Home Improvement

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

James E. Johnston, a retired Navy Department worker who also maintained a home-improvement business, died Sunday of cancer at FutureCare Lochearn. The longtime Northwest Baltimore resident was 88. Born and raised in Roanoke Rapids, N.C., James Eugene Johnston was the son of a seamstress. His father died when he was 5, family members said. After graduating in 1942 from McIver High School in Roanoke Rapids, Mr. Johnston enlisted in the Army. He served as a cook, and after being discharged in 1944, remained an active reservist for six years.

High school carpentry courses have given Paul "Pasha" Lippincott the skills to build a deck and a fence at his Towson home and the confidence to move ahead with a floor-to-ceiling renovation of the family kitchen. While completing his senior year and planning to pursue construction management in college, he also has gathered enough know-how and aplomb to demonstrate basic do-it-yourself tasks on BCPS-TV. The senior at George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology just taped a segment for "So Easy a Kid Can Do It," a series that debuted Monday on the county schools' cable television channel.

We frequently complain about big government but sometimes they can be very helpful. The following represents a case where the Maryland state government was very helpful to me. During the month of March 2012, I had a nationally known company perform repair work on my home. Unfortunately the work was performed in an unsatisfactory way and after months of dealing with the company we could not reach a resolution. I felt the company was not negotiating in good faith, so I contacted the Maryland Home Improvement Commission for assistance.

After spending six years sharing a bathroom with his wife and two children, salesman John Brummelcamp is adding a second bath and two bedrooms to his two-bedroom Southern California home.His monthly mortgage will rise by $300 as a result of the $50,000 equity loan he took out to finance the 800-square-foot addition. But that's only a third of the increase had he bought a bigger house."The dollars and cents pointed us in this direction," he said. "It really doesn't make financial sense to move."

The field of home improvement is influenced so strongly by history, by personal preference and by available technology that no one ever has the last word.Virtually every month brings a new crop of home how-to books and manuals. What follows are brief reviews of some we've seen lately that we like. Each of them is sure to please someone and some of them should please just about everybody who has an interest in how houses work.The prime entry in the latter category is an update of an old friend, "The Reader's Digest New Complete Do-It-Yourself Manual."

When Valley Brook Community Church's executive pastor, the Rev. Rob Lamp, talks to his congregation today, he won't just speak as a minister. He'll be doing a comedy routine.Mr. Lamp will imitate comedian Tim Allen, star of ABC's hit show "Home Improvement," at a kickoff service for the congregation's four-week family series also titled "Home Improvement"."We're going to do a little spoof on it [the show]. I'm going to be your host Tim Allen," said Mr. Lamp, who has helped produce the church's annual Christmas program and other productions.

OF ALL THE materials that will go into your home improvement project, the one that's most important is made of paper.It's the contract, and it puts into writing exactly what you and your contractor are agreeing to. The contractor agrees to build something, and you agree to pay for it.It sounds simple. He agrees to remodel a bath, you agree to pay for it. But the contract is where your expectations and his actions are placed in sync.A surprising number of people start remodeling projects with little or nothing in writing.

Sidney F. Harrison Jr., who ran a home improvement business and liked motorcycles, died in a motorcycle accident July 4 in Loudon County, Tenn. He was 38. Mr. Harrison's residence was in White Marsh, but he had been living in Madisonville, Tenn., where he and his wife were building a house. He was born and raised in Baltimore and graduated in 1986 from Polytechnic Institute. After graduation, he worked for several construction companies, then for FedEx for at least 10 years in Baltimore County before starting his business, which he ran out of his home in White Marsh.

The seventh season of "Home Improvement" (9 p.m.-9: 30 p.m., WMAR, Channel 2) opens with what the writers hope will be a new source of merriment for ensuing episodes: Tim's mid-life crisis.Having run smack-dab into middle age, Tim (Tim Allen) is acting a little odd of late: using foreign phrases, talking about existentialism and promising to spring a "surprise" on his family when they take their annual vacation in the woods. The "surprise" doesn't sit all that well with Jill (Patricia Richardson)

An Anne Arundel County judge sent a man to prison Wednesday for a series of paving scams in the county, calling Tommy Clack a "shameless swindler" who preyed on unsuspecting consumers. Clack, 40, was sentenced to two years in prison and five years probation for contracting and home improvement violations in the county, after he pleaded guilty this year in eight cases. Prosecutors said Clack targeted mostly older homeowners, often offering to repave driveways at a bargain price with leftover materials and demanding a heftier fee after the work was done.

John R. Regalbuto Sr., a retired contractor who had been a jockey at Maryland racetracks, died of Alzheimer's disease April 11 at Stella Maris Hospice. The former Essex resident was 80. Born in Vineland, N.J., he was raised on his family's small farm. Friends and family encouraged him to become a jockey, and he practiced at local farms. News articles often noted that his brother, Joseph Anthony Regalbuto, also rode horses. In 1948, he made his debut at Monmouth Park in New Jersey aboard Hasty Mabel.

High school carpentry courses have given Paul "Pasha" Lippincott the skills to build a deck and a fence at his Towson home and the confidence to move ahead with a floor-to-ceiling renovation of the family kitchen. While completing his senior year and planning to pursue construction management in college, he also has gathered enough know-how and aplomb to demonstrate basic do-it-yourself tasks on BCPS-TV. The senior at George Washington Carver Center for Arts and Technology just taped a segment for "So Easy a Kid Can Do It," a series that debuted Monday on the county schools' cable television channel.

Lowe's, the national home improvement chain, has pulled out as an anchor of the proposed 25th Street Station, a retail and housing development in Remington that won Baltimore City approval nearly a year ago but has been stalled by court challenges. "This site is currently not a site Lowe's is pursuing for a new store," Stacey C. Lentz, a spokeswoman for Lowe's Cos. Inc., said in an email Monday. The retailer, which said Monday that it was closing several stores — none of them in Maryland — and slowing its national expansion, decided several weeks ago to drop the Baltimore site, Lentz said.

Our cavernous family room presents a lighting challenge. For nearly 18 years, we've lived with the builder's insane idea of decent lighting: two recessed lights above our fireplace illuminating a framed, faded poster from my college-apartment days, and the weak halo cast by a ceiling-fan light fixture. Early on, my in-laws came to visit and were appalled at my lack of lighting (and possibly décor, though they were too kind to mention that). They insisted on buying some lamps for us, which created twin oases of light on either side of our family room couch.

Prior to Aberdeen's Wednesday-night home matchup with the Vermont LakeMonsters, the IronBirds had failed to win back-to-back games this season. But that streak ended as the hosts prevailed with a 6-4 win Wednesday. Aberdeen, which beat Tri-City Monday, was 6-20 on the year through Wednesday, putting the IronBirds at the bottom of the New York-Penn League's McNamara Division, seven games in back of the Brooklyn Cyclones. "We played some good baseball the last couple games, won on the road, then came back today and did a good job," Aberdeen manager Leo Gomez said after the game.

If you want a good idea of what yesterday's $19 billion Disney acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC Inc. will mean for television viewers, tune in to WMAR (Channel 2) at 9 tonight for Tim Allen's "Home Improvement."The series, TV's highest-rated sitcom, suggests both the synergy that makes this an obvious media marriage, as well as one of the main paths the Disney-owned ABC television network is expected to travel.As ABC Entertainment president Ted Harbert puts it, "ABC's comedy shows, like 'Home Improvement,' are made for America's families."

State officials have added additional money to a popular program that offers rebates for energy-efficient home improvements. So far, nearly 700 Maryland residents have been reimbursed through the Maryland Home Performance Rebate Program, exhausting the $1 million in federal stimulus dollars originally redirected to the program in January, according to the Maryland Energy Administration. Through the program, residents can get a rebate for 35 percent of the costs of qualifying efficiency projects, such as whole-house air sealing, duct replacement or insulation.