J.D. Power Ranks Wolf #1!

As one of their preferred trade partners, we at Jenkins Custom Homes want to congratulate Wolf Appliance for taking top honors in the J.D. Power and Associates rankings for Range/Cooktop/Oven!

The press release states that “The Kitchen Appliance Satisfaction Study measures customer satisfaction in three product categories: dishwashers; refrigerators; and cooktops/ranges/ovens.  Customer satisfaction is measured based on performance in six factors: performance and reliability (including how well the appliance functions, noise level and energy efficiency); features (such as the number of settings available and appliance capacity); ease of use; styling and feel; price; and warranty…Among manufacturers of cooktops, ranges, and ovens, Wolf ranks highest with a score of 812, and performs particularly well in five of six factors: ease of use; performance and reliability; styling and feel; features; and warranty.”  Congratulations, Wolf!

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.

Luxury Trends

Copyright Cna110703

There has been plenty of airtime given to the topic of the economy in recent years – and for good reason.  Data indicates that “Workers in the lowest income decile [10%] faced a Great Depression type unemployment rate of nearly 31%” (source: Sum).  But has the recession hit everyone equally?  Not according to Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies.

In fact, unemployment among those in the top 10% income group (individuals earning more than $150,000 per year) was only 3.2% in the fourth quarter of 2009 (source: Sum). This means that “There was no labor market recession for America’s affluent” (source: Sum).  Due to this phenomenon, many high end services and businesses continue to make sales because the wealthy are still actively buying.

For instance, “The more accessible labels [like Coach] have proved vulnerable, while the higher-end and classic brands, like Hermès, are still flourishing (indeed, Hermès reported an 8.5 percent rise in revenue for 2009)…today’s luxury brands must offer lasting value and/or real exclusivity— Hermès doesn’t need to court the masses, who are still pinching pennies. Luxury is making its way back to the high-end consumer.” (source: Miranda)

Top 5 Home Technology Trends

We recently attended the International Builder’s Show in Las Vegas, where we attended lots of seminars.  One of the big topics this year, as in years past, is home technology; however, the twist on this year’s seminars was “affordable technology”.  So many of today’s technologies are affordable and finding them in the plethora of choices is sometimes daunting.  Here are my “Top 5″.

  Convenience. These are the basics, like, when I get up at 3 am to go to the bathroom, the bathroom light comes on so I don’t trip on my shoes.  Convenience may or may not be expensive but can really change your life.

Accessibility. The smart phone has really changed everything in relation to accessibility.  Now, there’s an app for just about everything you can imagine on your home.  Want to watch streaming video of your kids getting home?  There’s an app for that.  Want to turn off the sprinklers because it’s supposed to freeze tonight?  There’s an app for that…  You get the picture.

  Green Technology.  This can mean a lot of things but the most popular ones usually involves some cost savings to the consumer or an ecologically-friendly impact on the environment.  These areas have really evolved recently to include things like tankless hot water heaters, geothermal heating, and solar panels.  These technologies for our homes are very site-specific; some of them are cost-prohibitive in certain areas while other alternatives have a 2- or 3-year cost benefit payout (which is fantastic!).  So, make sure you ask for a comprehensive cost analysis before you begin.

  Anticipation. Much of our new technology is created in anticipation of things to come.  Lately, we have installed a number of whole-house backup generators for our high end clients, for example.  They are anticipating power shortages at some point in the future.  Another example is the 3D technology that is coming, thanks in part to the movie “Avatar”.  At the International Builder’s Show, the speakers informed us that the new 3D technology that we saw on the big screen will some day be in our televisions in our homes.

Convergence.  Convergence in the technology realm refers to multiple technologies coming together to form a single, better solution.  In the home technology world, a great example of this is our ability to tie in the heating and cooling system into the home’s smart panel to allow for sensors in a room that control the room’s temperature when someone walks in the room.  You can imagine the many benefits for this type of feature, especially when you have two people living in a 6,000 square foot home or a couple who only comes to their lake home on the weekend.

There are so many more great new technologies which can be incorporated into a home.  The key is to really analyze how you live in your home and then talk to the experts about what’s out there.  If you are building a new home, do your research and be sure to discuss with your Builder the convenience, accessibility, green technology, anticipation, and convergence technologies which best fit your lifestyle.

If you like this post and think someone else might enjoy it, please share it with our “Share / Save” link below.

About the Author:  Bethany Jenkins is Vice President of Jenkins Custom Homes in Austin, Texas.  To read more about Bethany check out her bio here.