Mark Foreman asked:


Source4me is a newly established National web & telephone based builders merchant, dedicated experts in the sourcing and supply of specialist and hard to locate building materials.

As well as providing an urgent requirement service throughout the UK.

Source4me are able to source and supply building and construction materials to builders, developers, home owners, self build, contractors, surveyors, local authorities and other builders merchants.
With their new website located at http://www.source4me.co.uk it contains information on how to make an enquiry, examples, contact information and an online enquiry form.

To the best of their knowledge Source4me are the 1st builders merchants to offer such an extensive service.

Source4me makes no charge for submitting an enquiry and obtaining a quotation, via the online form, email or telephone 0845 803 7769.

Types of materials sourced, may vary from a timber profile or brick which is not in manufacture, to specialist foams.

It may be that you are unable to obtain your building materials requirements from your usual suppliers quickly enough for your on-site requirements.



HOWARD

eling Contractors asked:


Los Angeles Kitchen & Bath  is an owner operated business with over 9 years of experience specialize in bathroom and kitchen home remodeling.
LAKB is serving LA county, ORANGE county, VENTURA county and SAN DIEGO county.

Los Angeles Kitchen & Bath is a licensed, bonded and insured company. We provides most everything you need to remodel your home, including;

Bathroom remodeling: The bathroom is both personal and public most useful room in your home. It can be one of the most enjoyable and spoiling rooms in your home. With our 3D design program, LAKB will illustrate your desired bathroom. Using a variety of materials like: tile, granite, travertine, marble, showers, Jacuzzi, tubs and more, help us upgrade the look and the use of your bathroom. In LAKB we learned to work according to your budget and help you remodel your bathroom or redesign a complete bathroom. 

Kitchen remodeling: Kitchen is usually the heart and the most focal point of your home. LAKB Remodeling found a way to make your dreams come true with a 3D design computerized program that illustrate you visually the way your kitchen will be looking like. We do: new cabinets, refacing, pre-fab and custom made cabinets. We use variety of colors and materials. LAKB will work and find ways to achieve the kitchen of your dreams with your affordable budget.                                                                           

products, Home Addition and New Construction, from several hundred brand-name manufacturers in the U.S. LAKB also designs Kitchens, Offices, Closet organizers and much more. LAKB offers a huge selection of various tiles, flooring, fixtures, countertops and cabinetry, all to be customized to your specifications.

With number one source of business being referrals from happy clients, we strive to create a beautiful environment for your day-to-day life, but also enjoy developing a lasting relationship with you the customer that often results in repeat business.

We are committed to providing the highest quality of construction services in an atmosphere of mutual trust and respect.  Our capabilities, talents, and experience will demonstrate how we not only excel at construction; but at how we establish this relationship of trust that can be counted and relied upon for every project we perform for you.

Come enjoy a remodeling experience that promises to be pleasant from beginning to end!

Call Us Now And Get A FREE Estimate! 8002397439

You Can Also Visit Our Web Site: http://www.losangeleskb.com



CARMEN

Steve A. Parker asked:


Building a long-standing relationship with your commercial painting company can pay off big time. Here are five important tips to keep your relationship open, honest and good for you and good for your business.

Step 1: Share Your Priorities

Share your priorities with your commercial painting company contractor. Communication is essential to building long lasting business relationships. Your contractor can’t read your mind. You need to lay out your priorities, objectives and expectations as precisely as you can - as early as you can in the painting process. Don’t worry if things come up - just make sure to communicate why and how they need to be changed or fixed and how that should impact the painting contractor’s process.

Step 2: Negotiate Terms and Listen

A commercial painting company contractor can be a great planning resource. A painting contractor may be able suggest an otherwise overlooked solution to a difficult commercial painting project. Treat your contractor as an interested partner by soliciting opinions, listening to his or her recommendations, and adjusting your expectations and budget (if possible) to accommodate needs.

Step 3: Make a Written Contract

Establish a written detailed contract with the commercial painting company before the contractor preps a single surface or spray paints a single girder. Contracts help to clearly define the business relationship and - in a sense - liberate it. If you and your contractor are not clear on the terms of your mutual arrangement, it’s easy for frustrations and bad feelings to spoil a working relationship.

Step 4: Touch Base Often

Schedule regular meetings to discuss progress. By putting a meeting on the calendar, you and your contractor commit to maintaining an ongoing dialog. Ongoing communications as a project develops is absolutely essential to maintaining a good working relationship. These meetings do not need to take very long, nor do they need to be face to face. Figure on fifteen minutes a week for a routine progress meeting. Follow-up your meeting with an email to the contractor to clarify any significant issues.

Step 5: Trust Experience

Your commercial painting company contractor should know his or her business. Once you have found a painting company with the experience that your facility needs, stand back and let them take care of your projects. Trust your contractor’s experience.

Looking Ahead

Like a personal relationship, a business relationship evolves over time. Periodically review your relationships with contracting firms and outsourcing organizations and discover if there are areas that need touching up and improvement.



BRAIN

Carolyn Clayton asked:


The term building contractor refers to a group that draws up a contract with another organisation or individual for the construction or renovation of a building/road/structure. If you are having any construction work done on your property or you are hoping to have some construction work done on your property then you should contact a building contractor team.

During the construction or renovation of a property a building contractor team will be responsible for the methods of construction and the execution of a project, both of which are conducted in accordance with the proposed plans that are set out by the person who has hired the building contractor team.

If you need any repair, maintenance or construction work to be carried out on your property it is advised that you hire the help of a professional building contractor team as they will be able undertake all of the work to the highest standard and you will be left with the peace of mind that all of the work that has been carried out has been done so to the best of ability. A building contractor team will also engage with clients every step of the way throughout the building contractor work that will be conducted, they will keep you informed from the moment you inform them of the idea that you have for your property, through to the planning, maintenance and management of the project. Nothing will be done that hasn’t been proposed to you first.

If you do hire a building contractor team to carry out your building work the building contractor team will supply all of the material, labor and equipment that is needed, which includes engineering vehicles and tools as well as the services that are necessary for the construction of the project. Also in many cases, especially when the building contractor job is of a large scale a building contractor team will hire the help of a sub-contractor. The sub-contractor will then do part of the work; an example of this is if a building contractor team needed the specialist help of an electrician they would sub-contract the electrician into the construction job.

An example of what sort of work is involved in the role of a building contractor team includes the following:

? Look through and interpret a client’s plans and arrange the drawings of such plans to meet certain building regulations.

? Submit what are known as tenders, which are offers to do jobs at a stated price as well as submitting quotes or prices for projects to clients.

? They arrange a submission of plans to local authorities for approval and arrange inspections of building work.

? If sub-contractors are involved a building contractor team will have to organize subcontractors to carry out all the stages of building work as well as negotiating their rates of pay.

? They will have to calculate the quantity of material that is required for building projects and then order these from the building suppliers.

? Coordinate the activities of office staff involved in the preparation and payment of accounts

? Undertake some of the building work personally.



LONNIE

Jonathan Zemeckis asked:


When you decide to remodel your kitchen, you are taking on a tremendous task that could easily have disastrous results. Before you pickup that hammer and start demolishing the old cabinets and counter tops, you really need to sit down and figure out exactly what you want from your new kitchen. The kitchen is too important of a room for you to just “throw together”. Thought and careful planning must be utilized prior to starting the remodel. This article will discuss a few things you should take into consideration before beginning any type of kitchen remodel.

Do you have a digital camera? If you don’t have one already, then you need to go buy one! You are going to need it. Before you start designing the new layout of your kitchen, you need to visit home remodel stores such as Home Depot, Ikea, or any similar type of store. The bigger the store, the better. These types of stores have showrooms on display. These showrooms allow you to see the many ways a person can design and build a kitchen. When you see something you like, take a snapshot with your camera! I would suggest you visit at least three of these types of stores and get a thorough look at their showroom floor. With your printed photographs, you can then develop a general idea of how you want your new kitchen to look.

Are you going to hire a contractor or do the work yourself? If you choose to hire a contractor, get at least four different estimates from local companies. When I say “local contractors”, I mean it: get bids from builders who are within a 10 to 15 minute drive from your home. And while you are considering bids, remember that the cheapest bid is not always the best. Analyze each estimate and thoroughly breakdown their pricing. Sometimes a more expensive estimate is actually cheaper because it includes items the other contractors forgot to mention. The more thorough the bid the contractor gives you; the less likely there will be surprise bills during the remodel process.

If you are not going to hire a contractor and you are going to supervise the project yourself, I recommend you hire a contractor as a consultant and pay them an hourly rate to sit down with you and discuss the potential problems that may arise. Use their knowledge to help you build your project. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. As long as you are paying the contractor for their time, they will be open and honest with you about the entire construction process and the potential problems that can occur. Their consultant fees are easily worth the price.

How many people in your household use the kitchen? Are you the only cook? Or does your spouse also like to cook? Do you entertain often and throw big parties with lots of guests? Or do you prefer quiet, intimate meals with your loved one? These types of questions must be answered when you are designing your new kitchen. After all, the kitchen should reflect what you prefer most.

Another consultant I recommend you hire is an interior designer. You can either hire them to completely design your kitchen or you can choose to pay them as a consultant. Much like the building contractor, an interior designer is an expert in their field and can offer you invaluable advice on basic design and color schemes that will make your new kitchen perfect for your taste.

The above suggestions can make a dramatic difference on the outcome of your new kitchen. And if you choose to do the work yourself, I strongly recommend you hire a builder along with an interior designer as consultants because they can really make your entire remodel much easier. Good luck with your remodel!



NOAH

Russell Neal asked:


Cove lighting in buildings is an ideal way to highlight changes in ceiling elevation or variances in the adjoining space between the upper portion of the wall and the ceiling. Depending on the amount of natural light in the building, cove lights can be used as either the primary lighting source in the room, or a luxurious and ambient source of accent lighting. Many contractors, when building a home, initially install rope lights or fluorescent fixtures. Both of these cove lights are highly energy efficient, with rope lights also offering the building contractor a lower purchase cost. However, there are some drawbacks to both light sources. Cove rope lights operate in a series, so if one bulb fails, the entire string of lights will need to be replaced. This will pose hassle to the new homeowner, who will have to find a lighting designer or electrical contractor to replace the string. Fluorescents have a much longer lamp life in comparison, and they can offer quality lighting at a fixed level. It is not possible to dim them, however, making them incompatible with lighting controls and dimmers.

In buildings and homes where users want direct control over a cove lighting source that will save power and provide a long-term, low maintenance source of general or ambient lighting, linear cove strip lights are a much better choice for builders, architects, and electrical contractors to install. One of the primary reasons they are such an excellent choice is their low-profile design. Strip lights such as the Phantom CM series are extremely thin and can fit into any soffit, cove, or valance in an office or home. These fixtures are designed to conceal their visible presence in cove lighting applications and feature a remarkable adaptability to any commercial or residential environment. They can be fitted to any radius desired and are custom cut to the exact specifications of the contractor. This ensures the most secure and seamless fit possible, and it helps create an apparently sourceless light.

With energy costs rising, it is also important to point out the power saving benefits that linear cove lighting offers to any building or residence that is conscious of electrical costs. Low voltage lighting systems, especially strip lighting are an ideal solution to high price points that people have to pay for the luxurious qualities of xenon lighting. An added benefit that low voltage strips offer is the extended lamp life they create. Xenon bulbs will last up to 8,000 hours on a CM series fixture…a savings in replacement costs that you can pass on to your client in addition to the energy efficiency of the product’s basic design. Incandescent lamp life can be extended as well on a low voltage festoon lights fitted with a dimmer control. Provided that natural lighting levels are relatively low in the room, the lights can be powered up to full and provide a primary light source over a foyer or a hallway. When other lighting is in use, they can be turned down to provide ambient, supplemental lighting.

This type of controllable, low voltage cove lighting is ideal for office buildings and homes that feature faux painted ceilings or detailed block paneled ceilings. For warm ceiling colors, we recommend using incandescent lamps, and for cooler colors or very dark colors of wood, xenon low voltage lamps. Both sources will provide an excellent source of controlled lighting that the end user can adjust at will.

If you are located in California, or another locale that discourages the installation of incandescent fixtures due to pending laws, LED linear lighting strips represent an alternative to consider now. LED lamps are available for most linear strip fixtures, including CM series cove lights. These unique, patented festoons offer the commercial builder and electrical lighting designer a “green solution” to pass onto clients interested in lowering operating costs and contributing to a more sustainable future. Phantom’s unique lamping technology allows white or colored LEDs to produce lighting levels equivalent to that of incandescent and nearly approximate in lumens output to xenon. It might be best to propose to your clients the advantages of investing in LED lamps now rather than later.

If you have been contracted by the owner of a home or building to replace existing linear cove lights with a better or more energy efficient solution, you can save your client a great deal of money by simply replacing the lamps in their existing fixtures. Provided these fixtures are currently using festoon style lamps, you can order LED festoons that can be retrofitted to the existing cove lighting strips in the building. This is an excellent way to win bids with companies worried about the costs of upgrades in the midst of the recession.

Boardrooms, hallways, restaurants, clubs, and meeting rooms are some of the many areas where commercial building cove lighting may be used with success.



MYRON

Meredith Merchan asked:


My husband and I have an acre and a half behind our home and really wanted to do something special on part of it. We also just recently decided to renew our wedding vows and thought what better place to do it, than our very own home. Our dilemma began here because we did not have any ideas about what exactly we wanted. So over dinner one night we decided to talk about what we both envisioned for our wedding day, and what our budget would look like. Since we had been saving for this big event we were pleased with the amount we thought we could spend. So the next step was to look through some magazines, and watch a few remodeling shows on television for ideas.

It took us about a week and a half to get our ideas on paper and map out what we thought would function affectively for our family and still look appealing for future gatherings and events. We decided on a nice decorative gazebo with a beautifully lit pathway to its entrance. We also thought that we would put in decking section off to the side to provide for a dance floor, or future bar-be-que events at our home. The landscaping and gardens we decided we could handle ourselves with some hard work and planning, but the construction projects we knew better than to think we could tackle it. So we decided to look for a local general contractor that could meet our budget, and who shared our vision.

We wanted to be sure that we found the right contractor for the job, so we asked around to other people who had used him. We were glad we did, because we were able to even visit some sites where he had personally constructed other yard structures and other gazebos. This helped in the process to put our minds at ease using this particular contractor and his company.

We were also able to get a good idea of the material costs by calling around to local retail stores and asking a few questions. Then we spoke with this contractor and compared his quote with theirs. So far he seemed to be giving a fair price quote. One thing we really liked about this particular contractor was that he provided us a written quote and a list of the local retail stores that he tends to use or had used in the past. Not only was this helpful to compare costs, but also gave us a chance to ask others their opinion of this contractor.

Another aspect we appreciated about this contractor was that he provided a copy of his license and expiration dates. Over all, we were so pleased with this contractor because he provided a written contract that was easy to read, provided his name, address, phone number, license number, project description in detail, starting and completion dates, materials list, and a statement that said he was responsible for permits and inspections. He also provided us a warranty of workmanship and his guarantee. At the end of the project the contractor also provided a team that came out and cleaned-up all the mess and swept up any extra debris.

In the end, the total price was very accurate and the payment schedule ran smoothly. We were more than pleased with the working conditions during the building of the project and they always kept the site safe and as clean as possible. What more could a family ask for? Everything was completed on schedule and the wedding was on time too! Our guests had a wonderful time and they were so impressed with the gazebo and deck that many of our friends and family are considering using the same contractor to do some work in their yards too



HERSHEL

Carolyn Clayton asked:


There are many different types of construction buildings such as residential, commercial or industrial. Industrial buildings are mainly used for manufacture & warehousing, offices, showrooms, sport, retailing, agricultural and horticultural buildings, recreation & leisure, swimming pool enclosures as well as many other aspects. If your business is in need of extra space; whether it is for storage or to conduct aspects of business, an industrial building, such as a warehouse may be the answer that your business is looking for.

Industrial buildings, such as the ones named above are available from many different building contractor teams and they are often available as both a permanent or temporary business solution. You may need the use of an industrial building as a way of housing certain equipment and supplies as well as providing you with a space that can be dedicated for you to undertake aspects of business. Depending on what you need the industrial building for depends on what type of building you have constructed. If you need the extra space as a place where people can do business then a more permanent structure may be in order. Also if you are planning on using your industrial building as an added work space then it is important that you ensure the building is insulated and that your employees are protected.

Many of the industrial buildings that are open to you to use for your business provide you with a comfortable working environment and in many cases reduce energy through the quality and reliability which can be achieved with high performance insulation solutions. Also by choosing a reliable building contractor team to install your industrial building you will be getting a workspace which creates a clean environment for all of your production, storage, material handling and infrastructure needs.

Many building contractor teams will design your industrial buildings using cladding and lining and will incorporate windows and doors that in some cases are double glazed as well as being tough when it comes to security. You will be able to decide what features are and aren’t included on your industrial building, meaning from the start you will know exactly what you are buying.

When you are deciding on including an industrial building into your workplace you need to ensure that the execution of the project is successful. One way of making sure that this happens is by conducting effective planning as this is essential to ensure that you get what you want from your industrial building. During your planning for your industrial building you should consider aspects such as the environmental impact of the job, the success of the scheduling, budgeting and site safety as well as the availability of materials, logistics and the inconvenience to the public caused by construction delays, preparing tender documents, etc.

If you are hoping to gain the extra help from the use of an industrial building then it is highly important that you gain the help of a professional building contractor team to construct your industrial building.



PHILLIP

BoardingJD asked:


My home was built in 1938 and three of the stairs leading up into the (now finished) attic have cracks and are bending underfoot. I’ve done tons of work on this house but woodwork is new for me, so I’m wondering what I should use to replace them. I had Lowes cut me two steps and they cut pine boards. They are the proper thickness, but is there any reason that I should use a different type of wood? I know Pine is soft and I don’t know if thats something to worry about when dealing with a weight-bearing project like stairs. I’d appreciate any advice from carpenters or contractors. Thanks!
Some added details - the stairs have risers, and the treads are 3/4 in. thick. I believe that the original treads are oak. These steps are used daily, as my office and “game room” are upstairs. And wow, you guys are incredibly helpful. I have about a thousand other questions to post on here now.

GARTH