How to get the surfer look
Two websites where you can decorate for less
 Click on “heck yeah”: Free stuff for your pad is all over local websites. |
The Salvation Army and Goodwill are wonderful groups, to be sure, but trolling their stores isn’t the only way to snag used furniture and other treasures at prices a cheapskate could love. These days, smart shoppers also keep an eye on message boards at www.craigslist.org and www.freecycle.org—both of which have sites specific to Charlottesville.
Craigslist (What? You’ve never been on craigslist?) is a well-organized, stripped-down place to post all kinds of messages, from personals on up. That includes many home-related topics: furniture for sale, household items, garage sales, even real estate sales and rentals. A recent posting, typical of the genre: “TV stand—$50.” The seller is in Forest Lakes and can receive e-mails directly from the craigslist site. There’s even a “barter” section: “Trade Walnut for Heart Pine,” reads one post from someone in Belmont eager to made a deal.
Which brings us to freecycle, where by definition everything on offer will cost you nothing. Not just for offering your unwanted stuff—or saying “yes, please” to someone else’s castoffs—freecycle is a good place to let the world know that you’re in need of a new bookcase. “Wanted: Baby Gates” read one recent posting from a harried parent; farther up the same page, “Offer: Baby items in Charlottesville” might promise a solution.—Erika Howsare
Nothing like Animal House
UVA service group needs donations for house call
 If your house looks like this, you need to go to the Home Show. If your house is “finished,” you REALLY need to go. |
Got a list of house projects that’s been nagging you for years? Imagine that, one fine Saturday morning, dozens of college students show up at your place to help you get them done—all in one day. That’s what will happen on March 24 at the Piedmont House, a halfway house for nonviolent male felons on Monticello Avenue. About 80 students from UVA’s coed service fraternity, Alpha Phi Omega, will descend on the house and spend the day improving it for the men who live there.
The organization routinely spends Saturday mornings doing projects—many of them construction- or maintenance-related—for local nonprofits like Habitat for Humanity, says pledge Calder Telep. At Piedmont House, they’ll be tackling a hefty to-do list: putting a railing on a porch, installing a fence around dumpsters, adding gutters, landscaping, repairing the back porch, enclosing basement stairs, and putting in recreational equipment like horseshoe pits and basketball hoops.
That’s a lot of work, and the preparations are no piece of cake in themselves. Telep says simply, “Right now we need pretty much everything”—monetary donations toward a $4,500 budget, as well as gifts of lumber, concrete, sand for a volleyball court, small tools, paint, nails, screws and two moveable basketball hoops. If you dig the thought of 80 collegians crawling busily over a building and want to give some support, e-mail piedmonthouseproject@gmail.com for details on making a donation.—E.H.
Know your Home Show
What’s up at everyone’s fave yearly shelter event?
Here at ABODE, we rejoice at the coming of the Blue Ridge Home Show on March 9-11 (get yer tickets on site for $3 at the Cage at University Hall). We don’t, however, rejoice at the prospect of writing the same old Style File we wrote about it last year at this time. So get ready for our all-new Home Show quiz!
Here’s how it works. We’ll give you the name of a shelter vendor you might spot at the show, only we’ll alter it somewhat. Example: Instead of “ceiling” we might say “floor.” You attend the show, survey the room with all its dozens of vendors, from homebuilders to tile dealers to pool installers, and figure out the company’s actual name. (Or, um, just look below for the answers.)
1. “Murky Prospect.” This company deals in the “eyes” of the house.
2. “Continental Rock.” They’ll beat you at marbles.
3. “Chapel Mountain.” You might say their company is “in development.”—E.H.
Answers:
1. Clear View Window Tinting
2. European Stone Concepts
3. Church Hill Development
Green mile
Homebuyers get smarter about houses’ true costs
 The drive to town might be pretty, though its costs are anything but. |
Gone are the days of huge living room + cute breakfast nook = sold. The next generation of consumers is starting to put rising real estate prices into more logical, and ecological, terms. The idea of “house miles,” or miles between home and work, school, groceries, etc., has been getting some play since last fall thanks to experts from the Urban Land Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. For Generation Y, they say, house buying will include a sharper focus on energy sources, green building and public transportation.
Let’s do some math, shall we? Say I purchase a house in North Garden. If I calculate that house’s mileage based upon factors like its lack of a major grocery store, current gas prices, my job’s Downtown Mall location, and my determination to pack all my activities in town into one car trip, I’m looking at, at the very least, an additional $1,700 a year. That’s estimating only six trips to town per week—meaning no movies, shoe shopping, last-minute grocery runs. If I don’t carpool with my boyfriend, make that $3,400 for our household.
Buying a cheap place out in the boonies used to make sense, but with energy costs and environmental concerns rising, it’s no longer necessarily the most efficient decision. The price of transportation is now competing with the cost difference between urban and suburban living, so perhaps developers and planners will get the message that sprawl is a bad thing. And if you’re the owner of a centrally located abode, congratulate yourself on an excellent investment.—Katherine Cox
Easy on the eyes
Don’t gamble; go big with paint samples
 Yolo Colorhouse sells giant posters, all one color—oh wait, those are paint samples. |
Still gazing at that 2" color chip that’s taped to the dining room wall, desperately attempting some kind of psychic paint job before you commit to Bohemian Purple? Before you pull out your rollers, check out what some paint companies like Portland’s Yolo Colorhouse (www.yolocolorhouse.com) have to offer: poster-size color swatches that are made with actual paint! The $6 swatches even come with tacking, making it possible for you to stick it temporarily to the wall, then switch it from room to room. Another company, Colori, also provides large $6 swatches (www.colorichicago.com). Makes you wonder why you ever picked up that ink-printed color fan, doesn’t it? And you can make giant origami cranes out of them when you’re done!
Yolo’s nature-inspired tones reflect their aim as a company—to provide environmentally responsible, VOC-free products that don’t contribute to pollution (VOCs are volatile organic compounds, linked to a variety of health problems).
Other companies take a different approach to solving the tiny-paint-chip problem: sample jars that you paint right onto the wall in question. California Paints (www.californiapaints.com) has 4-oz. jars and Behr (www.behr.com) offers 8-oz. samples. —K.C.
