By Ken Wilson – “Gardens above all else are for sharing.” – Emily Whaley Would any gardener beg to differ? Emily Whaley knows: after all the planning and the plotting, and the digging and mulching and watering and tending have done their work comes a garden’s finest hour, when gardener and friends stroll through, approving […]
By Ken Wilson – “Gardens above all else are for sharing.” – Emily Whaley Would any gardener beg to differ? Emily Whaley knows: after all the planning and the plotting, and the digging and mulching and watering and tending have done their work comes a garden’s finest hour, when gardener and friends stroll through, approving […]
By Marilyn Pribus – “I can’t believe we’ve already had the AC on and it’s only April,” laments a Lake Monticello resident. “I don’t even want to think about our electric bill this summer.” She’s not alone. Air conditioning soaks up about five percent of all the electricity produced in our country, approaching $30 billion annually. […]
By Ken Wilson – Although it’s hard to say when exactly it happened this year, spring has sprung, and with it the hundred ways we show it. Whether it’s to make us parade down Market, run along the Rivanna, or jog up a mountain, spring energizes us all. Here are a few of the many […]
By Celeste M. Smucker – A big concern for home buyers is finding the right mortgage program, one they can live with for many years, and this decision is especially important for those who have limited funds for a down payment. Many move-up buyers have more than enough cash from selling their previous home to […]
By Celeste M. Smucker – When it comes to home and garden, you can count on one thing. The new year brings changes in everything from floor plans and style updates to interior and exterior color preferences and cutting-edge technologies. Home buyers and those thinking about remodeling an existing house can look online for trends and […]
By Celeste M. Smucker – When home owners are ready to sell their house, they usually have a good idea about what they think it’s worth. Similarly, buyer prospects have a strong opinion about what they are willing to pay for it. Sometimes these numbers are far apart. So what determines what a home is worth […]
By Ken Wilson – Jack Horn loves to build and he loves to travel. A couple of weeks after a 7.0 magnitude earthquake devastated much of Haiti in January of 2010, Horn, the CEO of the Charlottesville contracting firm Martin Horn, Inc., found himself on a mountainside overlooking Port-au-Prince. He was in the country with Building […]
By Marilyn Pribus – It’s always important to plan for the future when landscaping your yard. You want it to be nice for you today and you also want to keep an eye on the resale potential because a well-landscaped yard adds to that all-important curb appeal. How Much Landscaping Should I Have? “It’s very much […]
By Ken Wilson – Up and down Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall on a recent Saturday morning, the literati were looking. At New Dominion Bookshop, the oldest bookstore in town, dating back to 1924, a woman was checking out the Lit Crit section. At the Blue Whale, where original prints, antiquarian maps, and rare volumes sit alongside […]
By Marilyn Pribus – You’ve probably heard the term “curb appeal” that often hovers over discussions of the marketability of a property, but just what is it? “Curb appeal is an individual preference,” declares REALTOR® David Sloan of Sloan Manis Real Estate in Charlottesville, “but I think of a home that is well-landscaped, with a […]