To label what happened at an Elk Grove home on Tuesday afternoon as a "close call" might be an understatement -- as a three-decades-old tree toppled into Tracy Tillotson's house.

Tillotson, the homeowner, sensed something before the pine tree came down on Celery Court.

Watch report: Tree falls onto Elk Grove home

"I had a premonition," she told KCRA 3. "Something told me to leave the home, so I left for about 10 minutes. And I came back and the tree was in my house."

Related: PG&E power outage map | SMUD power outage map

Strong winds knocked down trees across Northern California on Tuesday. Two people died in two separate Butte County incidents. And in Davis, a teenage driver escaped serious injury but was still hospitalized after a tree came down on his SUV while driving on Seventh Street.

In Folsom, among other cities, as many as 5,000 people lost power due to a blown transformer. Wind-related issues were rampant by the evening hours.

As for Tillotson, one next-door neighbor heard the crash into her home and came out to look at the damage.

"(I) heard like crack, and something -- like an earthquake or something -- and then, bang! I actually thought something fell on our house," Nicky Slobodnjak said.

Photos: Damaging winds topple trees, cause power outages

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Woman leaves home before tree crash: 'I had a premonition'

Phase V (2010 - Current) is divided into two sub-phases: Phase 5A will upgrade all mechanical, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, security, fire monitoring and suppression systems in the Martin House. The main house will be integrated into the geo-thermal exchange heating and cooling system already in place on the campus and in use for the reconstructed pergola, conservatory and carriage house.

An education facility - the Junior League / Buffalo News Learning Center - will be incorporated into the lower-level "playroom" of the Martin House. A motorized lift will connect the first floor of the building with the lower level to provide accessible entry to the Learning Center. In addition, a pantry kitchen has been designed for non-public space on the lower level to service programs in the building.

The second phase of interior restoration, 5B, will focus on the extensive interior wood trim, plaster, and paint finishes, and exterior site-work. This highly specialized and detail-oriented work will complete restoration of the main Martin House to its appearance of 1907.

Upon completion of 5B, the extensive collection of original furnishings entrusted to the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, Bureau of Historic Sites, will be reinstalled in the Martin House according to our Historic Furnishings report. Many pieces of original art glass will be reinstalled in the house at this juncture as well.

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Martin House Restoration Corporation

Home Restoration 2014 Recap
Instead of a Holiday Card and Letter, I went the Holiday video route. So, please, catch up with your favorite music teacher duo and what we have done over th...

By: Jenna Hardy Pedersen

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Home Restoration 2014 Recap - Video

Updated: December 26, 2014 8:46PM

Hickory Creek Barrens Nature Preserve in New Lenox is an example of Excellence in Ecological Restoration, and was so honored recently by Chicago Wilderness a consortium of more than 300 environmental organizations.

The 575-acre preserve on the northeast corner of U.S. 30 and Schoolhouse Road has been the focus of a restoration effort by the Will County Forest Preserve District and is home to more than 140 bird species and the states largest population of the threatened savanna blazing star.

The forest preserve district was one of 10 agencies to receive a restoration award for exemplifying the best practices in natural resource management based on rigorous, science-based standards.

This is the second straight year the forest preserve district has received the award. Last year it was cited for restoration efforts at Braidwood Dunes and Savanna Nature Preserve in Braidwood.

Both awards were platinum the highest level.

Hickory Creek Barrens restoration efforts, which began in 1985, include native seeding and planting, erosion control, vegetation monitoring and prescribed burning. The preserve protects a portion of Hickory Creek as well as a mosaic of savanna, prairie, forest and sedge meadow that supports a diverse group of plants and animals.

In addition to the savanna blazing star, the site also includes an experimental reintroduction of the federally threatened Meads milkweed. Bird species that call this home include the pileated woodpecker, yellow rumped warbler, brown creeper and hermit thrush.

We are thrilled to receive an award that recognizes our many years of restoration work at Hickory Creek Barrens, said forest preserve board president Suzanne Hart. Restoring such a beautiful parcel of land back to its natural state is a long-term project that will benefit the region for years to come. Being acknowledged for this work is truly gratifying.

Susan DeMar Lafferty

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Hickory Creek preserve honored by environmental consortium

When Cliff and Marisa Simmons ventured into the attic and basement of their nearly 150-year-old home in Kittanning, they were like kids opening a Cracker Jack box full of unexpected prizes.

A pile of dance cards from 1904 found behind a stairwell. A fossil. Ten ornate cornices more than 100 years old. A torch charred from use so many decades ago, likely before there was electricity in the home.

It was always my dream to be living in a house like this, Marisa, 56, said. It's fascinating. I love the history of older homes.

The family was looking to move so Cliff, 58, could be closer to Abarta Oil and Gas in O'Hara, Allegheny County, where he is director of operations. Marisa works part time as a store merchandiser in Indiana County. Whitney Simmons, 28, who said she looks forward to one day renovating a home as her parents have done, is a lab tech at Monroeville-based RG Lee Group.

Originally from the Vandergrift area, the family jumped at the chance to move into the old house from their small raised ranch in Indiana County.

When the couple moved to the stately home at 424 N. McKean St. in June, they never expected to find such treasures. Their interest was simply to buy the Italianate-style home and restore it to its earlier glory. They plan to take the pieces of history they've found handmade nails, wooden paneling and other items and incorporate them into their restoration project.

It makes the home more personal, Whitney Simmons said. It's nice to be able to use the things we found and make something new out of them.

Borough archives list the home's original owners as a family of German immigrants named Moesta, who found success in Kittanning in the clothing trade. The home was built in 1872. Traces of writing still linger on an attic wall where the Moesta children scrawled their names in pencil.

The things we found are part of the past of this home, Marisa said. When I look at a home like this, I wonder what were their lives like?

Bringing old and new together is one of the family's aims as they return the home to a style reminiscent of its 19th-century origins a style that won't include the mint green and bubble gum pink paint someone put on its walls long after the Moestas were gone.

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Historical prizes found by family restoring Kittanning home

The inside of Eltham Palace, built in 1936 for members of the Courtauld family. Photograph: Alamy

In the late 15th century, when it was home to a boy who would become Henry VIII, and again in the 1930s, when it became an art-deco party house for the textile millionaire Stephen Courtauld and his wife, Virginia, Christmas was a hectic time at Eltham Palace, as it filled with holly and ivy, candles and firelight, the kitchens working flat out and the great hall filling with guests.

At first glance the great hall so familiar to Henry, who enjoyed many childhood celebrations at Eltham, looks miraculously unchanged under its great hammerbeam roof, the third largest in England, built for Edward IV in the 1470s. But the historian Andrew Hann stoops and pats the stone flagged floor to reveal one of the innovations introduced by Courtauld when he took on the property in the 30s. On a cold winter evening, the slabs are not as icy as expected: this is a medieval hall with underfloor heating.

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Weve learned a great deal about life in this house from people who visited or worked here, and were trying to put back some of that history, Hann says, of the 1.7m that English Heritage has put forward for a conservation project at Eltham Palace, the first since it took over the property in 1995.

The plan is to open previously unseenparts of what must rank as one of its most eccentric properties: a state-of-the-art 1930s mansion attached to a 15th-century hall, surrounded by a Tudor moat, deep in suburban southeast London.

When Henry VIII became king in 1509 he found his waterfront palace at Greenwich more convenient and Eltham fell into decline. It was used as a barn in the 18th century, and by the early 20th century it was an indoor tennis court. In 1933 Courtauld brother of Samuel, who founded the Courtauld Institute controversially gained permission to build a new house in the grounds provided he restored Elthams medieval hall.

John Seely and Paul Paget were an unusual choice of architects. They had excellent society connections, as heir to a title and son of a bishop respectively, and after the second world war they became known for sensitive restoration work on bombed churches. However, in 1933 their firm was only six years old, and Eltham was their first major project.

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Elthams Tudor-deco party palace reveals bunker bar and long-lost paintings

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) The childhood home of famed playwright August Wilson, in the Hill District, is being restored.

At the same time, this project is helping to restore the lives of men whod lost their way.

Steve Shelton is founder of the non-profit Trade Institute of Pittsburgh, which has changed the lives of nearly 100 at-risk men. Three of them are working on the August Wilson house.

We give them a hand up, and not a handout, Shelton explains. Theres no monetary price they have to pay to get into the Trade Institute, but I tell them theyre going to pay with the price of change. Sometimes change is difficult. But these guys have learned well.

Apprentice carpenter Chris Wilson says he was out of work and on the streets, before he enrolled in the the Trade Institute.

Im hoping, few years from now, maybe five years, to have my own company, he said. Real estate, contracting business.

Apprentice bricklayer Scott Snyder served nearly 10 years in prison, on gun charges.

Definitely changed my life, he said. Instead of living on the street, trying to get money, now I can depend on a paycheck.

Apprentice bricklayer Duane Green served time on drug charges.

I went to prison for three years, he said. And when I got out, I needed an opportunity to make some money. I had a family, a wife and kids. And the Trade Institute gave me a way out.

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Restoration Of August Wilsons Home Provides Opportunity For At-Risk Men

by The Associated Press Associated Press

Throughout a recent sunny, cool, late fall afternoon, hundreds of Fouke-area residents enjoyed streaming through the two-story vintage Scoggins House as the city's Citizens For a Better Community group held an open house dedication for this near-century-old home.

The local tourists spent time walking up and down the home's sun-bathed pine-wood stairways as they explored the home's nine historically refurbished rooms and two baths while soaking up views of early 20th century furniture, the Texarkana Gazette (http://bit.ly/1sEuYzw ) reported.

The downstairs rooms included a parlor, dining room, kitchen and library (already containing perhaps more than 200 books), while the upstairs quarters consisted of two bedrooms_one converted into a bride's room, the other a groom's room. A third upstairs bedroom is now a reading room, and a fourth is an office. The largest upstairs room is now a fully computerized education center.

"The people here in Fouke are so willing to do anything to make things better," said Roxie Coker, a local resident. "I'm proud of my community."

The historic domicile is now on the cusp of a new life as a public library, education center and social event center. Local residents will be able to hold musical programs, bridal showers and baby showers, as well as conduct genealogy research, local historical research, budgeting, book review presentations, seminars and parenting and various other workshops in the building.

The education center, known as the Vera and Lawrence Huff Education Center, is named in honor of two local educators. Last year, the late couple's daughter, Mary Elizabeth Huff Haile, who now lives in Urbana, Illinois, donated $50,000 to the historic home's restoration.

The center also received grants from an anonymous donor, the Jerry Roberson estate and the Texarkana Area Community Foundation.

Fouke's Citizens For a Better Community Inc. started renovation work on the home in July 2011 after this nonprofit community volunteer civic organization bought the house for $45,000 when the most recent occupants were faced with foreclosure.

The Scoggins home, about a block north of U.S. Highway 71 behind Fouke City Hall, was originally modeled after a house from a Sears and Roebuck catalog.

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Fouke historic home converted into public library

Dec. 21, 2014, 9:42 p.m.

They'd just moved into their first home when they engaged the services of Illawarra tradie.

He told us hed better any other quote we found and we thought fantastic. File image.

Mangertoncouple Amy Wyatt and Brett Williams had just moved into their first home when they engaged Lauren Gavin to seal some faulty valleys in their roof.

The Bellambi contractor and convicted conman, according to the Department of Fair Trading, spent just hours at the couples house but it was enough to cause thousands of dollars worth of damage to their dream home.

On October 14 this year, Dr Wyatt found rain streaming into her six-week-old daughters bedroom from a leak in the roof, drenching the carpet and the wall.

Prior to Mr Gavins visit, the couple had not observed any water leaking inside their house even during heavy rain.

The pair contacted their home insurer, AAMI, and a different roofer, to come out and assess the damage.

Both bodies found the roof leak had been caused by a corroded valley, which had not been repaired by Mr Gavin as requested.

The couple were devastated.

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'Conman' hits couple's Mangerton dream home

Patricia Happe says a house on a quiet residential street in Edgeworth is an example of restoration, not renovation.

The Italianate-gothic home, which dates to 1860, had had some changes done to it in an effort to lift it out of that antebellum era.

But its owners, John and Mary Menniti, took it back to its roots with one major, effective change: the addition of a bigger kitchen in what was once a porch.

The house is for sale for $650,000.

Work done by the Mennitis adds an intriguing touch to the home, said Happe of Berkshire Hathaway Home Services.

On the Maple Lane side of the house, a previous owner moved the front door away from an entrance area that is enclosed by wood. Happe said the Mennitis reopened that area back, converting it to the porch it once was.

They went the opposite direction on the other side of the house. There, Happe said, an owner in the early 1900s added a bedroom on the second floor. The house originally had three, one of which Happe believes was a maid's room.

Under the added bedroom, a large porch was constructed, facing the yard and a detached garage.

Happe said the Mennitis found the original kitchen, which was below the maid's quarters, to be too small, so they enclosed the porch and made it the home's kitchen.

The result is a large, modern cooking/gathering space with a center island and custom cabinets that match the moldings in the rest of the home. Acanthus leaf carvings a popular 19th century design element have been carried over from the fireplace in the living room to the kitchen. The old kitchen has become a laundry space.

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Edgeworth home offers modern conveniences, antebellum-era charm