Dino's Storage – Page 31 – Where your stuff's in the doghouse, so you're not!

You Can Make A Difference

Dino’s Storage has partnered with Lutheran Family Services of Nebraska to help foster children and others in need.

Donate a new winter coat, winter boots, hats and/or gloves to Lutheran Family Services and you will receive a discount on your first month of storage.

Your gift will help foster children in need and all donations are tax deductible. Your first month storage deduction will be $25 off on a small space, $50 off on a medium space and $75 off on a large space. The offer applies to the first month’s rent for new move-ins only with a minimum three-month lease. Your donations to Lutheran Family Services must be new and include price tags.

For more information about Lutheran Family Services or how to become a foster parent, please call 402-661-7100.

Recycled Commercial Buildings Turn Residential

Remodelers are taking former barns, churches and factories and converting them into unique, multimillion dollar homes. The idea is to “recycle” old, defunct property and offer buyers something beyond a cookie-cutter house, CNBC reports. These old properties may be refurbished and retrofitted, but still retain characteristics of their former purpose.

The luxury housing market is enjoying a strong recovery at the moment. The only segment of the market that saw prices increase over last year was comprised of homes priced at more than $1 million, according to June data from the National Association of Realtors^®.

“These clever conversions often command a hefty price tag because the interior rehabs can be far more high-end than regular new-builds,” CNBC notes. “They are usually a labor of love by the buyer, who has the vision to take, perhaps a water filtration plant and turn it into a home.”

As demand rises, some in the high-end market are finding they can rehab unique properties into their dream home.

A few examples include:

A building at 822 Pacific Street in Omaha, Neb.,that originally served as the mechanical plant for the Burlington Train Station in the early 1900s was converted into a residence with a unique second-floor art studio and a huge main level workshop. The structure features a large roof-top patio and built-in 2-story garage. There’s also a grand gated entrance on the nearly half-acre lot with extensive landscaping, trees, boulders and waterfall.

A historic stone church from the 1800s in Watertown, Mass., that was converted into a 2,800 square foot condo that occupies the church’s bell tower. Remodelers preserved the church’s old woodwork in the modern space.

Outside of Philadelphia, an early 19th century cattle barn was transformed into a five-bedroom, 8,000-square-foot home.

Don’t Lose Big Because of Inferior Boxes

Moving your possessions – whether to a new home, or placing things in storage – can lead to damaged goods if you fail to use adequate containers. Simply put, inadequate moving boxes may not adequately protect your belongs.

Boxes have certain strengths and thicknesses. Two simple guides, the Edge Crush Test and burst strength can guide you to make wise box choices. Either or both of these figures usually can be found on the bottom of the box. Look for an ECT of at least 32 pounds per square inch to ensure that your boxes won’t crush when stacked up. The Burst Strength Test, also known as the Mullen Test, should be at least 200 lbs., preferably 250 lbs., so the boxes won’t split open. And try to keep the weight of your packed boxes at or below 50 lbs. to facilitate easy handling.

Boxes you might scavenge from grocery or liquor stores are often far too flimsy for moving your goods. What’s more, used boxes may have insects or insect eggs in them. Boxes purchased from the big box stores usually are made from recycled – and therefore weaker – materials and often don’t meet the needed burst and edge crust standards.

The few dollars you might save by employing used boxes or purchasing cheap ones may end up costing you dearly if your possessions are broken or ruined because of flimsy boxes.

At Dino’s, we have a large assortment of moving boxes and supplies to make your job easier. Our boxes are suitable for your needs at reasonable prices.

Stacking moving boxes in a truck or self storage unit is kind of like doing a jigsaw puzzle. Having a number of similar sized boxes can make this easier. Remember to put the heavier boxes on the bottom and lighter boxes on the top to help prevent crushing. Packing the boxes full will help prevent crushing and damage. Damage is often caused when boxes are not full and things move around during the moving process.

Don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Use strong, well constructed boxes for your moving.

Live-Work Space, A New Old Idea

Remember the old neighborhood grocery? A place where the owners lived in the back rooms, or the upstairs of the small grocery store. Or the neighborhood music teacher whose home doubled as a studio. Or the beauty shop in the walkout basement of a friend’s home.

Maybe you, or someone you know, works from a home office. Perhaps you have visited a deli or small café where the owners lived on the premises.

The common thread in all of these situations is a double duty space for living and working. A few years back an Omaha developer created several units offering live-work space at Giovanna Rows at 6^th & Pierce Streets.

Live-work space is a niche market today, but it is making inroads as an old idea gains new popularity. It offers a comfortable place to live with no commuting needed for work. These properties range from condos to stand-alone homes or, in some cases, even larger buildings with lots of room both for living and working.

Landmark Group in Omaha, our partner company, currently has an ideal property for live-work available and it even has seller financing available. The property at 3040 Cuming Street near downtown Omaha is being offered at just $250,000 and contains roughly 20,000 square feet of space that can be made into an ideal live-work environment. Interested? Call David Paladino at 402-672-6566.

Pianos Disappearing from Homes

Piano retailers and manufacturers are closing their doors across North America and elsewhere as the public appetite for the expensive, space-consuming instruments dims.

Declining sales have plagued the industry for years and was exacerbated by the Great Recession. In many cases, pianos that once would have been resold are simply hauled to the trash dump.

“In our industry, it’s not as drastic as the computer replacing the typewriter,” said Ted Good, president of Ohio’s only dealer for new Steinway & Sons pianos, “it’s just changing.” The company, he said, has seen flat sales for the last five years.

In today’s fast-moving culture, shrinking homes and even competition with sports and video games have affected sales, according to industry experts and piano store owners. Nationwide sales dropped by half in a 20-year period, from nearly 175,000 in 1987 to 62,500 in 2007, according to the Bluebook of Pianos.

Bob Russell, a registered piano technician in Ohio runs a third-generation business. He said the piano business may be have been affected by some drastic changes in society but he still tunes close to 1,500 pianos a year. He believes new piano sales will continue to be flat for a while because of influences like a saturated market of used pianos.

“The problem with new piano sales is they’re competing with hundreds of thousands of pianos sold 10 years ago,” said Russell, “Ten years on a new piano is nothing. It’s like 5,000 miles on a car.”

From used and refurbished pianos to much less expensive brands and models, the piano’s biggest competition has probably been digital pianos – or even cheaper, digital keyboards that are sold in retailers that range from Kmart to Costco.

An electronic keyboard can be purchased for less than $200, while a standard piano may cost from $5,000 to $250,000. And the keyboard is portable, while the piano is a heavyweight consumer of large spaces in a home.

Landscaping Can Cut Your Energy Bill

Cold weather has given way to air conditioning season and home owners are ready to find new ways to save on their energy bills. Energy.gov suggests a variety of techniques for those who want to stay comfortable on the cheap.

Top among the site’s recommendations is to landscape for shade: landscaping can reduce air conditioning costs by as much as 50 percent. Neighborhoods with plenty of trees can see daytime temperatures of 6 degrees less than treeless areas, too. Shrubs and ground cover can cool air before it reaches the house, providing an even bigger break on bills.

Landscapes can also be designed to conserve water. Group plants with similar water requirements together, raise your lawn mower’s cutting height and water in the early morning to keep water from evaporating in the heat.

A landscape designed with these and other tips in mind can pay for itself in less than eight years, according to the website.

At Dino’s, We’re All About Service

At Dino’s, we know that you have many choices for storage services. Naturally, we want you to choose Dino’s and we do everything we can to ensure that your experience with Dino’s is a pleasant one.

We often receive comments from our customers that indicate we are meeting their expectations. Here are just a couple we recently received:

One of our customers used our midtown Omaha facility for more than six months before selling his home and buying another which gave him enough space to move his stored items to the new property. He described Dino’s as “friendly and helpful”and said he would recommend us to others. The customer said he was referred to Dino’s for its convenient location and customer service and found our facility to be clean and to provide the features he wanted.

A customer at our southeast Des Moines facility recently wrote us to say: “Just wanted to let you know how much my family and I appreciate how helpful Jill (the facility manager) was during our recent experience. We decided to try to sell both our homes and needed a place to store our “clutter”. Not only did Jill get a unit for us right away but she also helped with billing. We always got it cleared up right away. Unfortunately, we did not get a sale this time, but we will definitely visit Jill the next time we need your service. We just want to say thanks to Jill and Dino’s!

If you or someone you know needs a storage unit, please give us a call at 402-916-4015. We’re always ready to help.

A Bold New Future

Imagine you are riding in your driverless, hydrogen-powered car en route home from the spaceport after taking a trip into space. Your car senses that you are nearing your home and sends a signal to set your thermostat so your home will be at just the temperature you want. You beam data from your wearable computer to the grocery store and a drone delivers needed fresh groceries to your doorstep. Your personal robot takes the groceries in and prepares dinner for you just before you arrive home.

Fantasy? No. All this and more once unimaginable futuristic, life-changing breakthroughs are making their way from the laboratory and drawing boards to your real-world life. Some breakthroughs are here, some are just around the corner, others may be decades away.

Google plans to extend its Android system into cars, homes and smartwatches.

Apple has unveiled its HealthKit and HomeKit.

Travelers at Germany’s Duesseldorf airport can now leave the task of parking their car to a robot valet that is booked from a smartphone app.

In Japan, robots are serving department store shoppers and human-looking robots guide museum visitors.

An Arizona company, World View Enterprises, plans to offer balloon flights 20 miles into space at a cost of $75,000 per person beginning in 2016. A recent test flight took off from Roswell, New Mexico, and was labeled a huge success.

Virgin Galactic plans to launch its first space-tourism flights at a cost of $200,000 per person, perhaps by the end of this year, but the target date has been delayed several times already.

Toyota, the world’s largest car maker, has just unveiled its first mass-market hydrogen-powered fuel-cell car. The cars are expected to go on sale in Japan by the end of March next year. Honda projects its version of such cars also will be available next year. South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co. and Germany’s Daimler AG also are producing fuel-cell vehicles. Such vehicles could virtually end the problem of automotive pollution.

Drones are being tested that can zoom in over a crime scene and send sharp images directly to the police while the crime is in progress. Drones also can be used to record evidence from a car crash, deliver packages to your home or business, check soil quality and the status of crops or even take aerial photos to be used in advertising homes for sale. Hydrogen vehicles can run five times longer than battery-operated electric cars, and their tanks can be filled in just a few minutes compared with recharging times from 30 minutes up to several hours for electric cars.

Time travel, long a seemingly impossible dream, may even become possible if the theories and tests being done by Australian physicists pan out.

If a time traveler went back in time and stopped their own grandparents from meeting, would they prevent their own birth? If so, the traveler would not exist and could not travel in time. That’s the crux of an infamous theory known as the “grandfather paradox'” which is often said to mean time travel is impossible – but some researchers think otherwise. Researchers at the University of Queensland have discovered that two photons traveling through time can interact. In the simulation a photon stuck in a closed time-like curve through a wormhole was found to be capable of interacting with one traveling through regular space-time, suggesting that, at the quantum level, the grandfather paradox could be resolved.

Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity suggests the possibility of traveling backwards in time by following a space-time path that returns to the starting point in space but at an earlier time – a closed time-like curve. This possibility has puzzled physicists and philosophers alike since it was discovered by Austrian-American scientist Kurt Gödel in 1949, as it seems to cause paradoxes in the classical world. These include the “grandparents paradox”, where a time traveler could stop their grandparents from meeting, thus preventing the time traveler’s birth. This would make it impossible for the time traveler to have set out in the first place.

But this new research suggests that such interactions might indeed be possible – albeit only on a quantum level.

Scientists in the Netherlands have managed to reliably teleport quantum data for the first time, bringing us one step closer to the possible wonders of teleportation. Teleporting people through space, like in the series “Star Trek,” is a physical impossibility, but teleporting data is another matter. The Dutch scientists showed for the first time that it’s possible to reliably teleport information between two quantum bits separated by three meters (10 feet). As described in the journal Science, this phenomenon could transport us to the next frontier of Star Trek-style teleportation.

Shift From Suburbs to Cities a Costly Move

More Americans say they want the shorter commutes and nearby entertainment that come with living near the city center and they are shelling out big bucks to make that choice.

This marks a shift away from suburban demand, which has driven home construction for decades, The Associated Press reports. Living near city centers is often more costly and may force more Americans to rent, says John Mcllwain, a senior fellow at the Urban Land Institute. “Middle-class Americans are being squeezed out,” he says.

Land prices in cities with attractive amenities is surging, industry strategist and George Washington University professor Christopher Leinberger says.

The convenience of living downtown doesn’t come cheap. In Chattanooga, Tenn., for example, the starting price for a townhome development in the downtown area – with restaurants, stores and a waterfront park – is $610,000. That’s nearly three times the average in the metro area.

In 2012, homebuilder Toll Brothers spent $24 million to buy two-thirds of an acre near Nationals Park in Washington, D.C. That’s the equivalent of about $830 a square foot. Before the ballpark was there, the going rate was about $5 a square foot for the land.

In Chicago, a complex of 47 luxury row houses in the downtown area broke ground last month and every apartment was sold before construction began. Units start at $562,900. Buyers were willing to wait 12 to 16 months before being able to move in.

The American Planning Association says that even though 40 percent of Americans live in a suburb “where most people drive to places,” only 7 percent expressed a desire to remain in car-dominated neighborhoods.

Love Affair with Cars May Be Ending

Six decades after the launch of America’s interstate highway system, changing habits and attitudes suggest America’s romance with the road is fading. Driving rose almost continuously since World War II, but driving by U.S. households has declined nearly 10 percent since 2004. Since the decline began well before the Great Recession, economics doesn’t appear to be the only cause.

“There’s something more fundamental going on,” says Michael Sivak of the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute.

Consider these points:

The average American household now owns fewer than two cars, returning to the levels of the early 1990s. This may signal a change in home-building, too, as there is less need for three-car garages.

More teens and 20-somethings are waiting to get a license. Less than 70 percent of 19-year-olds now have one, down from 87 percent two decades ago.

Thousands of people are commuting by bicycle rather than by car. In Minneapolis, for example, about 3,500 people bike to work daily via the Midtown Greenway. That’s double the number of bicycle commuters in 2000.

Online shopping has reduced the number of car trips for shopping.

A record 10.7 billion mass transit rides were taken by Americans last year, a 37 percent increase since 1995. Light rail continues to expand in many cities and ride-sharing services, such as Lyft and Uber, are further denting the need to own an automobile.

The number of drive-ins – whether featuring car hops serving food or giant outdoor movie screens – have sharply declined as Americans drive less.

The number of teens taking drivers education has declined by 40 percent as state subsidies are eliminated and the need to take drivers ed to earn a high school diploma is dropped.

Heck, you don’t even need to own a vehicle to bring your things to Dino’s Storage – we rent trucks at many of our locations, so just give us a call.