AFriendlyHouse.com

where style meets safety

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A Family Run Website

Longtime journalist Lynette Evans has worked as an interior designer and design writer. Most recently, she was the Home & Garden editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, a post she also held at the San Francisco Examiner. As an interior designer specializing in kitchens and baths, she created the fully accessible interiors for her parents' retirement home, which she profiles at AFriendlyHouse.com.

While living in the South of Spain for over a decade, Monika Weiss experienced a culture where multi-generational dwelling was a commonly practiced tradition. Each apartment complex held its own narrative of challenges, such as the five-story building with no elevator, where, over time, the grandparents’ outings would be limited to doctor visits and special occasions. Or the eight-story building that had an elevator but no ramp for the lobby stairs despite a wheelchair-bound resident who had grown up there. In her time there, Monika ran her own Internet café aimed at college-aged foreigners and locals alike before spending her last three years working in marketing. Now back in the United States, she hopes to propel the ideas of AFriendlyHouse into the mainstay of American building and design.

Our Contributors

A Friendly House has phenomenal contributors who are committed to our shared goal of providing education, tips and an online community for people interested in well designed homes with safety as a priority. Thanks to our experienced and knowledgeable contributors, we're able to continually grow.

Monika Weiss

AFriendlyHouse.com's marketing director, Monika Weiss wears many hats: director of social networking, translator of Jonathan Chacon Barbero's product reviews from Spanish to English, and reporter and photographer of houses and products for the website. A believer in healthy living, Monika recently finished her first triathlon.
Lynette Evans

AFriendlyHouse.com editor Lynette Evans has begun blogging about her ongoing farmhouse remodel and commenting on contemporary home design. In her not-so-spare time she grows heirloom tomatoes and tends chickens.
http://blog.afriendlyhouse.com
Darlene Jurow

Darlene Jurow, ASID, CID, is principal of Jurow Design Associates, Piedmont, CA. Educated at Stephen's College, Columbia, MO., UCLA and New York School of Interior Design, she also studied Feng Shui at Nanjing University, China. A former president of the American Society of Interior Designers, Northern California, and member of ASID National Student Advisory Council, she has taught at Fashion Institute of Interior Design, SF, served on the Educational Advisory Board of the Art Institute, SF, the Editorial Advisory Board of Design for Living magazine and as docent to the Foundation for SF's Architectural Heritage. She recently received the Chapter Medalist Award from the National Board of Directors of ASID.
Jonathan Chacón Barbero

Accessibility, usability and new technologies developer and consultant Jonathan Chacón Barbero is the first blind programmer to develop an accessible game made for both blind and sighted players to be sold in the App Store; Buscaminas or Minesweeper was developed after 120 hours of writing code, spanning 7 months. Born blind from a congenital glaucoma, at just 45 days old, Jonathan received an operation that restored 90% of his vision. Entering into his teen years, however, his glaucoma returned and despite numerous operations, he is in the small minority of the blind who is 100% without sight. We will be featuring Jonathan’s product reviews to find out their degree of accessibility for those with low to no vision and we will discover how accessible he finds his own city to be, Seville, Spain.
Jan Goben

Writer and editor Jan Goben brings objective reporting, concise writing and her unique perspective to AFriendlyHouse.com. Jan lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter (and sometimes her two grown stepsons). Look for her to discover great accessible projects, to interview leaders in the field of universal design and occasionally to detail improvements she makes to her own home.
http://tinyurl.com/4oqtrxu