Salon d'handyman
Building or remodeling a home may have just gotten easier. Wydawnictwo Murator, a publisher of construction, architecture and interior design books and magazines, last month opened its first "salon," a resource center for do-it-your-selfers.
The aim of the newly established Murator Salon on Al. Wyzwolenia 14 in Warsaw is to provide amateur builders or renovators with all the information they need to design their home or refurbish their flat the way a professional would. The center, which has three rooms and occupies 192 square meters, contains areas for would-be "handymen" to relax and peruse copies of Murator publications. It also features a computer cafe.
"The start-up of a place like this is a great idea from an individual investor's point of view," said Tomasz Linkiewicz (right), who stopped by the center last Wednesday for Murator's grand-opening party. He said he admired the plastic models of houses that were on display.
"Even a simple tip you get from a specialist, an architect for instance, costs a lot of money, and here you can get it for free," Linkiewicz said. "I've just started building a house and I've already faced a lot of questions that I don't have the answers for."
It's part-time builders like Linkiewicz that the center is hoping to attract.
"We would like everyone building a house to find their way to this place," said Jacek Oryl, the development and promotion director at Murator. "We want to share our experience so we decided to open ourselves up to people."
Murator, it seems, has experience to share. Set up in 1982 by journalists who lost their jobs or decided they could no longer work for communist newspapers, Murator was the first private publishing house in Poland since shortly after World War II. The publisher's first magazine, a monthly called Murator - roughly "builder" in Polish suffered during its early days and was shut down for a year in 1990. Today Murator circulates about 180,000 copies monthly. Murator also publishes magazines Architektura, Murator Plus, Dobre Wnetrze (Good Interior) and other professional books and catalogs.
But a handyman's combination library and cafe is not all that the Murator Salon is promising for its patrons. Also included at the resource center, which cost zl. 200,000 to build, are rotating exhibitions of modern materials and technologies used in the construction industry. The current exhibit details the most modern methods for preparing exterior walls.
Jadwiga Glowacka, who runs a construction company, studied the exterior walls exhibit last week. While she has already built her own house and doesn't plan on building another, she said that as a professional she has to be aware of all innovations on the construction market.
"These walls have a filler that is ecological," Glowacka said. "It is clever and what is really important cheap."
In addition to the exhibits, the resource center also wants to hold readings and discussions every Friday, said Iwona Czerwienska-Cabaj, the client services manager for Murator.
"The first meeting is planned for Feb. 11 and will be about old-building renovation and reconstruction," she said. "Emilian Kaminski, a famous Polish actor will tell us how he handled his old house."
