Home Front
By JUDY STARK, Times Homes Editor
© St. Petersburg Times
published April 20, 2002
Briefs and news of note
A Florida 'panic room'
The Pinellas Parade of Homes ends Sunday. Brighten your tour of the subdivisions by stopping at the Highlands of Innisbrook to visit the Portofino model by M.P. Campagna Homes, where you can check out the current must-have, movie-thriller feature: a hurricane safe room. Now imagine you're Jodie Foster in Panic Room and scream away. The Campagna model is one of four new custom models at the Highlands of Innisbrook, on Alt. 19 N in Palm Harbor; it backs up to the Westin Innisbrook Resort. Information: (727) 939-2900. Models are open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. today, noon-5 p.m. Sunday.
Tour Old Southeast homes
From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today, visit 11 homes in the Old Southeast neighborhood of St. Petersburg, from Fourth Street to Tampa Bay and from 16th to 22nd avenues SE. It's a This Old House kind of neighborhood with lots of renovation going on, many different styles of homes and a knockout waterfront jewel, Lassing Park. Tickets are $5 at the park, which is on Beach Drive SE between 16th and 22nd avenues SE. Information: (727) 827-0024.
Once upon a time . . .
Speaking of Sears kit homes (you can visit one today on the Old Southeast neighborhood tour, see above), children's author Rosemary Wells introduces the youngest generation to this bit of Americana with The House in the Mail (Viking, $16.99), a book she wrote with her architect husband, Tom Wells. Narrator Emily Cartwright, a 12-year-old growing up in Enfield, Ky., in the late 1920s, recounts her family's experience of ordering their dream home from a catalog and building it with the help of friends. The house represents a leap into modernization for the Cartwrights, who get their first electric lights, indoor plumbing, gas stove, refrigerator and washing machine.
Remodelers host garage sale
From 8 a.m. to noon today, local remodeling contractors are holding their annual garage sale to get rid of overstocks, misorders, salvaged items and other good stuff. The Tampa Bay Area chapter of the National Association of the Remodeling Industry will sell doors, kitchen cabinets, windows, tile, appliances, locks, moldings, rails, office equipment, tools, who knows what all, at In-Town Mini Storage, 1026 19th St. N, St. Petersburg. Someone else's mistake or castoff might be just what you're looking for.
-- Compiled by Homes editor JUDY STARK
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