Foyer

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.

The Wormald Cos. has condominiums available at Park Place at Worman's Mill in Frederick.Worman's Mill is a neo-traditional small town on the Monocacy River in Frederick. Its village square includes restaurants, shops, a bakery, coffee shop and inn.The community will soon feature a clubhouse with swimming pools, tennis courts, exercise rooms, playground, basketball court, meeting rooms and putting green. One-third of the community's 307 acres is parkland.There are 14 floor plans available at Park Place, ranging from the 863-square-foot Blair, which starts at $109,900, to the 2,900-square-foot Astoria, which starts at $339,900.

Ellwood Building Corp. is down to its final six lots at Upman Court in the Catonsville area of Baltimore County, where the company is building 26 Colonial and split-foyer homes with gas heat and hot water.The split-foyer is a 1,600-square-foot house with a base price of $126,900.On the main level are a 13-by-14-foot living room, 9-by-13-foot kitchen, a coat closet, full hall bath, two bedrooms and a master suite with a full bath, 13-by-11-foot bedroom and his-and-her closets.A 21-by-19-foot recreation room, closet and unfinished utility/laundry room occupy the lower level.

What to make of the fact that the hall tree is back? This tall structure of ornately carved wood, with coat hooks, mirror and storage space for umbrellas, was a staple of the Victorian foyer. Furniture manufacturers have discovered that people like hall trees just as well in 1998, foyer or no foyer.Maybe today's living rooms aren't overflowing with heavy furniture, piled with carpets or cluttered with bric-a-brac, but a touch of Victorian is very much in vogue again. It might be something as simple as painting a room a deep, saturated color, where before off-white looked very right.

After living in apartments and ranchers most of their lives, Robert Wilson and Christine Roppelt-Wilson wanted authentic, country atmosphere -- and they got it, right down to woodpecker pecks in the foyer's paneling.Their "classic farmhouse," which really was once part of a farm, sits on a half-acre in Carney, nestled behind giant maple trees, hedges and flowers that have been there as long as the 90-year-old home.Tall windows, gables and rich red tones add to the home's rural feel. Two outbuildings remain in the back yard.

We have the somewhat unusual intention of converting part of a large entrance hall into a home office. One potential problem is that the area to be enclosed contains the only window in that part of the house. This will deprive the entrance hall of natural light. Do you have a suggestion for how to illuminate the shortened foyer?Without actually seeing your entrance hall, it's difficult for me to advise you on the best lighting method. A ceiling pendant or some form of track lighting might be a sound solution, but a lot will depend on what exactly you wish to illuminate.

As someone who admires historic preservation, Dianne Wiebe visits many old houses. But her favorite is still the one she restored herself."Since I've moved here, I've never gone into another house and not wanted to come back here," she said of the Uniontown house she bought in 1984. "I always liked old houses. I liked the TC simple ones. When I saw this house, I knew this was it."Her home, a log cabin faced with red brick, has an unusual history. Built by a free African-American couple in 1832, it was later owned by a single woman, a rarity in the 19th century.

Howard County police charged a man yesterday with trying to rob a Columbia Bank branch last month by calling in a bomb threat.Dayton Collins Jr., 35, of Baltimore, was arrested and charged with armed robbery, extortion, assault by threat and threatening use of an explosive device. He was being held at Howard County Detention Center on $250,000 bond.On May 22, a man called the Columbia Bank in the Harper's Choice Village Center and told a teller that he had placed a bomb in the bank's foyer.

The Antelmans moved into their new Clarksville home two years ago after a year of construction and two years of planning, but they're still working on it.Dr. Robert Antelman, a specialist in internal medicine, and his wife, Berni Antelman, a social worker, had been living in the Columbia village of Kings Contrivance. Several years ago, they began to tour new houses and model homes in the Baltimore and Washington suburbs, taking pictures and making videotapes of houses and features they liked.

My small apartment has no foyer. Visitors enter directly into the living room. Is there some way I can create a more welcoming effect?The biggest problem I have with this kind of apartment design is that it provides no shielding for a conversation grouping. It's always awkward -- for earlier arrivals and for newcomers alike -- when there's no transition space between the doorway and the actual seating area.One possibility is simply to invent a foyer, or at least a reasonable facsimile. Depending on the location of the doorway, this can be achieved by placing a divider perpendicular to the entrance wall and to the side of the door itself.

I want to add a console table to my home's entrance foyer, both for functional reasons and to make a design statement in this small and nondescript space. There doesn't seem to be much available, however, apart from straight-legged tables made of brown wood. I realize that these boring sorts of tables could be jazzed up with a grouping of decorative objects, but I'm not much of a collector. Any suggestions? Since you want visual interest as well as functionality, a console alone may not be sufficient.

I want to create a brighter and softer look in a foyer with a stained-wood floor and staircase. It's been suggested that I carpet the stairs, but I wonder whether you can offer a less expensive alternative. I'm willing to paint and to buy a small piece of furniture. Because such a space is typically small and filled with architectural elements, there are plenty of challenges to be met.Carpeting the staircase would introduce the color and pattern that your foyer lacks. But paint and a single piece of furniture can help, too. Heather Paper's book Decorating Ideas That Work, published by Taunton Press, shows one foyer idea.

The entrance foyer in my home could use some jazzing up. The space contains a small chest of drawers made of brown-stained wood. I want to retain this piece, but I'm wondering if it will interfere with my aim of making a contemporary design statement. What do you think? A contemporary design statement often involves the unexpected. For that reason, juxtaposing two styles in what I take to be a small foyer should actually be consistent with your aim. You might consider adding something like the wall covering seen in the photo as a contrasting accompaniment to your brown wood chest of drawers.

I like the look of teak furniture and teak flooring, but it seems I've overdone a good thing in my dining room. Not even the pale yellow walls prevent the space from looking dark and dull. Keeping my modest budget in mind, can you suggest how I might add some spark to this setting? What your dining room needs is more color and contrast. And both can be introduced, without great expense, by means of paint, fabrics and accessories. Consider painting over those pale yellow walls with a warm color such as melon or a reddish-orange.

Go ahead and pick the kind of dog you don't want to see walking toward you at the end of a leash on a busy sidewalk. A Rottweiler? A pit bull? A German shepherd being trailed by a neo-Nazi skinhead? Me, I'd take any one of those dogs -- even if it had rabies -- over the kind of dog I'm about to name. Because the kind of dog I'm about to name is the single, most unpredictable dog in the whole world. That's right, I'm talking about a Chihuahua. You don't see a lot of Chihuahuas anymore, but one was coming toward me the other evening on a sidewalk in Towson, being walked by a woman with a clipped haircut who resembled Florence Henderson.

Parents and students can clean their closets and make some cash during Prom Fest, an event scheduled from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Winters Mill High School in Westminster. A parents committee at the school is sponsoring the event to sell new and used prom dresses to help raise funds for Class of 2006 activities. Prom Fest organizers also have invited local florists, limousine owners, hair and nail stylists, and tuxedo and jewelry retailers to showcase their wares and services. All sales are final, and payments must be made in cash.

VATICAN CITY - Workers hauled in trunks marked diplomatico. Crews labored over the entrance foyer. Maids gathered in the basement cafeteria to rest for a moment. There were so many things left to do yesterday to prepare the Casa Santa Marta for the conclave of cardinals it host to beginning April 18, when they begin their secret deliberations to elect a new pope. "Yes, I'm nervous," sighed one maid, who declined to give her name because neither the hotel staff nor its construction crews are allowed to speak publicly about their role.

Carter Ward believes that "you can come home again." In March last year, he proved that to his wife-to-be, purchasing a grand Dutch Colonial in the same Forest Park neighborhood where she grew up. A wide variety of architectural styles line the side streets of this Northwest Baltimore neighborhood, off Liberty Heights Avenue, where large, single-family homes sit majestically at the apex of large front yards. Spanish-style stucco and red-tiled-roof villas rest beside brick Colonials, clapboard bungalows and lace-trimmed Victorians.

The Community Media Center, which has put life in Carroll County on TV for 13 years, televising everything from town meetings and candidate forums to the 4-H Fair and the Maryland Wine Festival, is about to get a new space with a soundproof studio, sophisticated lighting and advanced broadcast technology. The $1.7 million building under construction in Westminster is a vast improvement on the basement headquarters the community access television station has called home for the past decade.

Triadelphia Ridge Toll Brothers Inc. has 34 lots remaining in its Howard County community of Triadelphia Ridge. The community, with base prices ranging from $568,975 to $659,975, offers well water, septic systems and natural gas. Lots are a minimum of 1 acre. Standard features include a two- or three-car garage, hardwood floors in the foyer and kitchen and ceramic-tiled baths. The model, the Coventry Federal, features a 25-by-17-foot sunken family room, 14-by-11- foot study, 18-by-14-foot living room, two-story foyer, 19-by- 13-foot dining room, 23-by- 20-foot kitchen and breakfast room, laundry room, porch, powder room and three-car garage.