OUR BLOG
OUR BLOG
Check out what’s happening with Myers Constructs as well as the latest news and trends in home renovation.
Are You Emotionally Prepared for a Home Renovation?
Being on the brink of a new home improvement project is an exciting time of life. You've spent lots of time working with your design team to lay out plans and make product selections. You're already envisioning what life will be like when the new space is finished. It's a great feeling. But before you begin, it's important to pause and do a few things to get emotionally ready for the experience. Even under the best circumstances, your life is about to get a little strained, and it's best to be prepare up front. Here are a few suggestions based on our many years of experience helping clients through the process: Get comfortable with chaos (temporarily) With any renovation, there is a certain level of stress, mess, and the unsettled feeling that comes with the disruption to your normal routines and rhythms of life. You'll need to wrap your head[...]
In the Works: Re-Loving the “Flintstone House”
Our clients affectionately call this home a "Flintstone House," and that really makes us smile. This charming and well-loved home, which features a schist stone exterior with free-form columns and bluestone front patio — both materials that are native to the Philadelphia area — is located on a quiet street in Chestnut Hill, PA, that is walkable to the quaint and lively center of town. It also has a lot of history, as the homeowners grew up in this house, and they have other family still living on the same street. While the home has been lovingly maintained over the years, it is currently in need of a new kitchen, pantry, and powder room, as well as some maintenance upgrades — which we were happy to be called in to handle. In terms of backstory, the current kitchen was installed by our clients' father decades ago, a project that was[...]
Updates From the Art Deco Homefront
Many of you will recall our ongoing project for our client's lovely 1930s-era Glenside brick Colonial. As we move through various phases of renovating this home, which the client calls his “Art Deco museum,” it continues to be a lot of fun both for us and for him. In the image above, you can see the home's newly finished library and a sampling of his vast black, white, and chrome Art Deco picture frame collection — which includes about 170 in all — filled with photos of his favorite actresses from the 1930s-40s, including Ann Sothern, Lauren Bacall, and Myrna Loy. "I started collecting the frames in the 1990s, not long after I read the book Picture Perfect by Steve Starr, who owned a store in Chicago that specialized in deco frames and other collectibles," he explains. "I bought quite a few from him and other dealers, mostly at antique[...]
New Year, New Home Resolutions
While you’re likely busy preparing for holiday celebrations, festive entertaining, and winter travel, this is also the perfect time to take a closer look at your home and plan for the repairs, maintenance, and redesign projects that need to be tackled in the coming year. We don’t know a better way to celebrate the fresh possibilities of a new year than to breathe new life into a space that you use every day. Instant quality-of-life improvement! We're grateful for the trust our clients place in us, and we make it our goal to exceed their expectations for reimagining the spaces they share with family and friends all year through. Call us today to discuss your needs. We’ll be happy to create a 2019 plan for your home.
Behind the Scenes: What Our Customers Never See
Being a design build general contractor working any given day on a variety of projects throughout the Delaware Valley means that there's never a dull moment around here. Each day brings new challenges and opportunities to find creative solutions — and that's one of the things we love about this business! At Myers Constructs, our clients' projects receive the attention of both company owners: Tamara and me. At the outset, most of our clients understand that we will design their projects and also manage the construction, as well as the complex processes that are involved. What they don't know is that when the need arises, Tamara and I go to the job site to personally handle some portion of a project ourselves to ensure great quality control for clients. In fact, there are important things we do on a daily basis that most clients never see. For example, Tamara could[...]
In the Works: Glenside Colonial Goes Art Deco
One of our clients recently purchased this lovely large brick Colonial in the quaint and eclectic Philadelphia suburb of Glenside. His goal is to restore the home in a way that showcases his love for Art Deco styling, decor, and an extensive collection of art, ceramics, radios, and other electronics. The home was built by a local developer in the 1920s, and it represents the best quality workmanship of its era — in fact, even the laundry room floor has the original aqua blue linoleum floor still in very good condition! However, the challenge presented by this home is that some of its previous owners made adjustments over the years that didn't fit its style. For example, the large pantry and back hall, where you might carry in groceries from the rear parking area, was converted into a wine bar featuring faux stucco and brick accents applied to the plaster[...]
Holistic Renovation: A Look at the Whole-House Tune Up
When it comes to renovating a home, our solutions are truly always greater when we look at the sum of the individual parts. It allows us and the clients to understand how they will work together over time in the context of an overall home design system. In an ideal scenario, any project we undertake involves looking at big-picture problem solving in a very holistic way. Depending on the project budget and the clients' vision and needs, we can break projects up into logical sections so we can plan for future needs in the spaces we finish first. We are, in fact, doing this for several customers now. Here are a few examples: A retired client recently purchased a beautiful, large brick Center Hall Colonial in Glenside that needs stylistic upgrades that match his preference for 1930s Art Deco-era styling. The first steps include removing carpets to expose the hardwood[...]
A Trinity Renovation With Artistic Vision: The Bathroom — Part 2 in a Series
This week, we’re taking a closer look at the another space in our award-winning historic trinity renovation: the bathroom. The main challenge for this space was rethinking the modest footprint in a way that did not feel small, and our goal was to retain as much floor space as possible. In planning the design, we created drawings that considered each elevation of the room at an extreme level of detail. Because we were working with older dimensional lumber sizes, we were challenged to square up and level the room to accommodate the tile and other finishes. Framing this bathroom required highly skilled carpentry craftsmanship, using individually ripped pieces of framing material, in both metal and wood of varying dimensions, and correcting compromised floor joists. Our solution allowed for dedicated space for HVAC ducting, an AC line set, a powerful vent fan ducted to the exterior, and other mechanicals — with[...]
A Trinity Renovation With Artistic Vision: The Kitchen — Part 1 in a Series
We recently took on an exciting whole-home renovation for this lovely historic Trinity in Center City Philadelphia. Originally built in the mid-1800s, the house footprint is just over 17’ x 13’. As is typical of this type of 3-story house, the kitchen is located in the basement, making this house four floors of occupied space with overall square footage totaling just under 900 square feet. The homeowner felt the former kitchen was cramped, dimly lit, and inefficiently designed, and she was in search of help in bringing her artistic vision for the space to life, blending both old and new elements through an exciting mix of textures and character. High on her priority list was integrating her wonderful collection of objects gathered from her travels around the world. We brought our design skills and construction experience to the team, working with the homeowner and the designer to develop a host[...]
Creative Smallness: Thinking Big About Smaller Spaces
Tamara at KBIS/IBS It’s January, and we at Myers Constructs are super excited about the year ahead. As we all reflect on the past decades and look to the new year, we are grateful for the many opportunities we have had to work on many really wonderful homes. Of all the types and sizes of homes we work on, we have found that smaller houses often offer the greatest design and construction challenges. And, as is often the case, these challenges make it all the more rewarding when a project is complete! I have drawn on these experiences to create universal principles that guide not only our design build/projects but also a new #TamTalk called Creative Smallness: Thinking Big About Smaller Spaces, which I presented this year as one of the Voices From the Industry at next week’s Design and Construction Week. Held at the Orlando Convention Center this[...]
