Wine Room Considerations

Bethany Jenkins, Vice-President of Jenkins Custom Homes, in her article on wine rooms writes, “Whether you are a wine enthusiast or a novice, a custom-built wine room is the hot trend in custom home design, especially where luxury reigns. A good wine cellar creates an opportunity for great wine for a lifetime. It can also add value for purposes of resale of the home…All fine wine collections require the same basic care: climate, humidity, and light control systems to protect and preserve delicate vintages. Vapor-tight doors and easy access are also top priorities. Proper storage makes financial sense and allows wines to be purchased when they are released, at the time they are most available and lower in price.”

So when planning your wine room, keep these three elements in mind: light, humidity and temperature of the room.

Light

This one is simple: “UV light can break down the protiens [sic] in the wine.  It’s best to store wine in the dark” (source: newcellars.com).  The bottom line is to keep your wine out of direct light.  A flush-mounted fixture with a frosted cover can easily achieve this, but other options include rope lighting that is hidden up in the molding or even a smaller chandelier with low wattage bulbs.

Humidity

Storing wines in a highly humid environment is important because it keeps the cork from shrinking and allowing for the degradation of the wine.  However, high humidity also increases the possibility of water vapor damage.  According to AskTheBuilder.com’s Tim Carter, “The wine rooms love relative humidity levels of 55 – 75% relative humidity. That is frighteningly high humidity. If that water vapor escapes from the wine room somehow, it can condense on cooler surfaces in a heartbeat.”

Humidity needs to be high in the room, but also contained in the space.  Installing a good vapor barrier is the key.  This is the point at which a good builder becomes critical.  A builder who is both knowledgeable about your climate and the problems that such high humidity can cause to the rest of your house, will prove invaluable.

Temperature

According to Carter, “the temperature of the space is supposed to be 55-58F.”  Jenkins writes that, “The bigger the cellar, the harder it is to control temperature and humidity”.  However, it is a critical component.  The temperature of the room will determine how well your best wines age.  The site, newcellars.com, says that “Wine is constantly growing, never static.  The best wines are aged slowly and stored properly in a cool dark damp area…Extreme fluctuations in temperature can cause premature aging or deposits.”  There are many systems available to help maintain this constant temperature, some of which have an alarm that sounds if the temperature exceeds the range specified.  Which system works best for your space is a decision best made with the help of an experienced builder.

Jenkins writes that “Wine rooms can be designed to fit most budgets and can be built to a variety of sizes and styles. If you are designing a new home or updating an existing one, a wine room can add value and style for the simplest of homes to the very elite. Approximately 75% of the homes built by Texas’ Custom Builder of the Year, Jenkins Custom Homes, contain wine rooms.”

Once you know these basics and have a knowledgeable builder, then all that’s left to decide is how far you are willing to go in your wine room design.

“The Bathroom Is The New Den”

Or so claims Christopher Solomon of MSN Real Estate. “More and more, people are going to the bathroom to relax and even luxuriate after a day in the rush-rush world, say home remodelers and designers. Homeowners are upgrading the rooms — outfitting them with everything from soaking tubs to heated floors — to make themselves comfortable. But peace and quiet aren’t the only motivating factors. An upgraded bathroom helps sell a home and can be a good investment.”

Experts agree. “One way to ‘get away,’ and at the same time enhance a home’s value is to turn the bathroom into an in-home retreat. In fact, making the bathroom a place of retreat is one of today’s most popular home remodeling projects, according to Homestore.com, as homeowners look for relief from hectic lifestyles and choose to spend more time at home.” This makes sense to anyone who reads the news. “As the country faces tough times, homeowners are focusing their spending on the home to make it a secure, comfortable environment according to a Unity Marketing study” (source: ABathroomGuide.com). “‘Homeowners want a beautiful, relaxing space they can call their own,’ says Gary Uhl, director of industrial design for American Standard, the world’s leading plumbing products manufacturer and distributor. ‘To make the bathroom a personal retreat, homeowners are expanding the size of bathrooms and adding whirlpools and more decorative fixtures.’”

Whether you are designing your dream home or remodeling your bath, here are some things to keep in mind.

Add More Color

“‘The bathroom is becoming more of a centerpiece in the home with design trends ranging from the bold and colorful to the simple and elegant,’ says Jim Krengel, one of the first certified bathroom designers…’Adding a little color to a bathroom is as easy as a hand-painted sink or a new paint color to the walls…The latest color trends are running the gamut. Natural colors are the most versatile, but designers are incorporating some bolder colors such as red and blue as well as deep forest and emerald green and terra cotta and rust. These colors are used in everything from the paint to the sink to decorative tiles’” (source: ABathroomGuide.com). Designer Allison Bergamo agrees: “I’d like to see people embrace more color in their living spaces. It’s so easy and relatively inexpensive to try a new paint color or bring in pillows, area rugs, artwork, etc.”

The Unique Sink (And Tub. And Shower.)

In a recent episode of This Old House, Plumbing and heating expert Richard Trethewey and host Kevin O’Connor found that innovation is the name of the game in bathroom trends, and that is especially true where the fixtures are concerned. On tap (pun intended) for 2010 include “vessel sinks with water-spouting faucet inside of wall…Ceiling-mounted faucet provides unique way to fill bathtub…and Bath lavs come in wide variety including, traditional farmhouse sinks to contemporary clear-glass vessel sinks.”

Gary Uhl agrees. “Another hot trend in fixtures is above-counter sinks that serve as a sink as well as displayed art.” From floating sinks to vessel sinks, to every kind of faucet imaginable, the sink has become more of a centerpiece to the bathroom than just a place to wash hands.

Take, for example, the showerhead faucet. After a recent trip to Sushi Wabi in Chicago, The Bathonista reported that “After using it, I can’t say a showerhead is any more functional than a normal sink faucet, but if you’re going for style points, or “I have to have something totally different than all of my friends” points, this is something to consider.”

Heat It Up

“‘The big thing in bathrooms is steam,’ says [Richard Landon, of Richard Landon Design in Bellevue, Wash.] ‘People are discovering how wonderful it is to come home at the end of the day and de-stress.’” In fact, according to This Old House, “An integrated, multipurpose shower stall contains showerhead, handheld sprayer, adjustable body sprays, aroma-therapy system and steam heads.”

Beyond the sauna/shower, direct-vent fireplaces are all the rage in larger bathrooms, providing not just ambiance but added warmth (source: This Old House).

And finally, radiant heating under the floor is now “…creeping its way towards becoming a necessity” according to Erin Loechner. “Although radiant heating is a high cost up front (expect to pay between $15 and $20 per square foot), the benefit of floor heating extends beyond warm toes to economic benefits. Once floor tiles heat up, they continue emitting heat long after the radiant elements have shut off.” According to Christopher Solomon, “Companies such as Nuheat sell a mesh that is placed under the tiles when they’re set, and then is connected to a thermostat on the wall. ‘It’s not thousands of dollars. A bathroom could be just hundreds,’ (depending on the market) says [Sandy Hayes, a kitchen and bath designer in Portland, Ore.].

How Safe Is Your Safe?, Part Two

In Part One of “How Safe Is Your Safe?” we looked at the types of burglary safes available and where to put them in your home. Next, we will consider the most common ways of breaking into your safe.

Safe Manipulation Versus Lock Manipulation

The easiest way for a thief to gain the contents of your safe is to steal the whole safe and open it at his leisure.  That is why, as we mentioned in the previous article, the ‘safest safes’ are those that are installed in the walls of your home.  So assuming the thief is going to have to open the safe on the premises, his biggest obstacle is time.

Keeping in that in mind, there are two basic types of safe cracking: safe manipulation and lock manipulation. Safe manipulation includes drilling, torching, exploding – basically any method of getting into your safe that doesn’t involve having to figure out the combination. This is what Valdes considers the “low road”. The “high road”, then, is lock manipulation. “Lock manipulation represents safecracking at its most pure form.”

Lock Manipulation

While safe cracking does require listening carefully while turning the dial on a safe, that is where TV/movies and reality part ways.  Beyond just listening, the thief must also graph results, repeating the process over and over, until they have narrowed down to the most probable numbers in the combination. And since there is no way to determine what order the numbers are in, they then must begin working through all the possible combinations of those numbers. The more numbers in the combination, the more possibilities.

The bottom line is that cracking the code on a safe is both labor and time intensive, which is why, “Lock manipulation is used more by locksmiths than safecrackers because of the skill and time needed to pull it off“ (source: Valdes).  That leaves safe manipulation.

Safe Manipulation

“The most common method safecrackers use to manipulate the safe itself is drilling” (source: Valdes). As a counter measure, many safe manufacturers have installed cobalt plates, which prevent a common drill bit from ever penetrating the lock.  It may be possible to drill through using a diamond or titanium bit, but the thief will go through several drills as “as the bits will outlast the motors” and will take a whole lot of time (source: Valdes).

Another option for the thief is to drill above the cobalt plate in an attempt to see the locking mechanism using a fiber-optic camera called a borescope. However, the counter measure to this is a relocker that “is tripped when the safecracker’s drill bit breaks a sheet of glass or plastic while drilling into the lock” (source: Valdes) Once the relocker is tripped, only a locksmith or safe technician can open the safe.

Other than drilling, the thief can also attempt to cut a hole in the side of your safe – assuming he can remove it from the wall – using oxy-acetylene torches, plasma cutters and thermic lances. Or he can simply attempt to explode it on the premises using nitroglycerin. Of course, these methods generate noise, smoke and require skills that not all thieves have.

So, are you feeling better about your safe?  Think again.

What Can You Do To Protect Your Valuables?

No matter what kind of safe you purchase, all safes “…[contain] a fundamental weakness: Every safe must be accessible to a locksmith or other authority in the event of a malfunction or lock-out. This weakness forms the basis of safecracking.” (source: Valdes).

So how do most thieves break into a safe?  The answer may surprise you.

Change The Try-Out Combination

“All safes are shipped from the manufacturer with try-out combinations. Ideally a safe owner resets the try-out combination after purchasing the safe. This doesn’t happen as often as you would think. Many safe owners simply buy the safe and use the try-out combination; making their safe easy prey for safecrackers. The try-out combinations for most safes are an industry standard and widely known by both locksmiths and safecrackers” (source: Valdes).  So change the combination after your safe is installed!

Keep The Code a Secret

“Surprisingly, many people write the combination down near the safe, if not on the safe itself.” (source: Valdes)  Obviously, the smart thief will begin his attempt to crack open your safe by looking around for the combination.  So the obvious solution is keep the combination in a secure location, away from the safe itself!

Despite what you may have seen in the movies, safe-cracking is a rare form of burglary.  Just having one does not prevent a thief from attempting to steal its contents, but armed with a little knowledge, you can keep your valuables safe inside your safe.

How Safe Is Your Safe?

When considering buying or installing a new safe, there are many factors that come into play.  However, the first question you must answer is what you intend to protect in your safe.

Examine The Contents

Is the purpose of your safe to hide a key outside in case you lock yourself out of the house? Are you hoping to protect the antique rifle your grandfather handed down to you? Or do you have a copy of your will or other important papers that you want to protect in case of a house fire? These are the kinds of questions that will help you begin to narrow down what kind of safe you need.

While safe manufacturers claim to sell those that meet the requirements of both fire and burglary, generally speaking you have to first assess which is your greater need.  “Fire safes are reinforced with fire retardant materials but have little in the way of actual protection against unwanted entry. The typical burglary safe is built to withstand a considerable attack. But due to their reinforced steel frames and iron cladding, the burglary safe tends to act like an oven; effectively cooking the contents when exposed to heat or flame” (source: Valdes).  For the purposes of this article, we will focus on the burglary safe; however within the category of burglary safe, there are even further break-downs – gun safes, diversion safes (i.e., made to look like a pop can), luxury safes, and even laptop safes.

How Valuable Are Your Valuables?

After determining what you desire to protect, the next step is to decide on a general budget. Since safes range in price from less than $10 for the stone diversion safe, to $49,000 for the SLS Gem Anti-lance TXTL60 (the bidding starts at $49,000), you have to know what you can afford. While not many of us will have a need for the $49,000 safe – which, by the way, is one of the rarest safes in existence since only 4 were ever manufactured – not many of us will have a need to protect the “precious jewels of Great Britain royalty,” (which is why the SLS Gem Anti-lance TXTL60 was created), either.  Nevertheless, it helps to determine how much to spend on the safe once you have a clear picture of how valuable the contents are that will be housed inside.

Where Will You Put Your Safe?

If you are purchasing a stand-alone or diversion safe, then deciding where to put it is really a matter of convenience and space. But consider before you buy that the most popular method of safe-cracking is to “…simply steal the entire safe and move it to a location where the safe-cracker has the time and tools to take the safe apart and remove its contents” (source: Valdes).  The obvious benefit of a built-in safe is that it cannot be removed, but the difficulty -- especially when retrofitting into an existing home -- is deciding where to put it.

There are two basic locations for the built-in safe: floor or wall.  While the floor safe cannot be hauled off by a thief, it only takes one leak -- or even an overflow from your bathtub -- for water to seep into the safe and ruin any paperwork stored there.  Also, it is very difficult to retrofit a floor safe for obvious reasons, which leads us to the better option -- the wall safe.

A wall safe is “actually built into your wall and…can easily be concealed by a wall painting, a bookshelf or by a built in sliding panel” (source: Wagner).

This wall safe features a built-in picture frame with remote control access. To operate the safe, simply enter your access code (4-10 digits) on the remote control to deactivate the lock and then slide the door/picture frame to the right or left.  The remote control uses RF technology. The remote control is designed to work at a distance of up to 45 feet and does not require line of slight to work. The remote control is powered by rechargeable batteries. Two (2) mechanical backup keys are provided for emergency access in case of battery failure.   This wall safe has been specifically designed to be mounted into a standard residential wall with at least 2x4 construction and wall studs of at least sixteen (16) inches on center apart.An instructional installation DVD is included making installation a breeze (source: Nationwide Safes).

There are many types of wall safes, and this is just one example. However, the benefits are easy to see – it can be added to your home before or after construction, easily accessed, and well-hidden from thieves. And the price? This particular safe retails for $489.

Of course, if you really want to conceal your wall safe, you can have it installed inside your hidden room.  Remember the picture that was at the top of this post?  Were you able to locate the safe in that room?  It’s actually in the hidden room behind the rotating cabinet.

In part 2 of “How Safe Is Your Safe?” we will discuss different types of locking mechanisms, as well as common mistakes that make your safe a target for thieves.

A Palace For Pooch

According to the ASPCA, more than half of all households in the United States have a pet.  And yet, so often we design our a new homes without a thought about our four legged (or feathered) friends.  From the floor plan to the flooring, there are so many ways to accommodate our pets when designing our new home.  Prior to breaking ground, think through some of the following questions:

• Where will your pet sleep? Will she sleep with you or will she need her own space?
• Where will he eat? Where will you store his food?
• Will she go outside, and if so, does she like to roll around and track dirt in the house?
• Will your home need to accommodate a bird cage, or an aquarium, or a pet door?

The lifestyle of your pet and how they live with you is just as important to the design of your new home as is any other member of your family. You can modify your cabinetry to create specialized sliding storage bins for food or even drawers for food and water bowls that are hidden under the toe kick . You can create a pet shower, or a special room with a doggy door and pet run. You may want to put in hardwood flooring instead of carpet, or even design your electrical outlets so there are not a lot of exposed cords in the home – especially if your pet is of the pocket variety (rabbits and guinea pigs love to gnaw).

The Jenkins Custom Home Lifestyle Analysis™ is designed with these issues in mind. And the results are as individual as the people whose homes we build.  For instance, in one home we designed and built, we included a room under the stairs with the puppy’s name painted above the door (similar to the one in the photo). It was a cute way to show off the dog to family and friends, while providing the family pet with his own space.  In another example, we supplied the homeowner with a special niche – complete with a window – for her cat.  Whatever your pet’s needs, the bottom line is that no one knows them as well as you, and that makes you the expert in designing your pet’s “palace”!

(Picture courtesy of http://www.bhg.com/home-improvement/storage/around-the-house/make-a-pet-friendly-home/)

(For more information on this topic, please consider the following articles: http://www.homecheck.com/Reference/Aug_05/05Vol1Art5/index.htm; http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/article/0,,20296529,00.html) (Source for statistics: http://www.aspca.org/about-us/faq/pet-statistics.html)

International Builder’s Show

This year at the International Builder’s Show, we took our entire team.  It was so fun to attend seminars, walk the booths, and see the sights of Las Vegas together!  We truly enjoy being together and have such admiration and respect for each other.  I know we all feel enthusiastic about what we learned and are excited to bring it back and apply it.

One of the more interesting booths this year was the Kohler booth, not because of the plumbing fixtures, although they were great as always.  However, the real attraction for me this year was “Ed”, the guy from Extreme Home Makeovers…well, not him personally…rather, what he was showing.  It was a backup whole-home generator.  The best part about this generator is that they have partnered up with the company that manufactures the electrical panel to create a generator-ready electrical panel for very little additional cost.  What this means for you and me is that we can build our custom home with this panel and then decide later (if and when electrical shortages occur) to add the generator.  Adding a generator used to be an extremely costly proposition.  This makes it possible to prepare for it but not invest in it until it’s really needed or desired.

Stay tuned for more posts to come on the International Builder’s Show.  We learned so much this year that I will have to break it down into smaller posts.

About the Author:  Bethany Jenkins is Vice President of Jenkins Custom Homes and married to the owner, Shan Jenkins.  To read more about Bethany, check out her bio page here.