The design process is complete, and the Thronedown Challenge is about to commence.  The votes will be cast and the crown awarded to the champion designer. Capitol Lighting followers can visit our company’s Facebook page to vote, while showroom customers and employees can get a live look at the renovations in order to choose their favorite design and cast their ballots.

This friendly competition between two northern New Jersey interior designers has involved weeks of hard work, resulting in a transformation of  both the men’s and ladies’ restrooms in Capitol Lighting’s Paramus store. The finalists were chosen based on their expertise; they each received a $2,000 project budget with lighting supplied by Quoizel and Feiss.

Before

After

Mannarino’s vision was to create something sophisticated, dramatic and tailored. Her step-by-step design process included:

Are you living on the edge when it comes to fire safety in your home? You need more than a keen eye and a sharp nose to act quickly and avoid a Three Stooges re-enactment in the event of a fire in your home. With the help of smoke detectors, you can avoid any unnecessary antics, reduce fire risks, and increase your response time.

Do you need to invest in smoke detectors? Look for these 10 signs:

Don’t be a stooge. Stay on top of fire safety for the protection of your family and home. Contact Mr. Electric® today for the rapid installation of working smoke detectors on every level of your home.

I mean, this is crazy, right?! You can almost FEEL the presence of these weird light dudes as they approach you at a murderously slow pace. Are they astronauts on our own planet? Is this our planet? I was unable to locate a larger version of this photograph, but I still put it at the top because it is incredibly evocative. And that’s not even the real kicker. If you’ve read my other posts on light painting, you know that incredibly long exposure times are necessary for shots like this. So homegirl or homeboy was out in the snow, in the dark, making this thing. And she/he had the wherewithal, tromping through the icy powder, to render these human forms so very well, even making one look like he’s trudging knee-deep. So weirdly inhuman. So weirdly human. I love this photo.

2. Give Up the Ghost

I would never give you a photo of old shoes to look at unless there were something special going on in the picture. In this one, there’s a simple, appropriate message. Ready for it? LIGHT ENHANCES THINGS. Duh, right? This photo is aesthetically interesting, but more valuable to me is the way it shows the essential point of light painting: To have fun! To breathe some excitement into your photography. If your only subject is an old pair of Tims, don’t complain. Turn off the lights and bust out a “paintbrush.”

7. There Are ALMOST No Words for This

Isn’t this great? What I love most is how nonchalant and, well, normal the guy looks in this photo. See? It’s all about juxtaposition. Angel wings mixed with a loud sense of everydayness (he COULD be wearing white robes) make you take notice of the unspoken contradiction. You ask, Why this? And you are led to wonder if maybe this is saying something about how sometimes the people who are the most inconspicuous are the most angelic. See what I did there? That’s why I have chosen these photos from among the hundreds that are out there. They invite wonder and have the power to lead to new insights. I am a dork.

9. Do Not Anger Him/Her/It

* Note: I found these photos on Pinterest and was unable to confirm all of their original sources. So, if you have any information about the original sources for any of these photos, please let us know in the comments sections. We want to give credit for these fantastic light painting photos where it is very much due! Thanks!

Question: A contractor wants me to sign a Partial Release form on a job he hasn’t paid me for yet. Doesn’t that put me at risk of not collecting the money if I’m not really paid after I sign the release form? – Greg Storn

Answer: The good news here is that there is an easy solution to this issue. There are four different legal documents that apply to contracted work: 4. Unconditional Release Upon Final Payment

The only “condition” of a Conditional Release is that the release is valid only if the money specified on the release is paid to the contractor. In other words, if you are 50% complete with a $10,000 job, you can safely sign a Conditional Release Upon Progress Payment for $5,000. If you aren’t paid the $5,000, the release is not valid and you have not given up any of your lien rights to this money.

On the other hand, if you sign and Unconditional Release, you have just given up your rights to whatever amount of money that was on the Unconditional Release from. So the rule is, don’t sigh an Unconditional Release from until the money you are releasing is in your bank account. I’m not talking about a check in your hand, either. I’m saying that you should never sign an unconditional release until that check has cleared and the funds are literally in your bank account.

Some or my company’s corporate clients always ask for a release before they will pay an invoice. No problem, we just send them a Conditional Release Upon Progress Payment or a Conditional Release Upon Final Payment. Later, after their check has cleared into our bank account, we will (if they ask) follow up with an Unconditional Release.

By the way, Conditional Release forms protect both the client and the contractor. If a client gets a Conditional Release form a contractor, they know that they are protected from getting a lien from that contractor, but only if they actually pay the contractor the money specified on the lien.

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When you think of caring for your home, you don’t often think about the electrical system unless something is going wrong. With an electrical system, when things go wrong, they often go very wrong. You don’t want to lose your home to an electrical fire or even a life due to not having the knowledge you need to safely complete an electrical project or upgrade. That’s why you need your local electrician in Gladewater for any electrical projects you have around the house. But we truly cannot stress it enough that electrical work is not a do-it-yourself project, and to prove our point (and to keep you safe), keep reading in order to to learn the top five reasons that residential electrical work is not a do-it-yourself project.

While changing out things like light switches may seem like simple tasks around the house, and arguably they are, you’re still exposing yourself to bare wires that carry an electrical current. The average American home runs on 120 volts AC. While a quick zap from accidentally touching a bare wire will probably not be enough to kill you, you could easily be gravely injured. Low amperages can easily kill someone and amps vary widely. Additionally, if you accidentally hold onto a wire with a normal voltage, for any number of reasons, this could also kill you. The number one most important thing when dealing with electricity is safety. A professional electrician knows many of the proper techniques and processes in order to perform a variety of electrical services safely.

Like any other home project, there are some electrical projects that you can easily completed with a screwdriver or hammer, and there are others that require very specialized tools in order to complete the job properly. In fact, buying the tools to do the job may cost you substantially more than hiring a local electrician in order to complete it. Tools like a multimeter, insulated hand tools, wire striping or crimping tools, and fish poles or tapes are all essential tools for most electrical services. The costs can easily add up, especially if you just have a small project or two that you need completed.

Along with saving yourself the money associated with buying specialized tools you may only attempt to use once or twice, there are several other factors that can save you both time and money. You could spend hours trying to solve and repair a problem that would take a trained electrician a fraction of the time. Also, you may incorrectly estimate the amount of materials you need to complete the project, which can cause additional incurred costs. Lastly, you can’t get the same prices on materials that contractors can, which just increases your overall costs.

You may be great at following a manual, step-by-step guide, or YouTube video for a standard electrical repair or upgrade, but in older homes, standard is rarely the case. In fact, many older homes have wiring layouts that are anything but standard. Trying to find where wiring runs for an outlet that connects to a lightswitch may not be as easy as it sounds. This creative wiring will be tackled the quickest by a professional with the right level of experience, not by yourself when you don’t know what to expect.

Electrical work also involves keeping your home up to code for safety and for resale value. Most everyday individuals don’t have a clue what building codes are and what is required in order to keep home wiring adherent to code. That’s where your local, licensed electrician comes in. They are educated in how to keep your home up to code and the most affordable, safe ways in which to do so. If you own an older home, you may run into a situation where you need to upgrade the wiring to keep your home up to code. This can easily get expensive and complicated, but is well worth the hassle in order to protect your home, family, and investment.