Custom

Pam Chandler decided to accompany her husband, Bob, to the extraordinary auction of an Ocean City, N.J., mansion Saturday to keep him from "going overboard. " But an hour after she toured the 7,000-square-foot Victorian-style house on the Great Bay, she was the one prodding him to stay in the frenzied bidding on the breezy bayside veranda. The Chandlers, who live in Rumson, Monmouth County, with their three children, won the auction, ultimately paying $3.9 million for a property that was listed at about $6.5 million two years ago. It is assessed at $5 million.

Peachtree Point Moorestown (609) 235-1950 Finely detailed, custom-built houses, with the accent on custom woodwork, are offered at Peachtree Point in Moorestown. Maines & Simpson Inc. (Steward "Gub" Maines 3d and Paul Simpson) and Robert Maines are building houses that exceed 3,000 square feet of living space and $350,000 in price. Forty houses on two- to five-acre lots are planned for the site, which includes a section of the Rancocas Creek. To date, the largest house is close to 5,000 square feet, and the most expensive cost about $425,000.

Longview Lane, Marlborough Township, Chester County 459-5500. In the midst of the historic Brandywine area of Chester County, custom, single-family houses are under construction at Longview Lane. The 44-acre development is adjacent to, and takes its name from, the renowned Longwood Gardens. The site plan calls for the 23 houses of Longview Lane to be located along one slightly curving lane that ends in a cul-de-sac. Surrounding the site are horse farms, other single houses and about 108 acres of Longwood Gardens, including a bird sanctuary.

Estates at Stone Ridge, Buckingham Township, Bucks County To say that 12 standard designs are offered by DeLuca Enterprises Inc. at the Estates at Stone Ridge is misleading. In fact, calling any home at Stone Ridge "standard" is understatement at the least. Priced well above a half-million dollars each, the homes in this new community are really custom designed - even the "standard" ones are being completely customized to each buyer's needs and desires. For example, the Aspen design proved to be but a starting point for the home of Chanchal Khanna, a pathologist, and her husband, Om, a surgeon.

When Attorney General Ernie Preate Jr. looks for clues, he usually looks under the rug. In his latest case, he examined the rug itself. Such diligent detective work was what helped break The Case of the Tricky Toupe, in which an establishment selling hair replacements called The Hairmakers wasn't, well, making hair. Preate's office said yesterday that The Hairmakers, with stores in Center City and King of Prussia, stated in sales contracts that its hairpieces were "custom-made" when in fact they were stock hairpieces previously manufactured to standard sizes.

Steve Behrle will some day work for his father. Yesterday, he went to work on Malvern Prep's offense. Behrle, a 5-10, 185-pound senior linebacker, collected eight tackles and two sacks and forced a fumble - recovered by lineman Mark Muraglia and converted into the game's final touchdown - as Episcopal Academy, the heavy preseason favorite, muffled the host Friars, 24-0, in an Inter-Ac League opener. Actually, Behrle - it rhymes with Merrill - already works for his father.

Robert A. Hopf, 75, a retired custom-home builder who had a great interest in sports, died Saturday at his home in Jenkintown after a long illness. Mr. Hopf founded Robert A. Hopf Builders in 1950, and built customized houses in the Somerton and Bustleton sections of Philadelphia, Huntingdon Valley in Montgomery County, and Newtown Township and Washington Crossing in Bucks County. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was a member of the Jenkintown Zoning Hearing Board. Mr. Hopf was born in New York City and reared in Philadelphia, graduating from Frankford High School in 1940.

As a widely respected foreign correspondent, I recently felt the need to travel to Germany so I could observe firsthand the front lines of this dangerous all-dominating worldwide struggle we have come to know as the Cold War. At least that's what I'm going to tell the Internal Revenue Service. The truth is, I went to Germany because this is the year I turn 40, and I felt the need to be surrounded by the largest possible quantity of beer. They are very good at beer, the Germans, and what is more, they tend to serve it in vessels the size of municipal stadiums.

Guido B. Muscelli, 101, one of the owners and operators of Muscelli Brothers Clothing Manufacturers, in South Philadelphia, for 70 years, died Sunday at Zurbrugg Hospital, Willingboro. Mr. Muscelli died on his birthday and had enjoyed sound health until about a month ago. He had lived in South Jersey for the last 10 years and at the Burlington Woods Convalescent Center, in Burlington Township, for the last five years. Mr. Muscelli was born in Italy, where he learned to sew. He came to the United States at age 16. He entered the country through Ellis Island and settled in the Philadelphia area.

The white-lettered logo "Pemfab" does not tell passing motorists much about what goes on in the one-story building on Indel Avenue, off Route 295, in the Rancocas section of Westampton Township. Only the four lime and white fire engines aligned neatly on the left side of the building behind a fence gives passersby a hint. Pemfab, short for Pemberton Fabricators Inc., is a small precision-metal fabricating company of 120 employees owned by Inductotherm Corp. According to Richard J. Gergel, vice president for marketing, the company is one of only a half-dozen nationwide specializing in the design and manufacture of fire- engine chassis and cabs.

An African American shopper who says he suffers emotional distress and mental afflictions caused by a racist intercom announcement he heard two years ago at a Wal-Mart store in Washington Township, Gloucester County, is suing the retail giant for $1 million. Donnell Battie, 35, of Winslow Township, was in the crowded store on Route 42 the evening of March 14, 2010, when a male voice said over the loudspeaker: "Attention Wal-Mart customers, all black people must leave the store.

Minutes before the Fresh Donuts shop on Lancaster Avenue closed Saturday, Tamara Harris and her daughter, Tanjanique, 16, stopped in. They wanted to give a get-well card to shop employee Sokchea Luy, 27. "I couldn't believe someone would do something like that," said Tamara Harris, who is a crossing guard at a nearby school and stops by daily for coffee and something to eat. "These are really nice people. " People have been dropping in with cards, good wishes, and even money since Tuesday morning, when a well-dressed man, a regular customer, lost his temper in the store and threw a cup of hot coffee at Luy. He badly burned her upper arm, but it might have been worse if she hadn't used the arm to shield her face.

Jen Green looks out at the 80-some millennials chatting it up with local designers at the art gallery studio: christensen in Rittenhouse Square. Clad in this spring's must-have brights, the guests look swank. The rhubarb cocktails are flowing. And Green couldn't be more pleased. The April soiree, featuring Germantown-based women's-wear label NIC*FISH and calligrapher/jewelry designer Danny Fox, marks the one-year anniversary of HyLo Boutiques — short for hyper-local — Green's consulting company and design collective that uses a unique-to-our-time business model to promote fashions conceived of and manufactured in Philadelphia.

NEW YORK - How much would you pay for an amazing, state-of-the-art lightbulb? Shoppers will be asking themselves that very question at Home Depot and other outlets starting Sunday - Earth Day - when the bulb that won a $10 million government contest goes on sale. The bulb is the most energy-efficient yet, and is supposed to last about 20 years and to give off a pleasing, natural-looking light. But what separates it from the pack most is the price tag: $60. That's the price that reflects the cost of the components, especially the top-notch chips, or diodes, that give off the light, and that's the price commercial customers will pay. But the manufacturer, the Netherlands-based Philips, is discounting it right away to $50 for consumers, and working on deals with electric utilities to discount it even further, by as much as $20 to $30. Congress launched the L Prize contest in 2007, with the goal of creating a bulb to replace the standard, energy-wasting "incandescent" 60-watt bulb.

Everyone arriving back from abroad must fill in a Customs Declaration Form. Whether you're traveling with immediate family members or not, you'd better fill out at least three or four extra copies since these annoyingly oversize, hard-to-fold cards tend to get crumpled and lost when Customs officials start barking, "Get in line!" "Turn off your cell phone!" "Open that passport to the photo page!" Here's a look at what you can expect: 1. Print your family name. Print your given name.

Nine years after filing their first legal complaint, Comcast customers who contend that the cable television giant undercut competitors with unfair pricing policies and other anticompetitive strategies can take their claims to a jury. U.S. District Judge John R. Padova, sitting in Philadelphia, said Comcast customers had presented evidence during pretrial proceedings showing that the company had offered lower prices and extended contracts in a way that may have driven out competition.

Next door to the Old City fire station and Ben Franklin Park is a darling boutique with a timely fashion mission and a perfectly patriotic name. US*U.S. is a 600-square-foot designer co-op led by custom clothier Lele Tran that houses a practical mix of easy-to-wear clothing, including a boho-inspired children's line, bold-hued bikinis and a collection of Gothic couture wear featuring corsets and fitted skirts. But in addition to delivering this spring's latest colorful styles, US*U.S.

Moorestown girls' lacrosse coach Deanna Knobloch had a much different view of her latest accomplishment in a career that is shaping up as one of the best in South Jersey history, regardless of sport. Knobloch improved to 400-29-4 with Saturday's 8-3, season-opening win over visiting Strath Haven of Delaware County in a nonleague matchup played under raw, damp conditions. Instead of looking at it as her 400th win, Knobloch saw it as the first this season, a year in which the only goal remains the same: to be the last New Jersey team standing at the end. "This is a new season, and this is just the first rung up the ladder," she said.

When Naomi Stein, a Bala Cynwyd interior designer, was searching for a set of nightstands for her bedroom, she ran into a dilemma: She had a limited budget and rather expensive taste. Then she came across a blog post featuring an Ikea Rast dresser, a plain three-drawer box in unfinished pine, that had been painted, stained, and blinged out with hardware. She decided to follow the blogger's lead, creating her own elegant accent pieces from the same unassuming Ikea structure. "I figured, I can try it," Stein said.

If Philadelphia were a font, what would it look like? The Phillies logo? Maybe something like the Germanic Fraktur font used by the Pennsylvania Dutch? Surely there'd be an element of colonial-era history and maybe some whiffs of contemporary branding. (Wawa? Comcast?) Infusing the character of a big city into tiny letters is no small project. Even more daunting might be justifying why such an endeavor even matters. But these are the challenges faced by Robbie de Villiers and Jeremy Dooley, two typeface designers in Chattanooga, Tenn., who are developing a custom, city typeface.