Erika Howsare

Talk about a bonus buy: Jeff and Ivy Levien bought a 30-acre parcel at Bundoran Farm in 2012, and only later realized that it came with a historic log cabin. To be precise, the Leviens knew that the building existed, but they figured it for a teardown. Several contractors had concurred with that view, and […]

A 1942 Marshall Wells-designed home in tony Farmington: What could be more traditional? Except when it isn’t. For the last three years, designer Kathy Heiner of KLH Designs has been transforming this home in collaboration with its owners, making it a showcase for an eclectic, unfussy style. “This house is all about friends and family,” says […]

When Kristen and Glenn Martin dropped their daughter off to begin her college career at the University of Virginia in 2013, they weren’t planning on renovating a house in Nelson County’s Stoney Creek development. But, less two years later, that’s what the Pennsylvania residents found themselves doing. “It was very outdated,” says Glenn of the […]

Time is always a key element in landscape: Plants grow and change, seasons come and go. In some cases, it takes time for a design to bloom, too. That was true at Shady Lawn, a Western Albemarle property where landscape architect Anna Boeschenstein, of Grounded, created a master plan five years ago. Her design is […]

A lovely view is lovely, but a spectacular one might be life-changing. Think we exaggerate? Get ye to Elk Mountain Road in Afton on a clear day, and feast your eyes on the kind of vista that can truly alter your outlook. Number 885, which faces east from a lot just off the Blue Ridge Parkway, […]

Ten Flavors, a co-op that includes 11 mostly design-related businesses, has been around for about 35 years. Members have come and gone, and the co-op has moved offices several times, always on the Downtown Mall. But Jim Gibson, a longtime co-op member, says the Ten Flavors folks really, really liked their last home, a high-ceilinged […]

This place looks nothing like a hay barn. Yet there was a time, at some point in the early 20th century, when the Somerset farmhouse now belonging to David and Sissy Perdue was in fact used to store hay. Built in the 1880s as a two-over-two home for a family of chicken farmers, the house […]

The weekend home of a Washington, D.C., couple sits not quite in the middle of their 76-acre property north of Charlottesville. They didn’t choose the most lofty site for their cottage, but instead gravitated toward a spot that snuggles into a treeline and offers a broad, rolling view of fields and woods. “This was our […]

When Vinegar Hill Theatre closed its doors in 2013 after 37 years of showing independent films, many cinephiles in Charlottesville mourned its loss. So when the downtown building became the home of Light House Studio in May 2015, says Light House’s Brooks Wellmon, “There was a ton of community interest in preserving the theater.” Light […]

The first very important question for would-be buyers of 622 Watson Ave. is this: How much imagination do you have? The question is key because the house, a 1930 foursquare, is ripe for a reno. It’s one of the older houses on the street, and in general it’s not the handsomest feller at the hoedown. […]