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Commercial Drainage Job
Here is an excellent video done by Phoenix Home Services located in Northern Virginia. It is an apartment complex with some drainage issues. The second video shows a residentual drainage job upon completion.
How ‘Bout a Splash of Paint?
Paints have been around almost as long as we have. About 40,000 years ago, the first Homo sapiens were creating cave paintings. They used red and yellow ochre, manganese oxide, and charcoal. Forever onwards, human cultures would make good use of paints. In ancient Egypt, both houses and temples were brightly painted. These paints were applied slightly differently from how we do it today; instead of mixing the binding and the color, the Egyptians applied the gummy binding first, and then the pigment, which came in white, black, blue, red, yellow, and green. Many Egyptian paintings, even on exterior stonewalls, are still vibrantly colorful today. The Roman poet Pliny noted his astonishment at the freshness of some painted ceilings that he observed in the town of Ardea. They had been painted several centuries before, prior to the founding of Rome. Ancient paints were often made with egg yolks to help the mixture harden and stick to the surface to which it was applied. Pigments were made of all sorts of materials, from plants to sand to animal blood.
Paints today are a little more sophisticated. They come in a lot more colors and don’t contain sand or egg yolk. But they will still last as long as you need them to in any of the thousands of brilliant and elegant colors that you have to choose from. Northern Virginia contractors can custom-match any paint color to get the right color the first time. We use only the best and most trusted paint brands: Duron, Benjamin Moore, Ralph Lauren, and Sherwin-Williams. Northern Virginia Contractor’s residential painters provide quality interior and exterior painting. All you need to do is call them up, and our contractors will do drywall repairs, sanding, wallpaper removal, and anything else necessary to get your walls ready for paint. All trim is caulked and primer paint is applied to the drywall (this allows the topcoat of paint to adhere much better than if paint alone were used). Our painting contractors can also do exterior wood replacement and repairs.
Finished Basement
Rooms below ground can fall prey to a host of inconveniences: cold, moisture, darkness, wet-dog smell. However, they don’t have to. There are plenty of things you can do to make your basement an elegant, comfortable living space.
When finishing your basement there are lots of issues that must be taken into account. Northern Virginia Contractors will help you find the right person to work with you to get your job just right. The floor of your basement is a vulnerable area. Water can seep in from around your home or form in the cool air at the bottom of your house. Good choices for basement flooring (especially to avoid any wet-dog-like smells) are tiles or laminates. 
Another problem is adjusting the heat and airflow in your basement to match the rest of your house. I live in a finished basement, so I’m very aware that often – even in the summer – I’ll be curled up in a blanket while those who live on the top floor are panting beneath their fans. If you have a forced air furnace heating system, you can install booster fans to improve airflow, or for a more involved solution, you could extend your cold air return ducts to the floor.
Finally, a great tip for improving or introducing natural light into your basement is installing a tubular skylight. These can even transfer sunlight across floors of your house. Other options are increasing the number of windows, if possible, or extending existing windows.
Fountains
Fountains are wonderful decorative pieces. They are beautiful, distinctive, calming, and easy to maintain. We can install all sorts of fountains and other outdoor plumbing features. You could create a mini Versailles right in your own backyard. Just choose your fountain, and we’ll do the rest.
This picture is a great example not only of an elegant, four-tiered fountain, but also the masonry work that complements it so nicely. Here we see Pennsylvania irregular flagstone lined with brick. Fountain installations often go along with some stonework, specially designed and selected to fit your style.
Bathrooms
At least 27% of your household water is used in one little room – the bathroom. Installing water-saving bathroom features will help you cut your water bill, and it’s good for the environment too. Retrofit your toilet with a dual-flush handle (like the ones they have in Europe. You’ll look very sophisticated). Install a low-flow shower head.
An average of ten percent of your energy bills come from heating up hot water for your showers or baths. So another great green suggestion is to set up a solar-powered water heater. These are much cheaper and more efficient than they once were.
If you are considering a major renovation, know about the materials you’re selecting. There are options that are both mold-stopping and eco-friendly that will help on clean-up in the long run. In Japan, they often line bathtubs with cedar because water resistant woods and corks possess natural mold inhibitors. Recycled glass or ceramic tiles are great for an eco-friendly floor, while recycled glass cullet or sealed, compressed recycled paper (Paperstone, Richlite) are perfect for countertops. For your walls, American clay or other natural plaster will absorb and slowly release moisture, making your bathroom drier and less hospitable to mildew.
We can help you fight mold, mildew, and your carbon footprint while still designing an elegant, beautiful bathroom.
If you are considering a major renovation, know about the materials you’re selecting. There are options that are both mold-stopping and eco-friendly that will help on clean-up in the long run. In Japan, they often line bathtubs with cedar because water resistant woods and corks possess natural mold inhibitors. Recycled glass or ceramic tiles are great for an eco-friendly floor, while recycled glass cullet or sealed, compressed recycled paper (Paperstone, Richlite) are perfect for countertops. For your walls, American clay or other natural plaster will absorb and slowly release moisture, making your bathroom drier and less hospitable to mildew.
We can help you fight mold, mildew, and your carbon footprint while still designing an elegant, beautiful bathroom.
Fencing
The fence is a classic staple of American suburbia. It is ubiquitously present in sitcoms and reality because it serves both as a meeting point for neighbors – a sort of outdoor water cooler – and a defining boundary of your own property – to keep wayward pets in and noise and distractions out.
We can install any type of fence to suit your purpose, budget, and style. There are an abundance of options that you can choose from: wood or metal, scalloped or straight edged, concave or convex, privacy or picket, and so on. We can help you make those choices and then install the best fence for you.
Making an informed decision is an important part of the process. When we bought the house I live in now, there was a short, chain link fence running between the sparse grass of the lawn and the forest that covered the slope beyond our yard. With the whole house and garden surrounded by trees, with nothing but a four-foot fence as a boundary, we soon discovered two major problems. The first was that deer easily hopped the barrier and munched and trampled on our vegetable garden, and the second was that our liberty-loving beagle leaped the fence to explore the wide wood. This has resulted in a long arms race of progressively higher ramparts added to the chain link fence. The flimsy wire additions are either too short or too unstable to be effective for long. This time and money consuming process would have been easily avoided by originally installing a fence of the proper height (not to mention the aesthetics).
Brick Driveways
The driveway is usually the first thing that visitors see of your home. An artistic, distinctive driveway provides character and curbs appeal to your home. While many different factors will go into deciding on the type of driveway you ought to have – such as weather, drainage, soil stability, and style – one excellent and aesthetically pleasing option is brick. Check it out for yourself:
Bricks lend a traditional feel to your home. They’re great for historic houses, especially as the design pattern of the bricks can be copied from or inspired by historic photos. If you are interested in being environmentally friendly, it is possible to use local reclaimed bricks. In addition, they are easy to work with. They have regular form and standardized sizes, they can be easily replaced, and they come in a variety of colors.
However, as mentioned above, there are different factors to be considered in your choice of driveway materials. One drawback of brick driveways is the price. They can cost anywhere from $8 to $26 dollars per square foot, while a poured concrete driveway generally cost between $1 and $5 per square foot.
If strong curb appeal and a unique design are important to you when selecting a driveway, you should check out brick as an option.
Drainage System
While walking barefoot in my basement the other day, I discovered something unusual. My footsteps on the berber carpet produced a squishing noise.
“Does the carpet look darker to you?” My sister asked me. In response, I jumped, sending splashes of water into the air. The puddle of soggy carpet spread from the wall - where the water was seeping in - to several feet into the room in every direction. And rain was still hammering down on the windows.
We ended up having to rip up and cut out a large portion of carpeting. DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. It’s been a very rainy spring, but with the proper drainage system, you don’t have to worry about water collecting around - or inside - your house. Here’s an example:
Installing a drain
With all the rain this spring we have seen a lot of flooded yards. Here’s a team from Northern Virginia Contractors installing a french drain to move the water away from the yard and into the street where it belongs.
Flagstone Patio
This patio wall built with a 4″ 3500 psi concrete bace reinforced fiber. After the concrete was poured it was then capped with capped with Pennsylvania broken flagsone set in a mixtured of portland cement and fine sand. The seating walls were built out of 8″cmu and then capped with dove grey thin stone. Both low voltage and 12 volt lighting was added to finish the project.