WE LOVE BUILDING EXTRAORDINARILY BEAUTIFUL AND EXTREMELY DIFFICULT HOMES AND RENOVATIONS
The 38th & 39th floor two-story Penthouse at Turnberry Tower One is adding a 3rd floor. All three floors are undergoing a complete demolition and complete renovation. A semi-spiral brushed stainless steel, Swarovski glass tread staircase joins the 37th and 38th floor. This self-supporting magical stairway emerges through the 8” concrete floor and a new 11’ wide x 14’ long hole previously housing dozens of post-tension cables. These cables held that floor and upper building together. This was one of Merlin Custom Home Builders’s most challenging structural undertakings. It started by finding the building’s original engineer and an LA contractor with a very specific skill set. Then Merlin Custom Home Builders x-rayed the floor 300+ times; ran 60 sonar scans; installed 22,000 lbs of structural I-beams (to replace the cable); gently jackhammered
around the cables (capturing them just outside the hole); re-tensioned the old cables on the wall side prior to cutting off those lengths in the hole.
The hole is made, the custom glass treads with imbedded Swarovski crystals are being sourced, and right now the two stainless steel structural stair stringers are going in!
Stay tuned for the report on our plan to helicopter in the 38th floor two-story pneumatic acyrlic tube elevator that will complement the glass stairway.
Building Success 101
Q: How many jobs are you currently doing?
A: With real estate prices rising, new homebuilders and remodelers alike are busier than they have been for years. Because of this, some homeowners worry that their contractor will be spread too thin. The best way to avoid such worries is to hire a pro. One reason professionally managed companies tend to dominate their markets is that they have the systems and staff in place to manage multiple projects. And their financial stability means they don’t have to scramble to take every project that comes along. The result is a higher-quality product and happier customers.
The advantages of building a new custom home go beyond the obvious.
The allure of a new custom home fires the imagination and ignites the spirit. We’ve all dreamed of living in a home with our version of the perfect gourmet kitchen, a beautifully appointed office, and a luxurious master suite. Having everything just the way you envision it is reason enough for most people to consider a new home over an existing property.
But the advantages go beyond the obvious: a custom home built by a professional builder offers performance benefits that only a new home can. These hidden benefits are as crucial to the homeowners’ ultimate happiness as the design, if not more so.
Many of these benefits are the happy offspring of the drive to save energy. Everyone understands that thick wall and attic insulation, careful air sealing, and better heating and cooling equipment make new custom homes very energy-efficient. But what some homeowners don’t realize is that these details do more than reduce monthly heating and cooling bills: they also make the home more comfortable, healthier, and quieter.
Energy-efficient details are mandated by many building codes, a fact that has raised the quality baseline for all new construction. Most professional custom builders go well beyond this baseline. They work with designers and use the latest software to analyze how the thousands of items that go into the home will determine its performance, and they hire employees and subcontractors who will do the job right.
The result is a home that offers superior performance in more ways than one. Consider…
Comfort. Properly detailed insulation, along with careful sealing of the building shell and the HVAC ductwork, minimizes drafts and helps keep temperatures even throughout the home. Comfort can be further enhanced by optimizing the home’s space design and windows to the local climate. High-performance windows can even be ordered with coatings that protect furnishings from ultraviolet light.
Health. Those comfort-enhancing, air-sealing details also help keep pollen and dust out of the home. High-performance windows resist condensation that can lead to mold growth. Today’s efficient heating, cooling, and ventilation systems are very good at removing unwanted humidity and other pollutants from the home, while bringing fresh filtered air in. Sealed-combustion heating equipment makes everyone safe by keeping carbon monoxide out of the indoor air.
Quiet. Double- or triple-pane windows, quality doors with good weather-stripping, and of course the air sealing and insulation already mentioned, make a new custom home naturally better at blocking outside noise than an older one. If there’s a busy nearby street, sound-deadening windows can be ordered to further muffle traffic noise. Inside, if there’s a home theater or a teenage musician, sealing gaps in those rooms’ walls and using sound-dampened drywall can give everyone what they want for less effort and cost than it would to retrofit an existing home.
A new home also provides a certain peace of mind and confidence that everything in the home will work the way it’s supposed to for years to come. That’s why professional builders use proven products with good warranties, along with highly skilled installers.
In fact, a lot of people build new custom homes for the same reason they buy new cars: to avoid unexpected, costly repairs. The big difference is that while buyers can add options to a new car, they have to choose from one of the dealer’s stock models. With a custom luxury home, on the other hand, the buyers get a finished project that reflects their own vision. And the skillful use of energy detailing eliminates annoyances that could get between them and their enjoyment of that home. This superior performance is something an old house just can’t offer.
Warm Regards,
Steve Jones & Bart Jones
Merlin Custom Home Builders
6408 S. Arville Street
Las Vegas, NV 89118
702.257.8102 – Phone