DENVER (CBS4)- The side of house in DenversFive Points neighborhood collapsed Friday, andinvestigators are trying to determine whether excavation in a neighboring lot played a role.

Ithappenedat a two-story home at 2442 Glenarm Place.No one was home or injured during the collapse. The familys dog was home, but its OK.

Itdidnt make any sound, just fell. Thats it, witnessMax Burlapan said.

Crews from Xcel Energyshut off gas to the area, and restoration crews were inside the building on Friday evening trying tostabilize it.

What caused the partial collapse is being investigated, but preliminary reports suggest there was excavation occurring in a lot nexttothe home.

The contractor doing the work said it had the proper permits and engineering needed, so theyre still not sure what went wrong.

A woman living in the house emailed the contractor Friday morning, inquiring about the safety of the project.The woman and her family are expecting a baby and recently finished the nursery.

Engineers with the city are examining the damage to see if the home can be salvaged or repaired.

Crewsexcavating ground at a nearby project said its necessaryto install structural beams and lagging to protect nearby structures.

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Partial Building Collapse In Five Points Investigated

The Palace of Westminster, home to the Houses of Parliament. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA

The planned restoration of the Palace of Westminster could cost taxpayers more than 3bn, it has been claimed.

An expert who led an examination of options for renovating the historic building told BBC2s Newsnight that it was not unreasonable to think the bill could top 2bn, but the programme claimed the working assumption of insiders was that it could cost 1bn more.

Dr Richard Ware was appointed in 2012 as director of a group studying the restoration and renewal of the palace, and later that year produced a report that put the capital cost of necessary repairs at around 1.5bn.

The report found that basic services within the building, such as electricity, water and sanitation, were functioning with increasing difficulty and growing risks, while asbestos was present throughout the palace and original roofs were no longer watertight, leading to extensive damp, leaks and floods.

The present building home to the House of Lords since 1847 and the Commons since 1852 has had no general renovation since repairs to wartime damage in 1945-50, the 2012 report said, adding: If the palace were not a listed building of the highest heritage value, its owners would probably be advised to demolish and rebuild.

The report considered the options of constructing a new home for parliament, moving one or both houses temporarily while Westminster is renovated, or attempting to restore the building with MPs and peers working inside something it warned could take 50 years. And it proposed the establishment of a quango, along the lines of the Olympic Delivery Authority, to oversee the work.

The House of Commons was told last week that 7m was being spent on a further report, with MPs due to choose their favoured option in spring 2016 and work not expected to begin in earnest until after 2020.

Ware told Newsnight that if nothing was done, politicians and staff would end up working in a ruin. Were moving backwards, the building is getting older, faster than we can deal with it. The building is on borrowed time, and if we dont act soon we wont have a choice.

Asked if the cost would be more than 2bn, Ware said it was not unreasonable to think it will be of that order. But Newsnight said it had been told that the working assumption was that the cost could reach 3bn over many years. It quoted an unnamed source familiar with the project as saying: Id be surprised if it stayed at that.

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Palace of Westminster renovation could cost taxpayers 3bn

1978 Motorhome Restoration #9
These Motor-home restoration videos document my experience rebuilding my particular RV. I #39;m a novice and any advise, information, ideas expressed or seen are to be used at own risk. This kind...

By: Glenn B

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1978 Motorhome Restoration #9 - Video

SANTA ANA, Calif. (KABC) --

They've been staying at the Red Roof Inn in Santa Ana since October with the help of family and the non-profit Global Heart Vision. Joshua works part-time at a grocery store. His wife works part-time at Disneyland.

"We just live day by day and hope for the best, and make sure we have food on the table and a roof over our heads kind of thing," said Joshua.

The Sayongs used to live in Seaside Heights, New Jersey. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy destroyed everything they owned. The devastation came in the midst of the youngest daughter Melyssa's fight with leukemia. The family moved west to continue her chemotherapy at Children's Hospital of Orange County.

In May, doctors gave the family good news: Melyssa was in remission. Last month during a routine checkup, doctors told the family the leukemia had relapsed. Melyssa must now return to the hospital and undergo intense chemotherapy.

"To have it again was just like the first time, it just kind of hits you in the gut," said her mother Kathleen.

It's a feeling the family knows too well. Kathleen, an ovarian cancer survivor, just found lumps in her breast. The middle child, Keila, is autistic.

But Wednesday marked a big change and a fresh start for the family. The Sayongs opened the door to their brand new 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom apartment in Anaheim.

"We haven't really been able to smile in a long time, a lot of different things going on and to see them smile, just means the world to me," said Kathleen.

The new home is a gift from the Santa Ana police department's HEART program. It stands for Homeless Evaluation Assessment Response Team.

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Homeless family moves into new apartment with help of outreach program

When Atlanta firefighters arrive at a fire scene, they do more than put out the fire. They also call a private company to board up the property after a fire. The homeowner doesn't choose the company, the fire department does.

Critics wonder whether Atlanta is playing favorites, with big insurance money at stake.

Zahi Elias owns several rental properties. Last July, his tenant called to say his house in Atlanta was on fire.

When Elias arrived, a company called 1-800-BOARDUP was already on the scene, and the tenant had signed an agreement to let the company board up the house.

"I said 'No, this is my property, not the tenants property. I will board it.' He wasn't happy," Elias said of the BoardUp representative. He called the two men with the company pushy.

1-800-BOARDUP is based in St. Louis. Local restoration companies around the country buy a franchise, and often hire current and former firefighters to be the face of the franchise.

The companys website states, If your market is available and you would like to increase your sales and decrease your dependence on worn out marketing strategies, please contact our franchise sales department.

Testimonials on the website include this one from Dave W. Of California: Our disaster recovery business flourishes because of our 1-800-BOARDUP program.

Retired Atlanta Fire Section Chief Jimmy Hodges gets a paycheck from a restoration company, but if you ask where he works, he'll say, "1-800-BOARDUP."

Every franchise has to have a director of emergency services and usually it's a chief officer like myself, retired, Hodges said. We understand emergency management. We understand what people go through.

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2 Investigates: Fire department ties with home restoration company

The House of Bourbon (English //; French pronunciation:[bu.b]) is a European royal house of French origin, a branch of the Capetian dynasty //. Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma. Spain and Luxembourg currently have Bourbon monarchs.

The royal Bourbons originated in 1268, when the heiress of the lordship of Bourbon married a younger son of King Louis IX. The house continued for three centuries as a cadet branch, while more senior Capetians ruled France, until Henry IV became the first Bourbon king of France in 1589. Bourbon monarchs then unified France with the small kingdom of Navarre, which Henry's father had gained by marriage in 1555, and ruled until the 1792 overthrow of the monarchy during the French Revolution. Restored briefly in 1814 and definitively in 1815 after the fall of the First French Empire, the senior line of the Bourbons was finally overthrown in the July Revolution of 1830. A cadet branch, the House of Orlans, then ruled for 18 years (18301848), until it too was overthrown.

The Princes of Cond were a cadet branch of the Bourbons descended from an uncle of Henry IV, and the Princes of Conti were a cadet branch of the Cond. Both houses were prominent French nobles until their respective extinctions in 1830 and 1814.

When the Bourbons inherited the strongest claim to the Spanish throne, the claim was passed to a cadet who became Philip V of Spain. The strict separation of the French and Spanish thrones was formalized in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1714, and similar arrangements later kept the Spanish throne separate from those of the Two Sicilies and Parma. The Spanish Bourbons (in Spanish, the name is spelled Borbn) have been overthrown and restored several times, reigning 17001808, 18131868, 18751931, and from 1975 to the present day. Bourbons ruled in Naples from 17341806 and in Sicily from 17341816, and in a unified Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from 18161860. They also ruled in Parma from 17311735, 17481802 and 18471859.

Grand Duchess Charlotte of Luxembourg married a cadet of the Parmese line and thus her successors, who have ruled Luxembourg since her abdication in 1964, have also been members of the House of Bourbon. Princess Isabel, heiress and regent of the Empire of Brazil, married a cadet of the Orlans line and thus their descendants, known as the Orlans-Braganza, would have ascended to that throne had the empire not ended in 1889.

All members of the House of Bourbon and its cadet branches alive today are direct agnatic descendants of Henry IV.

The pre-Capetian House of Bourbon was a noble family, dating at least from the beginning of the 13th century, when the estate of Bourbon was ruled by the Sire de Bourbon who was a vassal of the King of France. The term House of Bourbon or "Maison de Bourbon" could be used to refer to this first house and the House of Bourbon-Dampierre, the second family to rule the seigneury.

In 1268, Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth son of King Louis IX of France, married Beatrix of Bourbon, heiress to the lordship of Bourbon and from the House of Bourbon-Dampierre. Their son Louis was made Duke of Bourbon in 1327. His descendant, the Constable of France Charles de Bourbon, was the last of the senior Bourbon line when he died in 1527. Because he chose to fight under the banner of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and lead a life of exile, his title was discontinued after his death.

The remaining line of Bourbons was now descended from the younger son of Louis I, Duke of Bourbon, whose grandson became the Count of Vendme through his mother's inheritance. In 1514, Charles, Count of Vendme had his title raised to Duke of Vendme. His son Antoine became King of Navarre, on the northern side of the Pyrenees, by marriage in 1555. Two of Antoine's younger brothers were Cardinal Archbishop Charles de Bourbon and the French and Huguenot general Louis, Prince of Cond. Louis' descendents, the Princes of Cond, continued until 1830. Finally, in 1589, Antoine's son Henry III of Navarre became Henry IV of France.

The first Bourbon King of France was Henry IV. He was born on 13 December 1553 in the Kingdom of Navarre. Antoine de Bourbon, his father, was a ninth generation descendant of King Louis IX of France. Jeanne d'Albret, his mother was the Queen of Navarre and the niece of King Francis I of France. He was baptized Catholic, but raised Calvinist. After his father was killed in 1563, he became Duke of Vendme at the age of 10, with Admiral Gaspard de Coligny (15191572) as his regent. Five years later, the young duke became the nominal leader of the Huguenots after the death of his uncle the Prince of Cond in 1569.

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House of Bourbon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

When news broke in late 2012 that Orlando's venerable Merita Bread Bakery would close, reaction ranged from concern for workers losing their jobs to questions about the fate of the huge Merita sign overlooking Interstate 4 a Central Florida icon since the 1960s.

Seen from I-4 near the Kaley exit, the large, curvy red letters spelling "Merita" were long accompanied by the homey smell of baking bread, and by a clock that supplied drivers with the time and temperature, too.

It was the perhaps the largest surviving sign designed by the Bob Galler, a true artist of neon who died this past August at 84.

It's fitting that, like some of Galler's other creations, the Merita sign will soon reside in the collections of the Charles Hosmer Museum of American Art in Winter Park. If all goes as planned, the sign will be relocated this month to the Morse warehouse, where it will join Galler signs for Ronnie's and Gary's Duck Inn restaurants.

Artist of our landscape

When Galler retired in late 2006 as design vice president of Orlando's Graphic Systems Inc., he signed off on more than a half-century of shaping Central Florida's visual landscape.

By the way, when he designed the Merita sign in the 1960s, it bore a round tick-tock clock at the top, instead of the digital display added later.

In addition to his work for Ronnie's and Gary's, Galler's credits include well-known signs for McNamara Pontiac, Church Street Market, NASCAR and Walt Disney World. He devised the 1980s version of Orlando's downtown Christmas star that's still in use as the center of the current decoration.

The McKean legacy

Galler was great fun to talk with about his work because he genuinely loved it, a trait he shared with the late Hugh McKean, who became interested in commercial signs while director of the Morse a museum most closely identified with the elegant stained-glass creations of Louis Comfort Tiffany.

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Merita, curvy roadside icon, finds home at Morse Museum

Less than 10 months ago, the house at 145 Galley Ave. was uninhabitable. Now, it is unrecognizable.

The Roncesvalles home was so dilapidated when its elderly owner put it on the market for $649,900 last January, the MLS listing warned open-house enthusiasts to leave the kids at home: Not for the faint of heart.

The furnace hadnt worked in years. The walls were grey from the soot kicked out by kerosene heaters. Windows were missing. The roof was a sieve.

Still, more than 30 folks bid on the house. It sold for $803,649 more than $150,000 over the asking price.

Its up for sale again for $1.5 million.

This is just in keeping with whats been happening in the area, says contractor Michael DeSimone as workers applied the finishing touches, aiming to have it ready for visitors by Dec. 1.

Ten years ago, this Roncesvalles/Parkdale area was in need of revitalization. These things help in that, he says, glancing at the stunning transformation.

An unprecedented renovation/restoration/rejuvenation binge is sweeping the streets of the old City of Toronto and having a significant impact on overall house prices, which were yet again up, this time almost nine per cent, across the GTA in October, year over year.

Last April, for instance, a surge of new infill homes in the 416 region was enough to briefly skew the average mid-month sale price of detached homes in the City of Toronto to an unprecedented $1 million. That average has since settled back down to $950,000.

This renovation and rebuilding boom is fuelled by what James McKellar, director of the real estate and infrastructure program at York Universitys Schulich School of Business, calls a major structural shift in the consumer market for housing.

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The great Toronto rebuild

Restoration of the Esrock Residence on the corner of Tenth Street and Adella Avenue has revealed one historic page of information after another. The project was completed last month by Lorton Mitchell Custom Homes and has recently been occupied by new owners, Bernie and Jill Esrock.

The 1902 home was moved from its original location on Ocean Boulevard in 1905 after enormous storms battered the shoreline, destroying the boulevard and throwing seas of water into the front yards of the oceanfront homes. Originally known as the Kneedler Home, it was owned by Dr. William L. Kneedler, a retired Army doctor and personal physician to President William H. Taft.

To move the home, multiple teams of horses had to be brought in, as well as large logs and a small army of men. They slowly raised the home, placed it on logs, and pulled it, one-foot at a time, across Orange Avenue and the trolley tracks, towards its new destination on high ground at Tenth and Adella.

As one log popped out the rear, it was painstakingly replaced in the front, and so on. The entire operation took the better part of five days, Friday-Tuesday. It was moved fast for a reason. On Sunday, record tides were expected to hit our shores. That, combined with the stormy seas, might just have proved fatal for the Kneedler Home.

Being a wooden structure, the Kneedler Home could be moved, unlike the brick and stone residences along Ocean Boulevard, which had to stay on their original foundations. Within a year, however, workers were able to build a large, rock seawall, which saved the homes and allowed for a reconstruction of Ocean Blvd. The rock seawall, paid for by the homeowners, is still in place today.

In the 1950s the Kneedler Home became known as the Morton Home, owned by Dr. Paul Morton, a fondly remembered Coronado physician. A new historical chapter for this home had begun. Last year, Lorton Mitchell and his team began to excavate the site after receiving an endorsement from Coronados Historic Resource Commission to restore the home to its original 1902 exterior.

Contractors are used to finding sand, and even water from the aquifer (the underground river coursing underneath Coronado) when digging on a site. Often they find old bottles from a time gone by. What Mitchell found was what he believes to be the ancient seashore of Coronado at the edge of Tenth and Adella, dating back millions of years, to a time before streets, homes, or even people.

The site was dry, said Mitchell. We drilled down 30 feet and never hit water. What we did hit, however, were pre-limestone formations dating back millions of years. Ive never seen this in the more than 100 homes weve built in Coronado. We hit the brown sand, and we hit the white sand, but what we saw next was like nothing we had encountered before.

Mitchell brought in a geologist to confirm their findings. There were no fossils, but lots and lots of seashells. The pre-limestone foundation was created by pressure and time, fusing together into stone over the centuries.

The conclusion was that, at one time, Coronados shoreline ended at the area near Tenth and Adella, where Tenth drops down into what early residents called the Coronado Flats (the Pomona/Glorietta area). That, indicated the geologist, was all water.

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Extraordinary Home Restoration Reveals Prehistoric Coronado Seashore

NAIR NAY PYI TAW: Prime Minister Narendra Modi today met Nobel laureate and Myanmar's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi who described India as her "second home", recalling her years spent in the country.

It was Modi's first interaction with the 69-year-old pro-democracy icon.

The Prime Minister referred to Suu Kyi as a "symbol of democracy", referring to the enormous efforts made by her for restoration of democracy in Myanmar long ruled by military junta.

After the meeting, spokesman of the Ministry of External Affairs, Syed Akbaruddin tweeted that the Myanmarese leader had told Modi that India was her "second home".

"India is my second home - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to @PMOIndia," Akbaruddin tweeted.

He told reporters that Suu Kyi was effusive in her praise of India.

Suu Kyi told Modi that India was the first country to which she travelled from Burma, which was the old name of Myanmar.

The opposition leader also underscored the importance of stability going hand in hand with democracy.

The prime minister also presented Suu Kyi with a special copy of Mahatma Gandhi's commentary on Bhagwad Gita.

Asked by a journalist whether the prime minister had extended an invitation to the Myanmar leader to visit India, the spokesperson said, "the invitation to Aung San Suu Kyi to visit India is always available as no one invites one to her second home".

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'India my second home', Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi tells Prime Minister Narendra Modi