Living

It’s like Cab Calloway says to Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi near the beginning of The Blues Brothers: “Boys, times are bad.” Local home values are mostly going down. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now the property of Uncle Sam. And the broader economy looks shakier than it has in a very long time. […]

There was a time when the Morrises felt comfortable sending their 15-year-old son from their home on Blueberry Road on his bike down Route 20. But that was more than 25 years ago. With many proposed changes coming to the rural area around Key West, some old conveniences may be compromised, says Cal Morris. But […]

It’s not your usual student housing. That dorm feeling—hard surfaces, the smells of bleach and beer—seems very far away from the cosy Jefferson Park Avenue house where six people, most of them UVA grad students, make their cooperative home. They’re members of CHUVA (short for Co-operative Housing at the University of Virginia), meaning they pool […]

  Crozet’s latest LEED dwelling Back in our April issue, we wrote about a house Upstream Construction was building in Crozet for Brian and Joan Day. It’s notable not only because it’s a custom house with many green features, but because the Days are both environmental professionals who decided to open their house to the […]

  Future fab This month’s surfer: Jane Fisher, CCDC executive director What’s on her browser: inhabitat.com What it is: A photo-heavy blog, coming at you live from the future of design. Green living, high-concept prefabs, interior design, super-stylish treehouses: It’s all here. You can also sign up, as Fisher did, for a daily e-mail from […]

  Rain reprieve Weather comes at us fast—immediate as a hurricane—but it doesn’t last long. A month ago, we were on the verge of severe drought after an encouraging spring and early summer; yet as of this writing we’ve had several good soakings from northbound tropical storms, and all of a sudden the idea of […]

  Pump it up The sun may be shining and the chiggers still biting, but when the hard squashes start to show up at City Market, get ready for the curtain to fall on the summertime show. While it’s true that squash will store over the winter (ideally at a dry cellar temperature of about […]

  Flood relief Question for Debbie Halhoun with Floors are Us: What should you do if you spill water on a wood floor?   Answer: “Get it dry, get it quick,” should be your motto, says Halhoun. While damage is preventable, a speedy response is your best chance at saving your hardwood floor from tragedy. […]

  We appreciate subtlety now and then, and this place in Johnson Village has it in spades. Seemingly a standard rancher given some tasteful Craftsman-style updates, it wears its flared porch columns and front roof gable with a quiet pride. Ornamental trees help it blend with its setting, and the low, mostly rail-less porch—furnished with […]