Illuminations of the Triad
941 Hastings Hill Road
Kernersville NC
336-996-2424
Illuminations@embarqmail.com
www.lightingofyourlife.com

The Light Stuff

Though it's tucked away in an unassuming brick building in a residential community off of Kernersville's Union Cross Road, Illuminations of the Triad is impossible to miss. You’ll recognize it from the showroom window aglow with every light fixture imaginable, from Tiffany-style hanging lamps to wrought iron chandeliers, to contemporary pendant lamps—not to mention floor lamps, ceiling fans and a back room devoted to outdoor lighting features. Illuminations’ owner Angie Brown—with an appropriate kilowatt smile—had always enjoyed decorating friends’ houses and showed a flair for lighting. At the urging of an electrician friend she took the plunge and opened her business in August of 2006. “There was so much to learn,” she comments. "There must be thousands of different kinds of bulbs; you have to learn the specs of a house, the height of a chandelier, color and decorating of fixtures.” But Brown was undaunted and built her business working exclusively with builders, and in recent months with off-the-street customers. Serving residential and commercial clients, Illuminations’ has fixtures from 50 different companies, including Golden and Regency, and keeps careful records of all orders (so, if you should break that hard-to-replace globe, you can easily find another). Though it doesn’t do actual installation, Illuminations offers free delivery, supplies parts and does warranties. The company works on both residential and commercial contracts. Under-cabinet lighting, accent lighting, landscape lighting and lamp repair are its most sought-after services.

But perhaps the best service that Illuminations of the Triad provides is educating customers. "So many come in the door who do not know what they want," says Brown. After all, there’s a lot to lighting a room—the size of it, for one, the ornateness of the fixture. Brown sees more outdoor elements, such as sconces, coming into houses, as well as a large variety of styles, from Old World to contemporary. "So many people want everything matchy-matchy, she observes. "We try to encourage individuality from room to room to customize a home." And seeing a customer walk away happy is one of Brown’s greatest sources of satisfaction. The other is her sense of accomplishment. "It’s been an adventure," she says of her enterprise, "I feel like I’ve been to college and flunked, been to college and flunked, and now I’m ready to graduate." With highest honors, no doubt.

Interlandi and Associates
Custom Home Designs
950 Graves Street, Suite E
Kernersville NC
336-993-4252
www.interlandihomedesign.com

Foundation for a Dream

For Salvatore (“Sal”) Interlandi, president of Interlandi and Associates Custom Home Design, pursuing a career as an architect was a dream deferred. Though trained in architecture in his native New York, Interlandi’s path took him to the field of nuclear engineering, until a layoff in the early 1990s. With the help of his wife Joanne, he set up shop in the basement of his house in Kernersville, where his dream took root Of course, he’d nourished it over the years. “All along, I was drawing houses, mostly as favors for friends,” Interlandi explains. He also found that his experience as an engineer came in handy when it came to stresses, beams and torque. And his timing was spot-on. “The market, at that time, was just on the incline,” Interlandi recalls. He landed two “good-sized” projects and was off and running.

Fast-forward to today, and the company now occupies office space on Graves Street, near Highway 421, and includes two young designers, Ryan Fortin and Brandon Echols (along with Interlandi’s brother John, who prepares all the company’s renderings). In the last three years, the company has created about 300–500 houses, most of them in the Piedmont Triad. So just what goes into hiring an architect? For one, it helps to do some homework and arrive at an initial meeting with any photos, articles, plans or sketches. “We’ll do a composite drawing from all of those ideas,” says Interlandi. From there, it might take a couple of passes until elevations, a floor plan, square footage and roofline are established. At this point, Interlandi likes to loop in a contractor (who can be someone of his or the client’s choosing), who can advise a client as to whether they’re within or over budget.

Among the building trends Interlandi is seeing, is a desire among homebuyers for “a house to be the one they retire in.” That means adding wider corridors and doors, and walk-in showers for wheelchair access.” He’s also noticing more user-friendly kitchens, a single common area for gathering, eating and cooking, usually distinguished by differing ceiling and flooring choices, and “charging areas”—a separate space off of the garage for charging 21st-century tech toys, so there’s no hunting for the cell phone charger. These days, the company is also doing a brisk trade in renovations, which often means increasing master bedrooms or finishing basements for office or workout use. As much as he loves designing houses, Interlandi is happy to let designers Fortin and Echols take the reins, and enjoys nurturing high school and college interns. “You can see the excitement in the kids and how they get into it,” Interlandi says with a smile. The same kind of excitement that he must have felt as a child, playing with erector sets and designing high-rise cities and “all kinds of crazy stuff,” he recalls. Crazy? Well, sometimes that’s what it takes to make dreams come true.