Ceilings

Mayor Sheila Dixon dismissed the head of the city's fire training academy yesterday but let the fire chief keep his job after an investigation into the death of a recruit during a training exercise revealed safety violations that have sullied the department's credibility. Addressing her first crisis as the city's chief executive, the mayor said that 25 regulations established by the National Fire Protection Agency were not followed Feb. 9 when instructors set fires in an abandoned rowhouse and sent cadets inside.

A LOT of readers have written asking about leaky basements in the aftermath of Hurricane Floyd.The most frequently asked questions have been: What do you do if the leak is behind a wall, and how do you find a reputable contractor to repair the problem?A certain acquaintance we know, whom we'll call simply "Bob," has the first problem. It seems, when Ron called for details, that Bob has been living in his house since 1991, and his basement never leaked until he had it finished recently.Bob first noticed the problem when he was watering his lawn last spring.

Williams KnollRyan Homes has opened a new model at its Williams Knoll community in Elkridge.The Howard County community has 29 lots available.The model, the Halifax, is a two-story colonial with a base price of $176,990 for 1,624 square feet.The first floor consists of a 16-by-14-foot great room, 8-by-13-foot kitchen with 7-by-11-foot dinette, 11-by-13-foot dining room and a powder room.The second floor includes a 14-by-14-foot master bedroom with two walk-in closets, an 11-by-12-foot bedroom, 11-by-14-foot bedroom and bath.

Helmore Farm, this year's Baltimore Symphony Associates' Decorator Show House, has been decorated to look as though a well-traveled, horse-raising family lived there.Remember that old George Peppard line in the "A-Team"? I love it when a plan comes together.The debonair Peppard might easily have been talking about the Baltimore Symphony Associates' Decorator Show House, where every year dozens of organizers, volunteers and designers come together to transform some promising but uninspired space into a treasure.

WASHINGTON -- The top priority for the Republican-led Congress when it returns to work tomorrow will be devising an exit strategy to adjourn for the year while yielding as little as possible to the demands of President Clinton and the Democrats.Republican leaders see little chance of striking a deal with the president on tax cuts after he exercises his promised veto of their $792 billion tax cut bill this month. Many Republicans seem content to wait to fight that issue in next year's elections.

Though traditional on the outside, with its stone steps, curving windows and witch-hat roof -- you won't find a single Queen Anne table or Laura Ashley duvet within.You will find a mafraj -- a traditional reception room in Yemen used primarily by men who sit on floor-level couches to relax.Large cherry-wood sliding doors open into rooms filled with Moroccan and Yemenite crockery, bridal chests, baskets and other ornaments.Intricate Victorian fireplaces are filled with Moroccan lamps and baskets.

WASHINGTON -- Congress is beginning to get a close look at the price of keeping the federal budget in balance -- it would mean squeezing everybody's favorite programs -- and signs are that the lawmakers won't pay it.As for the much-heralded budget surplus: Forget about it.Would-be budget-cutters are unnerved by dire scenarios: Scientific research canceled. Homeless AIDS patients left on the streets. Poor children turned away from Head Start programs. Emergency heating aid to the elderly denied.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- When Graham Banks arrived at a gala in Kansas City's refurbished Union Station last week, he immediately looked at the ceilings.Gazing at ceilings is a habit of the Portsmouth, England, native, who is general manager of the Baltimore firm Hayles & Howe, an ornamental plaster enterprise that restored the lofty reaches of grand old buildings such as Union Station.As ceilings go, Banks says, the ones in Kansas City's train station are stunners."I thought the Postal Museum was a big project," he says, referring to the ceilings of the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum in Washington.

"We sold 25 percent of our lots before opening the model," said Craig E. Hyatt, an associate broker with Pinnacle Real Estate and sales director for Regional Homes at Brushwood in Owings Mills.There are no through streets in the Baltimore County community, which has 25 lots that back to farmland.Gas heat, hardwood flooring in the foyer, an alarm system, ceramic tile bathrooms, two-car garages and unfinished basements are some of the standard features at Brushwood.The Tyler, a two-story traditional with 2,600 square feet and a beginning price of $210,990, is the model for the development.

WASHINGTON -- In a case that President Clinton and campaign finance reform advocates hope will lead the Supreme Court to change its mind about spending ceilings, a federal appeals court struck down yesterday a Cincinnati mandatory ceilings law passed explicitly to put the justices to a test.A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, rebuffing the pleas of 24 states and a host of activist organizations who want to curb spending, said that the arguments in favor of caps on campaign outlays have been rejected by the Supreme Court for more than 20 years.

To Nick Marulli and Tim Bennett, city means much more than their house's location. "This is a way of life for us," said Marulli, a 50-year-old NASA employee. So when he and Bennett, a firefighter in Washington, purchased a three-story brick rowhouse in Upper Fells Point, the neighbors, neighborhood association and proximity to shopping and restaurants were as important as the house itself. The rowhouse's interior, which had been down to the joists and completely renovated by its former owner, suited Bennett and Marulli in large part because it required nothing more than painting the rooms to their taste.

In the Downs community outside Annapolis, a 1980s house that began as a long and dark brick rancher has been transformed into a large, light-filled two-story home surrounded by lush gardens and accompanied by a separate two-car garage. That's because when Paula and John Gifford bought it eight years ago, they had a different vision for the 110-foot-long house: cathedral ceilings and big windows that would take advantage of the sunlight and serene setting on the peninsula bordered by Brewer and Clements creeks and the Severn River.

In June 2006, Ed and Stacy Hill bought and moved into their sixth house in eight years of marriage. The reasons had nothing to do with restlessness, wanderlust or dissatisfaction. Ed Hill, a private contractor, simply loved to renovate houses and then move on. But the couple see the home they've had for two years, a two-story Dutch Colonial, as the place in which they plan to grow old. Sitting on 1 acre of tree-shaded property in the heart of Pikesville, the circa-1901 home features a two-toned exterior - a ground floor of cream vinyl siding and a second story, with three gables, garbed in burgundy aluminum siding.

When Jeanne and Sean St. Martin bought an old house on a hill above Historic Ellicott City's Main Street, they became the owners of a building that had been turned into three apartments and had been rented for decades. They could see the sky through numerous places in the roof. That was 22 years and many improvements ago. The couple, both accountants, removed walls, created rooms, dumped three work kitchens in favor of one airy eat-in and stripped the black paint off the pine floors in a home that already had a few additions to the original house.

Traditional and understated outside, this Roland Park home is distinguished by its unexpected interior. The ceilings soar to show a grand foyer with a slate floor and a wood plank ceiling. Sunlight permeates the home's three levels with large skylights, picture windows, interior windows and French doors. All take advantage of the dappled shade of tall trees and terraced patios. An unusual spark is a loft library, a cozy nook that's in contrast to the expansive beamed living room. The owners, Laura Burrows and A. Michael Jackson, are selling because "it's time to move on," Burrows said, noting that she wants to downsize.

Six years ago when Ryan and Elizabeth Hopkins were looking for their first home, they had a short list of requirements. They wanted a city neighborhood where the architecture was diverse, where the trees were tall and the neighbors constituted a cultural mix. Their hunt ended with the second home they saw - a brick Tudor in the Mount Washington area of Northwest Baltimore, just one mile from the charming village of the same name. "We were looking for a small-town feel, but in the city, and [close to]

Tour a hospital with James West and you begin to notice something - it's a noisy place. Alarms on patient monitors are always beeping. When supply and cleaning carts clatter by, staff and patients have to raise their voices to be heard. Overhead paging systems and chirping telephones create a cacophony that makes it hard to work - and harder to heal. The 76-year-old West is trying to change that. The solutions can be as simple as replacing noisy public address systems with silent pagers, or as complex as finding new materials to absorb noise without risking patient safety.

CAMBRIDGE -- Developer Brett Summers and restoration contractor Thom Huntington say they started from the top down, with a scrap of the original decorative cornice that had stretched across the front of the landmark McCrory's building. Months of searching led them to a company that replicated the ornate crowning piece, and they were on their way - one meticulous detail at a time - to restoring the old downtown five-and-dime store. After decades of decline, investors and renovators such as Summers and Huntington seem to be everywhere these days in Cambridge's 50-block business district.

Food *** (3 stars) Service ** (2 stars) Atmosphere ***1/2 (3 1/2 stars) The new Lebanese Taverna makes a great first impression. The "taverna" in the name, the ethnic cuisine, and the fact that it's part of a local chain could lead you to believe it might have good food but not much style. You'd be wrong. The high-ceilinged, contemporary space in the Spinnaker Bay building is a showstopper. The ceilings are curved like sails, huge windows let in plenty of light and many of the seats have views of the water.

Mayor Sheila Dixon dismissed the head of the city's fire training academy yesterday but let the fire chief keep his job after an investigation into the death of a recruit during a training exercise revealed safety violations that have sullied the department's credibility. Addressing her first crisis as the city's chief executive, the mayor said that 25 regulations established by the National Fire Protection Agency were not followed Feb. 9 when instructors set fires in an abandoned rowhouse and sent cadets inside.