Living

In his own words, Chuck Taylor is “coy” about his record collection.

Virginia Fizz could be the name of a comic book superhero—a corkscrew-curled, bespectacled librarian by day and electrifying crime fighter by night.

Energy guides hitting mailboxes this month The Piedmont Environmental Council is mailing guides to every Charlottesville and Albemarle house this month that will help residents make their homes more energy-efficient. The Energy Smart Solutions campaign will focus on small, affordable fixes—think weatherstripping your old windows, not buying new ones. Check out how-to videos on these […]

The backstory on beef The majority of cattle raised in Virginia are destined for an out-of-state feedlot where they will join the ranks of the numbered animals that are processed, shipped, and eaten around the country. As recent films and books have illustrated, commercially raised beef is one of the most troubling elements of our […]

Get it together Problem: How to corral kids’ clutter into the common areas of a small home The 800-square-foot, two-bedroom city home that Kerry MacFarland shares with her husband, 3-year-old daughter and newborn baby boy is a study in multifunctional use of space and hidden storage.  Kerry McFarland and her kids—Hannah, 3, and Sage, 6 […]

In real estate, timing is everything. And no time is that more true than when gearing up for the spring selling season, traditionally the most brisk time for moving homes during the year.   But a big mistake a lot of buyers and sellers make is actually waiting until springtime to get serious about putting a […]

The trench in which we buried the two conduits. One of the silliest projects we ever took on was also a somewhat involuntary one. We needed to run four lengths of 3/4" tubing through a pair of underground conduits between our outdoor furnace and our basement. These would carry water back and forth to power […]

We don’t know about you, but here at Instant Decorator, we keep magazines lying around for months. (Being the crafting mavens we are, we just know that someday they’ll come in handy!) Luckily, this month’s craft puts them to good use. You can make this project exactly as we did, or come up with other […]

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 […]