Property Creations featured in Atlanta Hospital News 9/2007

Property Creations Brightens the Holidays, Beautifies Landscapes

By Vannessa Orr

While it may seem a little early to be thinking about Christmas decorations, the fact is, companies can save themselves a lot of stress by planning and budgeting for their holiday displays during the spring and summer months. These same businesses can save even more time and effort by working with holiday design professionals such as Property Creations, who specialize in all types of residential and commercial installations.

"We custom design displays, both interior and exterior, and provide all of the materials and installation," explained Bob Evans, who has owned the Cumming, Georgia company for four years. "We maintain the displays while they are up, and take down and store all of the pieces that we've installed at the end of the season.

"It's a complete turn-key operation for our clients," he added. "They don't have to do anything other than write a check."
Property Creations' clients include Northside Hospital, Underpriced Furniture, and St. Ives and St. Marlo country clubs, among others. "There are literally less than a handful of businesses that can do the large-scale type of commercial work that we do," said Evans. "We also pride ourselves on being able to do anything a client wants; there's no limit as to what we can custom-make."

Past custom-made displays included 12-foot wreaths, 55-foot Christmas trees and even Santa taking a hard-earned break. "Underpriced Furniture wanted us to build a unique 'Santa & Sleigh' scene, which involved Santa resting on a recliner in back of his reindeer," said Evans. "It was a pretty cool display.

"We're happy to work with whatever a client's budget is," he added. "Even if a customer's requirements are not as extensive, we can provide the same quality service."

Though holiday decorating is seasonal, the displays themsleves require year-round attention. "It's a very labor-intensive business from October 1 to January 31," said Evans, whose staff grows from 10 to 35 during the holiday season. "We spend the off-months refurbishing existing decorations, selling new decorations, updating customer files and dealing with other issues, like updating our clients' electrical systems." Property Creations is also the exclusive dealer in the area of energy-efficient LED lights, which last five times longer then traditional lights.

Property Creations' focus on creating unique and welcoming holiday displays has resulted in a lot of repeat business. "We have a 95 percent retention rate with current customers, and over half of our new customers come from referrals," said Evans. "The remainder of our new customers are usually people who have seen us working and liked what they saw."

In addition to brightening up the holidays with decorative displays, Property Creations also provides landscaping services to both residential and commercial customers. "We do everything from landscape design to complete site engineering," said Evans. "The only thing we don't provide is maintenance." Installation projects include segmental retaining walls, concrete driveways, interlocking walkways and patios, irrigation and drainage.

Property Creations serves Atlanta and the surrounding areas. For more information, call (678) 455-5772, email info@propertycreationsinc.com or visit www.propertycreationsinc.com

Property Creations featured on CBS 46 in Atlanta

On December 7th, Bob appeared on CBS 46 in Atlanta talking about Christmas Lighting tips for your home.

http://www.cbs46.com/video/14796256/index.html

Our work appearing in the Orlando Sentinel

Holiday decorating is easy if you've located oulets in all the right places.

By TRACY DeCARLO
SPECIAL TO THE SENTINEL

When you're decorating for the holidays each year, do you find yourself wishing for more outlets - or outlets in different places? It's true. A few outlets placed in handy locations can make a big difference; so keep those wishes in mind when planning the electrical portion of your new home or remodeling project.
Outside. Outlets in the soffit make it easier to string lights along the eaves. If you take this idea one step further and have those outlets wired to a timer switch in the garage, the lights will even turn themsleves on and off.
Thinking about hanging a lighted garland around the front door? Place an oulet nearby. What about wrapping lights around or hanging lighted wreaths on the front pillars? If you include outlets on the back sides of these columns, high up or out of sight, you'll avoid the clutter of extension cords underfoot.
If you like to hang lights around the inside of the back porch, place a couple of outlets close to the ceiling and you won't have cords snking down the wall.
Do you have a deep front yard with various planting beds? To avoid unsightly (and potentially dangerous) extension cords, consider including hidden yard outlets in one or moreof these beds. During the holidays, it will easy to plug in free-standing decorations or tree lighting, and during the rest of the year, these outlets can be used for powering electric yard-maintenance equipment.
Inside. Have you thought about where you plan to place the Christams tree in your new or remodeled home? Include an outlet nearby. Outlets incorporated into and around built-ins also support decorating flexibility.
For example, an outlet installed on top of a built-in cabinet can be wired to a switch, making it convenient to light a small tree placed on top of the cabinet. Including an outlet in the open-shelving portion of the cabinetry allows the homeowner to light holiday decorations during the season and small, cool-burning lamps the rest of the year.
LED the way. Have you had it with trying to figure out which bulb had caused the light string to go out, even though the instructions say this will never happen? Give yourself, your pocketbook, the power company and the environment a break by switching to light-emmiting diode holiday lighting.
LEDs are already well-known in products such as automobile brake lights and traffic signals, and they have been used in holiday lighting for several years. LED string lighting typically will perform without dimming for 30,000 hours. That's eight hours a day for a decade. Can you imagine not having to replace light strings each year?
These lights use pennies on the dollar of electricity compared with traditional holiday lighting. In fact, LEDs are estimated to use 90 percent less electricity than conventional mini-bulbs. In addition, the epoxy of LEDs are virtually indestructible. Yes, these lights are more expensive, but they obviously pay for themselves over and over. And on more benefit: LEDs become barely warm and thus pose no fire hazard from heat generation.
Individual LED light strings are readily available in discount stores, and pre-lit LED Christmas trees are just entering the market.


Tracy DeCarlo is a home-design function analyst and author of 'Don't Forget the Linen Closets!'. She helps homeowners incorporate functional products and features into their building or remodeling projects. For more tips, go to detailedsolutions.net.