In 2012, you could have felt hopeful about the economy on any given day. Some days, you also could have felt the opposite. It was the year of the rocky recovery. But if you take a closer look at what happened in key...

It used to be easy to labor fixtures. I learned a lot about lamps and fixtures in the ’70s and memorized all the standard labor units 30 years ago. For a long time, nothing changed. Apply the standard labor unit, throw in the...