'Home improvement' has a broad meaning

FORT MOHAVE - The phrase 'home improvement' can mean a lot of different things to different people.



For some, it may mean knocking out a wall to expand a room. Or maybe putting up a wall to turn a wide-open space into two more cozy confines.



It can mean adding a new deck. Or remodeling the kitchen.



Or it can mean something relatively simple, such as changing the lighting, or the paint, or carpeting, or updating appliances.

At Tri-State Building Materials Inc.-Ace Hardware in Fort Mohave, paint studio manager Lola Windham was busy matching a paint color for a contractor.



'Painting rental properties,' the contractor said as Windham used a color spectophotometer, essentially a computer that identifies the color of a small sample so that a near-exact mixture can be produced to match it.



'Every day, people are coming in matching colors,' Windham said, suggesting that the prevailing trend in the Tri-state is not to change the color scheme but to freshen it up.



'Color is always trending here in Bullhead,' said Michael Paul, owner of Tri-State Building Materials and its Ace stores in Kingman, Bullhead City and Fort Mohave. 'We tend to follow the trend, but not as quickly as maybe Southern California or metro areas.'



He said most customers tend to stay on the conservative side when it comes to paint color selection, but occasionally they make requests for non-traditional schemes.



Paul said lighting is also trending, especially with the demise of the incandescent light bulb. Some customers are staying ahead of the times by switching to other lighting sources - LEDs, fluorescents and solar-powered lighting.

'LEDs are starting to get more affordable,' Paul said. 'Cost is starting to come down, making it more doable for most folks.'



Color is also trending in lighting, Paul said.



'In lighting, color is becoming more of an issue,' he said. 'It's very subtle. It's not red versus green versus blue. It's a color that might be more conducive to reading...' or a color better suited for other purposes.



Solar power is also trending on a small, home-improvement scale.



'Solar is becoming a bigger factor as manufacturers adapt the technology to other applications,' Paul said.



Those applications range from path lighting to solar-powered electric fencing to using the sun's energy to recharge batteries on ATVs.



Another area trending now is preparing homes for warmer temperatures. First up, according to Ace officials, is screening, followed by awnings and air conditioning.



Screening comes first, Paul said, because of the pleasant night-time temperatures.



'When it's nice and cool, people like to have their windows open,' he said, noting that the store has seen quite a few customers seeking to replace damaged or missing screens.



When the temperatures start to climb, awnings and tinting inserts become popular as residents try to keep cool - and reduce their cooling costs - by blocking out the heat of the sun.



But eventually, nearly everyone in the area has to turn on the air conditioner.



'Evap coolers are still popular around here,' noted Althea Thomas-Swanson. 'People are preparing for hotter weather and evap coolers are pretty effective to supplement the air conditioner.'



'We have the right climate for it,' Paul added. 'Hot and dry.'



Recent rain, however, has shifted the focus for some Tri-state residents.



'When it rains - and it always does - there will be weeds to get rid of,' Paul said.



'Weed eradication - we're prepared for that,' Thomas-Swanson said, looking over shelves of weed applications. 'That's the only bad thing about the rain - it brings out the weeds almost immediately.'



For John Howard, home improvement wasn't about a major household change. He was buying hardware for 'a honey-do project' for his Fort Mohave home.



'A little wiring project,' he said, suggesting that he may have been putting the project off. 'I finally came to the right place to get what I needed.'