Hebron - Valliant Addition, Bruce Addition, Meany Addition, Michalski Cedar Porch Centennial Estates - Reinhard Bathroom The Chase - Bell Bathroom Point of Homewood - Tayman Addition Historic Ellicott City - Ash Front Porch, Greyrock Condominiums Ellicott City - Zeigler* Addition, Klein Addition, Zusi Addition, Witzke Funeral Portico Maple Woods - Kwash* Addition, Home, Peay* Basement Valleymede - Hoover Kitchen, Macheel Kitchen, Shoukas Addition, Karithanom Addition, Nicodemus Bathroom, Hellstrom Addition Font Hill - Case Bathrooms, Morris* Bathrooms, Claus Kitchen, Guillett Addition West Friendship - Rappaport Bathroom, Burchardt Garage, Torres* Addition, Carport, King Addition, Moyes Addition Chestnut Hill Estates - Embrey Addition Catonsville - Smith Addition, Historical Soc.* Kitchen, Addition, Domenici Basement, Lewis Addition, Wheatley Addition, Deboy Porch, Catonsville Methodist Entry, Hollar Bathrooms, Blaylock Custom Home Worthington - Enstrom Addition, Gordon Porch, Kubofcik Addition Elkridge - Saunders Kitchen, Ray Addition, Burns Addition, Williamson Addition, Black Addition, Sneden Addition Old Mill - Stokes Basement Patapsco Park Estates - Regan Addition Columbia - Bunt Addition, Glick Addition, Hall Kitchen, Shekore* Kitchen, Bath, Addition, Harris Bathroom, Phillips* Kitchen, Bathroom, Klinefelter Kitchen Turf Valley Overlook - Boland Basement, Klein Addition, DiGeorge Kitchen Wetherburn - Jolles Kitchen Chapel View - Sites Basement Roland Park - Stunda Bathrooms Pikesville - Himmelrich Addition, Shaw Basement, Imagent Corp. Office Bowie - Animal Clinic of North Bowie Veterinary Clinic Eldersburg - Hurt Addition, Perella Kitchen Woodbridge Valley - Derrenberger Addition, Frank Addition Towson - Taylor Addition Timonium - Veach Addition, Elliott Kitchen Laurel - Richardson Bathroom, Lewis* Addition, Windows Bethgate - Hellstrom Addition Allview Estates - Brocato Bathrooms, Levay Bathrooms, Haralson Bathrooms Glenelg - McNamara Custom Home Relay - Ekey* Bathrooms Arbutus - Tracey* Kitchen, Windows Sykesville - Mellott* Addition, Bathroom, Ahearn Kitchen   To Top The Ambiance of a Fireplace Nothing was more important to a colonial American home than the structure and location of its fireplace. In fact the architecture of our early homes largely derives from this center of home life (see article on page 2). Around a fireplace, whether it was used for cooking or for warmth, every family’s social life revolved. Two and a half centuries later much has changed in regard to fireplaces. We rarely use them any more for cooking, and heat is usually provided for by furnaces or heat pumps. But throughout the country the social nature of fireplaces remains with us. Cookouts, which we all love, aren’t only about the taste of grilled hamburger or steak. They are a social gathering--around a fire. A quiet romantic evening still is one where you can see the flickers of the flame and the glowing of embers and hear the cracking of the wood. Fireplaces today are very different from those colonial ancestors used and can be found anywhere: at the poolside, in the owners’ suite, in the family room, etc. Our fireplaces are now generally much smaller. We no longer need storage and baking areas around the fire, and increased concern for efficiency has led to a smaller firebox where the fire’s energy is better concentrated. As a result, fireplaces now average around 4 feet wide. The styles of colonial homes were strongly influenced by the need to accommodate the chimney. Today, the structure of a house has little to do with the placement of a fireplace and its chimney. The most extreme examples are gas log fireplaces. They can be "vent free," requiring no chimney at all; "direct vent," venting directly out through a side wall; or "natural vent," routing the exhaust up through the roof. And for those who still want wood burning in their fireplaces, the flues and chimneys nowadays are small and safe. Other bells and whistles also make fireplaces beautiful and convenient. Mantels of almost any style and material are available for traditional as well as contemporary decor. Firebox design, circulating fans and glass doors control energy movement. Some gas fireplaces can even be operated by remote control, making life almost too easy! Fireplaces remain an important part of our homes. Their ambiance glows as we gather around them with family and friends.   To Top Architectural Styles: Pre-Revolution Colonial Heritage When the first settlers came to the "New World" and started building homes, they modeled the structures after the homes they had in Europe but adapted them to the North American colonial experience. The earliest homes were very simple, consisting of a single room with a centrally located fireplace. Above the rectangular-framed living area was a steep gabled roof. This area provided room for sleeping in lofts. In the North, this was known as a "saltbox" house. An early variation of the saltbox was the "leanto" house where a larger slope in the roof at the back provided covered space for additional rooms. In the Southern colonies this came to be known as a "catslide" house. As people needed to provide for more interior space the one-and-one-half and two and one-half story "Early American" houses developed as expansions of this basic pattern. A well-known example of this type of house is the "Cape Cod" which developed in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the late 17th and early 18th centuries. It is a two room deep, single story house with a chimney in the center. It is characterized by its squareness and a sweeping, moderately high-pitched roof that comes down to the ceiling height of the first floor. All upstairs windows are in gables. The front entrance is central, flanked by a pair of windows. The earlier homes had a wooden frame structure covered either by clapboard or filled in with stone or brick (i.e. half-timbered). With the establishment of brickyards around 1700, bricks more frequently became a structural element for homes. This made it possible for chimneys to be centered in the gables, and ushered in the "Georgian" style. Two chimneys, one at each end, became common and the houses became more elaborate. The front door stayed in the center, but no longer led to the fireplace. Now it led to a hall which would often contain the staircase and go all the way to the back. On either side of the hall would be the living quarters. A new variation appeared in which chimneys weren’t built into the gables but into longitudinal walls, providing 2 back-to-back fireplaces, one on each side of the house. This provided an ideal situation for a drawing room and dining room combination on one side of the hall, with a sitting room and parlor combination on the other. The kitchen was out back and the bedrooms upstairs. During this period high ridged roofs gave way to low, inconspicuous ones and lavish decoration became standard. Moldings supported by dentils became common under rooflines and in the interiors of rooms. This period was very formal, with every attention being paid to detail and symmetry. In the later Georgian period, styles became even more elegant. Windows became larger. The doorways were framed with sidelights and pillared porticoes. A Palladian window often topped the pedimented door. And to emphasize the effects of grandeur, the homes were often built on high foundations and reached by broad masonry stairways.   To Top Decorative Columns Add Elegance to Interiors Columns, an important architectural feature throughout much of history, are being used more frequently inside the home today. With a touch of elegance, they open up visual space and yet preserve distinct areas within the home. A column normally has three parts: the capital, shaft, and base. The capital is the top section. The shaft is the long slender part of the column. It can be round, fluted, or square. The base is the support at the bottom of the column. Following rules established by the Greeks and Romans during the Classical Period of architecture, columns today usually come in three types: Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian. The Doric is the oldest and simplest of the Greek column forms. It has no base, a rather stout shaft, and a plain capital. The shaft of the Ionic is more delicately proportioned, but its main identifying feature is a spiral, scroll-shaped ornament in the capital called a "volute." The Corinthian is still more delicate in appearance because the shaft is proportionally more slender. The Corinthian capital is more ornate and is decorated with ornamentation representing the leaves of the acanthus plant. Column shafts today come in a wide variety of materials, from natural materials like stone and wood, to metals like aluminum, to man-made materials like structural fiberglass, polyurethane and polyethylene. The bases and capitals are purchased separately. Capitals may be made of plaster, resin, or aluminum. Bases are made from plaster, polyethylene, or polyurethane. The man-made materials are especially well-suited for interior columns and can be finished to give almost any effect imaginable. © 2003 Coastal Builders, Inc.