As its name suggests, the utility knife is very, well, useful. Sometimes called a “box cutter” because of its superiority to a pair of scissors for splitting thick packaging tape and cutting open boxes, the utility knife has multiple purposes. The razor blade—most often retractable—can be used for cutting drywall, laminate flooring or carpeting; scraping […]
Kids on kitchen duty Problem: Getting the kids to help themselves Kate Bennis and Hal Movius designed their kitchen so that Anya, 4, and Luke, 6, can set their own table. Transferring from more cramped quarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, a few years ago, Kate Bennis and her husband, Hal Movius, were thrilled to find an […]
SEE MORE Click here for a gallery of more photos from Cox and Galfione’s home. “Our kids have left. Why are we doing this now?” That’s what local architect Giovanna Galfione says she and her husband, Maurice Cox, asked themselves repeatedly before embarking on a two-year, two-phase project to renovate their 100-year-old home in the […]
Whether you own your own home or rent an apartment, the putty knife is up there with the screwdriver as a must-have tool. That’s true even if you’re the type who calls a handyman just to hang a picture for you. With its flat blade and sturdy handle, the putty knife is like an industrial-strength […]
Willie Drake makes the most out of being a mountain man Willie Drake, founder of world-renowned Mountain Lumber Co., a reclaimed wood and millwork company in Ruckersville with a showroom in the Main Street Market, says he fell in love with salvaging abandoned wood timbers from old barns and factories “long before I was an […]
Ted Nelson’s chair for a new age Ted Nelson, architect and owner of Design Build Office and a 2002 graduate of the UVA Architecture School, says it took hundreds of hours to design, test and complete his newspaper chair. Architect and builder Ted Nelson takes a seat in his paper project. The chair is comprised […]
READ THE FEATURE • The Paper Chase Challenge [with video!]: Three designers, three weeks and a whole lot of waste paper • Four local designers turn trash to treasure • What’s old is new again: Local items to attract your eye and your eco-consciousness. It started as a source of self-gratification and ended up a celebration of sustainability. […]
The workhorse tool in my house is the cordless power drill. That’s true even though most of the bits for boring holes, grinding and sanding are collecting dust in the garage as our serious D.I.Y. home improvement projects are behind us (for now anyway). Mostly we use the bits for easily driving and removing […]
The list of potential cost savings from the smoking ban is long: lower rates of fire, general liability, unemployment and workers’ compensation insurance; better worker retention; and less wear and tear on carpets, paint and HVAC systems. The anecdotal evidence and public conjecture about the relative revenue to be generated from smokers versus nonsmokers is […]
In 1996, when architect Neal Deputy adapted the original Coca-Cola Bottling Works (CCBW) Building on 10th Street NW into four residential apartments, there wasn’t much like it for renters in town. Almost 14 years later, such “loft-style” apartments—former industrial buildings converted to residences with large open floor plans—are more common. The rage that began in […]