December 07, 2009

AZ Economy in the Dumps – Start Innovating or Get Out

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet It looks like our economy is in dire straits for a few more years to come. According to this December 2, 2009 article below by Mike Sunnucks of The Phoenix Business Journal, both our residential and commercial real estate markets are dead in the water until about 2013. I’m the last person to want to spread bad news, but I think it’s important for all of us to understand where we stand so that we can take the appropriate action to move forward. We in Arizona can’t be thinking that since we heard news of the recession ending it…

November 30, 2009

A Sense of Community for the Rugged Individuals of Phoenix

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet One of the most highly prized values of our nation is “rugged individualism” and nowhere is this more apparent than in our very own city – Phoenix. Many of us have come here to get away from our old tired communities and to start life anew. Maybe it’s because of our bad experiences with the communities we grew up in that we seem to shun any semblance of community in our newly-adopted city. But where does that leave us rugged individuals? Surely we can’t rely wholly on ourselves? Surely there are times we need help from others. Who do…

August 17, 2009

A Convection Oven – A Great Way to Save Energy

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet In my previous blog “Huge Utility Bill and Hot Guests” I talked about how we just couldn’t cool 3 Palms down on a hot summer day when we had guests and I had used my wall oven to bake enchiladas. This blog post is a follow-up on the oven part of that story. At 3 Palms, we kept the original vintage wall oven from the early 1960’s. It’s very cool-looking and wonderful in a lot of ways. But it’s a big energy-hog!!! Not only does it use alot of energy to operate, but it also heats up the house…

August 12, 2009

High Utility Bill and Hot Guests at 3 Palms!

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet All of you who live in Phoenix know well that July is one of our hottest months of the year. Things like “It is like the surface of the sun outside” have been said about this month. Imagine how hard our air-conditioning has to work to keep us comfortable in outside temperatures like 112-118 degrees. Two things happened to alarm me that something is amiss with our air-conditioning unit at 3 Palms: 1. I had a party for my family. Anyone who knows me knows that I have a giant family. Only 50% of my giant family was in…

July 07, 2009

Street Presence

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet How many times have you driven around in neighborhoods that are not quite there yet and when you see a unique and well-kept home you know that things will turn around in that neighborhood? At Blooming Rock, our goal is to positively impact the neighborhood we develop in. One of the most effective ways to do that is to improve the street presence of the home. We believe that improving even one home on a street will encourage better maintenance and general improvement of the other homes on that street and as one street gets better, the surrounding ones…

June 23, 2009

Two Green Strategies at 3 Palms

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Use our glorious sun, nix the dryer! Have you ever noticed how fast things dry in Phoenix in the summer? Make a puddle of water on the sidewalk and it’ll be gone in ten minutes! We decided to harness this wonderful Phoenix drying power to dry our laundry in lieu of using a dryer. Our tenants are on board with this as well and are all for the savings on their energy bill! The first component to our greener laundry system at 3 Palms is our front-loading washing machine. Front-loading washing machines use 40%-60% less water than top loading…

May 27, 2009

Transformation

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet This is what the back wall of the kitchen used to look like. Missing window pane, ugly vinyl tile flooring, old beat-up door, and warped laminate countertop. This is what it looks like now. We replaced the window pane, added a new steel door, replaced the old baseboard and door frame, replaced the old laminate counter top with a new IKEA countertop and best of all – that ugly vinyl flooring is now a beautiful gray laminate floating floor. The original kitchen… The new kitchen…We added a new tile backsplash, new sink and new faucet along with the new…

May 08, 2009

Beautiful New Flooring in the Kitchen!

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet We found a great floor at IKEA for the kitchen that fits in perfectly with the modern look we’re going for. This is a laminate flooring that doesn’t pretend to be wood or something else. It’s just an awesome simple gray laminate flooring that looks great! The price is right at $2.25/sq ft considering you can install it yourself and it comes with the foam underlayment right on the laminate panel. This floating floor turned out to be the perfect solution to cover the existing vinyl tile. It’s a simple click-in-place floor, no adhesive, no underlayment required. It took…

April 23, 2009

Tile Removal

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Yesterday and today we had the onerous task of removing the blue VCT tile from Unit 1847 to expose the beautiful chocolate-colored concrete beneath. The living room looked like this before we started: Removing this VCT required a special tool that we rented from Home Depot. Although this tool made the project alot easier, it was still a painstaking and physically difficult process to remove each tile as you can see from the video. tile removal video After much work and sweat and approximately 7 hours, we removed all the tile! Now we face the hurdle of removing the…

April 15, 2009

3 Palms Existing Conditions and Proposed Work

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Blooming Rock’s first project! We purchased a great foreclosed block duplex and are now in the process of revitalizing it. This duplex is located near Thomas Rd. and 16th St. which is in keeping with our commitment to work in Central Phoenix. The building has some very nice block details which are ripe for accenting. Proposed work: Paint exterior building, find a way to accent block details, colors to be determined. Clean up weeds in front yard, add dg, and add some sculptural metal pieces along with possibly some desert drought-resistant plants such as prickly pears and/or agave. Proposed…