Month: June 2011

We know what Pliny the Elder meant when he wrote “in vino veritas”—give someone wine and he’ll spill the beans. However, in this age of information overload, I prefer it to mean that the wine itself holds the truth. But, with all of our blogging, Facebook posting, podcasting, tweeting and re-tweeting, are we so busy talking about wine that we forget to stop and listen to it?

It’s human nature to crave knowledge—especially about things that we love. However, it’s also human nature to then show off everything that we know. As the variety and volume of wine increase, so do the forums in which to pontificate on a topic already fraught with intimidation and snobbery. Every wine blogger becomes a self-proclaimed expert, or worse yet, a critic.

Now, before you start smelling a hypocrite, I’ll say that while I do love a good wine blog (Dr. Vino comes to mind) and regularly check in with the columns and follow-up posts of Eric Asimov at the New York Times and Lettie Teague and Jay McInerney at the Wall Street Journal, I prefer wine writers (and earnestly try to be one myself) who tell stories about wine and bring to light new producers, varietals and regions. Assigning scores willy-nilly, publicly trashing entire varietals or vintages, or discounting winemakers for their use of new oak or commercial yeasts (see Winespeak 101), strikes me as careless assumption of knowledge, assertion of opinion as fact, and most importantly, completely antithetical to wine’s M.O.—pleasure.

Even if you don’t scroll the wine blogosphere, a bottle’s label often tells you what you’ll smell and taste in it. We might buy one because we love pears or reject another because we don’t like mushrooms. And, just as J. Tobias Beard’s cover story on Kluge a few weeks ago revealed, when we’re given TMI (pertinent or not) about a wine (or its owner), we’re not as likely to buy it, or enjoy it. With suggestion being as powerful as it is, wouldn’t we be better off just tasting the wine and letting it speak for itself?

Talk is cheap, and these days, words (especially electronic ones) are even cheaper. With wine’s very nature serving as a conversation lubricant, it’s tempting to use your 140-word maximum to tweet all about the tasty wine you’ve just had that’s so good it’s hard to describe. French oenologist Emile Peynaud wrote in his book, The Taste of Wine, that “it is impossible to describe a wine without simplifying and distorting its image.” It’s as if the intellectual and sensory components of wine are at odds with one another and we’re desperately trying to connect them with words instead of just turning off our brains and turning on our senses.

That’s not to say that ignorance is bliss. I wouldn’t have spent the past decade studying wine if that were the case, but some of my most memorable wine moments have been remarkably quiet ones. There was the Vouvray I drank at a château in the Loire that, even at the tender (and illegal) age that I was, subconsciously drove my eyes to the sky just in time to see a shooting star. There was the naked carafe in Umbria poured by a shepherd who served it with his handmade pecorino cheese. I didn’t ask what the grape was, what the vintage was, or who made it—I didn’t care. We drank in silence broken only by his humming. Most recently, there was the local wine that I drank with the man who made it. It reflected every ounce of skill, passion and devotion that he possesses, but all we said was, “This is good.” In fact, the more I like a wine, the less I have to say about it. Enough said.—Megan Headley

Wine bloggers cometh

The fast-typing fingers behind a third of the 1,000-plus wine blogs that compete for screen time these days will convene (along with industry insiders, winery owners, print journalists and PR reps) here in Charlottesville July 22-24 for the Fourth Annual Wine Bloggers’ Conference. Virginia wines will get a chance to strut their stuff for both well-acquainted and unacquainted enthusiasts. With keynote speeches coming from British wine writer and Oxford Companion to Wine editor Jancis Robinson, along with New York Times wine columnist Eric Asimov, expect our town to be all a-“twitter” with wine buzz.

Winespeak 101

Commercial yeasts (n.): Commercially-grown yeast strains sold with the promise of delivering specific, predictable, consistent traits for the fermentation of wine.

What do you need for the perfect outdoor meal? (Aside from the food, that is. And the wine. And the bucolic setting, charming company, and carefree schedule.) We’ve got your recipe for a satisfying summer nosh right here, with the ingredients supplied by local shops. Dig in!

Wall Art ($10.95 from Fifth Season Gardening Co., 900 Preston Ave., 293-2332); Mirror ($1,550 from Quince, 126 Garrett St., 296-0062); Object d’art (Available at Artifacts)

Plaque ($92 from Creme de la Creme, Barracks Road Shopping Center, 296-7018); Notecards ($31 from Creme de la Creme); Fabric ($24.95/yard from The Second Yard, 307 E. Market St., 295-6054)

If strawberry season came and went as something of a surprise to you, the natural world has but one message for you: WAKE UP. The Year in Fruit is an annual parade that arrives in town, marches through, and then is gone until next spring. Each fruit is a group that marches together, with a clear color scheme that, upon closer inspection, yields a fantastic variety of shapes, sizes and complexions.

As the strawberries taper off, spring raspberries arrive—but just a few—and then cherries surge by, all at once, dark red and sunny yellow, long-stemmed and short-stemmed and sour and sweet and…gone. But oh, here comes hope in the shape of a peach, smallish and light yellow, firm and fuzzy, followed by peachy clingstones, juicy and fragrant, and then the brassy, buxom freestones, so sweet that they gush when you look at them.

Amid the cherries, a purple plum might appear, waving and vying for your attention; amid the peaches, some blackberries and blueberries beckon. Tender figs might march with the apples, stately and confident that they reign supreme in Central Virginia, and the shriveled, frost-bitten persimmons conclude the procession and close the fruit year.

Because fruit is a plant’s means of reproducing, the timing of harvest cannot easily be manipulated by humans; somehow, cherries know to turn bright red just when adult and adolescent birds are on the wing, looking for food, and persimmons finally fall from the tree when deer are mating and moving around, scanning for food and spreading the seeds in their droppings.

Making cherries last

According to the statewide website Buy Local, Virginia (www.buylocalvirginia.org), there are at least 12 U-Pick cherry orchards in Virginia, and an untold number of backyard and municipal specimens that might yield delicious fruit. Either way, the trick is to take advantage of cherry season the moment it arrives, and to do everything in your power to preserve it for the rest of the year.

First step is to go out and get some fruit, and to eat as much as you possibly can (and then give some to your friends and neighbors). In general, don’t wash fruit before you store it—wash it before you eat it (otherwise you’re encouraging microbial growth). Store fresh cherries in the refrigerator in glass or plastic containers with the lids slightly ajar, or covered with a clean, dry kitchen towel. For fun, soak some clean, pitted cherries in a mild wine vinegar or vinaigrette to make a fun, fruity salad dressing. Drop a few in a bottle of brandy, or vodka, or even Amaretto and invent a summertime, cherry-red cocktail.

When you’ve had your fill of fresh cherries, go out and get more fruit—it’s time to think of the future. Of course there’s jam and jelly, and one can even make pickled cherries; consider perfecting your fresh sour cherry pie recipe, and then prepare some extra batches of filling to store in the freezer (hey, you can even freeze pie crust, and you’ll be glad you did).

With any miscellaneous leftover cherries, cook them lightly, then separate the fruit from the juice: Freeze the fruit to use in autumn when preparing a sauce for duck, venison, or pork; use the juice to make salad dressing, or to drizzle on ice cream or squirt into a spritzer.

You can freeze cherries and other smallish fruit like berries by spreading them out on a cookie sheet (but check that it fits in your freezer before you begin!). The fruit will be frozen solid in a matter of hours, so dump it into a labeled freezer bag and roll out another batch. Dehydrated cherries would make a great addition to scones and cookies, and can also be rehydrated in oatmeal and cereal.

Our kitchen columnist, Lisa Reeder, is an educator and advocate for local and regional food production in Central Virginia. She received chef’s training in New York and currently works in Farm Services and Distribution at the Local Food Hub.

A cherry-flavored menu

COCKTAILS

Easy: Cherry Dark and Stormy. Soak cherries in ginger beer for a few hours; drizzle the infusion over dark rum and ice. Don’t forget to impale cherries on sword-stirrers if you can!

Advanced: Cherry Bounce. Recipes abound; the best ones will include some additional fermentation of the cherries and sugar that will result in the bubbles that put “bounce” in the name, but will also take six to 12 weeks to complete. Maybe for Labor Day?

APPETIZER

Easy: Cheese and olive plate, fea-turing aged and fresh goat cheese, cherries, almonds and mild olives.

SALAD

Easy: Spinach and mixed leaf lettuces with fresh chevre, hazelnuts and pitted cherries in tarragon vinaigrette.

ENTRÉE

Easy: Barbecue-glazed broiled chicken. Add reduced cherry juice to a spicy BBQ sauce for a deep red flavor and a sweet glaze.

Easy: Couscous. Include dried cherries in the couscous cooking liquid, then fluff with olive oil, fresh herbs and lemon juice.

Advanced: Seared saddle of rabbit with cherry sauce.

DESSERT

Easy: Good ol’ American cherry pie. Don’t forget the lattice top (it’s easier than it looks!).

Advanced: Cherries Jubilee. A dessert of sweet, dark red cherries, sugar and kirsch that is set briefly alight, then spooned over ice cream.

DIGESTIF

Kirsch/kirschwasser (liquor made from cherry juice and cherry pits, distilled into a clear brandy), served chilled (on a warm night) or warmed slightly in the hands (on a cool night, with a fire).

Problem: Making room for an unusual hobby
In a far corner of the Schneehagens’ backyard, hundreds of bees are buzzing in and out of their bright yellow hive. Henri Schneehagen, 9, and his parents, Loreena and Jason, are the keepers of the bees and other living things that thrive on this Charlottesville city homestead. In addition to the bees, Henri helps tend to the vegetable and fruit gardens. Talking about strawberries, most likely pollinated by his own bees, he says, “I usually eat half of them out of the garden. I do like them a lot better than other strawberries at the grocery store!”
Finding a place for an unusual hobby can be a challenge, especially if space is limited.
Inside, the walls of Henri’s bedroom are a deep ocean blue and the ceiling is dotted with painted clouds and glow-in-the-dark stars. Under his loft bed is a small desk and a cot for sleepover guests. One set of shelves is devoted entirely to Legos; another is filled with home-schooling materials. “When it’s nice,” Henri explains, “I go outside and when it’s not, I usually play with Legos or video games.”

The Schneehagen house, itself, is a tight fit for this family of three (plus Mack, the dog). With just two bedrooms, one bath, a living room and a cozy kitchen, much of the activity happens outside of the home.

“We have too many hobbies,” says Loreena. “My husband has a beer brewing shed and we’re roasting coffee right now. And a lot of gardening. We just took up kayaking [and] backpacking. We do triathlons, mountain biking…bees kind of fit in there, [too].”

A few hours of Henri’s day are dedicated to schoolwork followed by plenty of time outdoors for a different type of schooling. His curriculum is enhanced by habitat observation and on-site food production. Beyond the beer brewing and coffee roasting, everyone helps maintain and preserve the gardens’ bounty by canning fruits and veggies and harvesting the honey and beeswax.

The beehive is situated as far as it can be from their house and surrounding homes. True, the Schneehagens have been stung a handful of times but have never had an incident of injured guests or neighbors in the several years that they have kept bees. Twice they have had to replenish their colony. Once, they experienced colony collapse and the second time, the bees swarmed, leaving their hive en masse on a search for a new home. Maintaining the hive has been quite a learning experience for the whole family.

“It’s sort of like having a little field trip in your backyard,” Jason points out. “Kids love to see beehives—you get to see how it happens. You can stand here and watch all of the different jobs that each bee has—it’s the same thing in society. It’s something to learn from.”

Henri has been talking with his dad about the potential of expanding his beekeeping and helping manage a few other hives locally. In the meantime, between schoolwork, Legos and staying on top of the weeding, his summer is already looking, well, busy.—Christy Baker

Basket haul

No matter what your kids’ favorite pastime, keep hobby accoutrements organized and contained in this colorful Kaisa-grass storage basket from Ten Thousand Villages ($48). It’s large enough to hold anything from fabrics for crafts to piles of Legos. Ask a salesperson for a printout of the story behind the basket and learn about the definition of “fair trade.”—C.B.

 There’s an old saw about renovation—that it always takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you expect. But Scott Wiley, who’s fixed up several Charlottesville houses, figures it somewhat differently: “For every dollar I spend, I save a dollar.”

Wiley and his wife, Christy Riebeling, just moved into their most recent renovation project, a 1920 house in the Rose Hill neighborhood that Wiley’s been working on for two and a half years. If you visited, you’d enter through a salvaged front door with salvaged sidelights. The entryway is paneled with tongue-and-groove boards from the Habitat Store. The bathroom countertop is from the Habitat Store. The medicine cabinet doors are from the Habitat Store.
You get the picture: Wiley has filled the house with old materials—recycled, reused, repurposed.

“I’ve been accused of being a scrounger,” he says. This is scrounging as art form, and as serious building strategy. Wiley estimates he’s spent $50,000 at the Habitat Store over the years.

He considers that an excellent investment. Even if the savings is only 50 percent over new materials—and he believes it’s sometimes more like 90 percent—that means he’s saved at least $50,000.

For Wiley, renovating affordably also means putting in some major sweat equity. He earns a living as a nurse at the Blue Ridge Poison Center, but makes another full-time job out of D.I.Y. renovation.

His secret to enjoying the process? “We haven’t had any deadlines,” he says. “Hard work when you’re under pressure is no fun at all.” When the inevitable snags arise during the work, he explains, he can “throw a bunch of hours at a problem” rather than worry about paying a contractor for extra time.

A tiny elephant

Before this house, Wiley’s last project was renovating what he calls “the little house.” That’s an understatement—it’s about 400 square feet. Its owner, Aimee Hunt, occupies the Belmont dwelling with her two kids, Charlie (12) and Jane (9). She’d had her eye on the house when she noticed Wiley fixing it up. 

Though he’d bought it intending to renovate and then rent or sell it, he resists the description “flipping” for the 16 months of work it took. “It’s like flipping an elephant,” he says. 

Habitat Store materials fill the place, lending character and providing the built-in storage that makes the tiny house functional. “We were thinking this is small but if it were a condo or loft in New York, it would be fairly large,” says Wiley. 

He installed salvaged cupboards in what he thought would be the house’s single bedroom (as it turns out, that room is shared by the kids, while Hunt herself sleeps in what Wiley thought would be an office). More storage is built into the living room. “[Scott] told me he thought of it as a ship,” says Hunt.

In the kitchen, the art of salvaging is fully on display. “The only thing I bought new was the refrigerator,” Wiley says. Everything else—from cabinets to sink to track lighting to faucets to microwave—came from Habitat. 

Hunt and her kids moved in three-and-a-half years ago. “It seemed like something I could cope with,” says Hunt, who had previously lived on 37 acres with a big farmhouse and lots of outbuildings. Here, she jokes, “You can sit on the toilet and wash the dishes in the kitchen.”

She even added her own salvaged element: an extension to the kitchen counter that lets her kids belly up on stools and get their legs underneath. It’s supported by carved wooden posts that came from their old house.

"A peaceful feel"

After finishing the little Belmont house, Wiley and Riebeling bought the Rose Hill house in 2008. They weren’t initially sure whether they’d be fixing it up to sell or to live in themselves—but they knew they liked it. “It didn’t have that funky warren feeling that a lot of houses have. After we started spending a little time over here, even in the dust and chaos, we noticed the house had a peaceful feel to it.” 

Wiley decided his goal was for the house “to look like it had originally, without being too fussy about the details.” Once again, used materials would be a major factor in getting the results he wanted at a good price.

Take the bathroom, tucked into the first floor behind the stairwell. Salvaged heart pine forms the board-and-batten style walls, a built-in bench, the vanity, and a small cupboard above the toilet. The windows, countertop and backsplash came from Habitat, along with trim boards and shower fixtures. The sink faucet came from eBay. 

Says Wiley, “My one luxury is I buy new toilets.” But he made a towel shelf out of used oyster tongs with the teeth removed.

The bathroom doesn’t particularly evoke the 1920s, when the house was built, but it’s got a classic feel that fits in well. The dining room is more of a period piece, with a large breakfront (from Habitat) built in along one wall, and formal wainscoting that Wiley made by repurposing paneled wooden doors (from Habitat). He also added crown molding here and in many of the rooms, partially fashioning it from a big group of 300 trim boards (from—you guessed it—Habitat).

Outsized hobby

Wiley has taken the learn-as-you-go approach to D.I.Y. construction. He’s had a woodworking hobby for about 25 years, but it was long confined to building furniture. Now, he can fairly say he’s tackled some pretty major projects. In the Rose Hill house, for example, he started by trying to repair the original plaster walls, but found they were too cracked and ended up installing drywall throughout. 

The upstairs hallway was sagging; he added a beam to shore it up. Under the living room, the foundation had some problems. “The whole sill was rotten,” he says. “The only feasible way to work on it was to rip up the floor.” He dug the crawlspace out by hand, filling 300 five-gallon buckets with dirt. And while he had a contractor do the actual foundation repair, he jacked up the house to get it ready. “I had watched the foundation work on the first house; it wasn’t rocket science. You just watch things and listen to the wood.”

Wiley does hire a plumber, electrician and floor refinisher when needed. But there’s plenty of other heavy work to do. Currently, the kitchen lacks a floor (as well as cabinets, walls, and anything else recognizably kitchen-like). From the ground beneath this part of the house, Wiley has been working on digging out the crawlspace under the dining room by lying on his side and pulling dirt out with a hoe.

Besides the kitchen, the house’s exterior still needs a complete makeover. Later this year Wiley will add spray foam insulation and sheathing, then Hardiplank siding. 

Meanwhile, Riebeling has handled all the painting—no small job. “We calculated with all of the various paint lines and with all the crown molding and quarter-round,” Wiley says, “that she had done three quarters of a mile of caulking.”

Better deals

The salvaged materials from Habitat and other sources often bring along the whiff of other times and places. Large dressers in the guest bedroom are from a local winery that once used them for linen storage. Another big cupboard from the Covesville Store was originally part of a school, where someone handwrote labels on the cubbies like “Review of Reviews—1929.” Wiley’s got his grandmother’s blue glass lamp from 1870 and an antique chandelier he bought on the Eastern Shore.

“Even though I consider myself aware of environmental issues, the bigger reasons [to use old things] are to get materials that look more authentic,” he says. “I don’t have fiberglass doors; all the doors in the house are big heavy wooden doors.” 

Of course, cost is a great motivator too. “If my time were worth $20 an hour,” says Wiley, “there were plenty of times where I saved more money [by buying something used] than my time was worth for that whole day.”

In the end, Wiley seems to take pleasure in a steady workload, approached with calm. “If you have time,” he says, “what else are you going to do? Take naps?”

 In the current housing market, flexibility and creativity have become important skills. Homeowners who are ready to—or have already—put their property on the market are faced with the challenge not only of finding the right buyers, but of finding any buyer at all.
With local and national statistics showing that it’s still a buyer’s market, more and more homeowners are putting off selling, and becoming landlords instead. And folks who might otherwise buy are signing leases.

“People are choosing to rent instead of buy, and the ones I have encountered are primarily people who have been transferred, for work, and they haven’t been able to sell their home in their prior city,” says Denise Ramey, local real estate expert with Roy Wheeler Realty Company. “Many [newcomers to this area] are entering in six- to-12-month leases with the hope that when their house sells, they’ll know the area a little better, and they will have more funds.”

Ramey says the dilemma of renting versus owning has been a major topic of discussion among Realtors nationally. While Freddie Mac’s U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook for the month of May reports a 2.8 percent decrease in home prices around the country in the first quarter of 2011, the inventory is still very high.

Many homeowners who decided to rent out their houses find themselves lacking enough equity for a down payment on another purchase, and are forced to become renters themselves while they save up.

Such folks may enter what’s called a lease-purchase agreement, in which “they are going to lease for one year to give themselves time to save up the 20 percent down payment,” explains Ramey. “The purchase agreement will occur the next year.”

Greg Slater, Realtor with Better Homes and Gardens/Real Estate III, has a client who was forced to rent his home for the past two years, but is now tired of being a landlord. Tough luck. Because his home is still not selling, “we are starting to talk about renting it again,” Slater says. “I think it will rent in about 10 minutes when he decides to rent.”

Indeed, demand for rentals is up. And because of that, rents have increased in the past two years. “I think people who have rental properties available can afford to be more choosy now about who they rent their property to,” says Ramey. “They can command more in rent.”
Slater agrees. For example, he says, “People are shocked at what it costs to rent in Crozet. It can be really high.”

“There are more tenants around,” says Slater, in part because the past few years left lots of folks with credit problems. “If they left the market with a short sale, they will be tenants for a couple of years,” says Slater. A short sale damages a property owner’s credit and it can take at least two years for mortgage companies to be willing to issue them a new loan.
Because it is still a challenging time for buyers and sellers, Ramey says many real estate agents are more willing to help renters. “Smart agents are willing to help clients who are renting today because they are the buyers of the future,” she says. “It’s definitely a change in our business that our agents had to become accustomed to.”

Slater’s tip for would-be renters: “The number one strategy to get a rental home in Crozet right now is to call the people who have their homes for sale and ask them to rent it,” he says.

Whether you simmer and sauté or microwave and melt, chances are, you spend a lot of time in your kitchen. The heart of the home is also one of the most expensive rooms to renovate—therefore, the one that stumps renters who wish they could make some changes.

As a renter, you can’t replace countertops, cabinetry, or appliances. But with a few bucks, a Saturday afternoon, and a little imagination, you can still make your kitchen feel like home. A kitchen back-splash is a quick, affordable, and easy way to update your kitchen, adding color and detail while protecting your walls from spills and splashes. From instant fixes to D.I.Y. projects, there’s a solution for every skill level.

Fast food

Catering to renters and homeowners alike, Broan (available at Rexel Electrical, Stony Point Road) and Star Stainless Design have created a line of ready-to-hang tile backsplashes. Not only do these framed tile displays add detail above a sink or range, they require about as much effort to install as hanging a picture on the wall. With styles ranging from sleek and stainless to Tuscan Villa, there’s a backsplash for every kitchen, no grout necessary.

Stuck with bland and boring tile for a backsplash? Innovative companies like Mibo (www.mibo.co.uk) and Modwalls (www.modwalls.com) sell lines of Tile Tattoos, designed to fashionably and affordably spruce up your 15x15cm standard tile. With designs both modern and whimsical, these waterproof decals are as easy to remove as they are to apply. Just peel and stick. 

If tile’s not your thing, but you’re stuck on the ease of stick-on solutions, try a Wallsticker from Ferm Living (www.fermliving.com). These no-fuss vinyl decals are perfect for a kitchen backsplash, coming in easy-to-cut 20"x20" sheets, allowing you to create your own pattern and design. When the time comes to leave your rental, just peel off the decals—no harm, no foul. If you’re looking to cover more ground, try self-adhesive temporary wallpaper (www.tempaperdesigns.com). Designed as a perfect solution for renters or those with a bad case of design-indecisiveness, the affordable peel-and-stick paper designs go from the box to the back-splash with a ruler and utility knife.

Weekend warrior

If you’re feeling a little more crafty and adventurous, explore your local hardware and home improvement stores for inspiration. A practical and inexpensive material, like peg board, can easily be measured and cut to fit your space, not only shielding your walls from splashes and spills, but making a great place to hang your spoons and spatulas. Paint the peg board with a fun contrasting color in semi-gloss for an easy-to-clean focal point. If it was good enough for Julia Child, it’s good enough for me. 

Browse the flooring section for additional inspiration. With some command adhesive tape strips, lightweight vinyl floor tiles could make a fun and affordable backsplash in a matter of minutes. 

Try putting a little kitsch in your kitchen! Mount vintage postcards from The Consignment House (121 W. Main Street) behind a protective surface of Plexiglass, cut to fit. If you’re feeling tongue-in-cheek, swap out the postcards with your favorite take-out menus from around town. Not only will they be a graphic conversation starter, but they’ll be readily available next time you don’t feel like cooking. 

No matter which solution you go for, always choose surface materials that are waterproof, easy to clean, and easy to remove. With myriad fun, affordable, and removable backsplash options, renters and homeowners alike can take their kitchen from standard issue to top chef in no time.—Ed Warwick

Before joining the ABODE team, Ed Warwick was the author of “Simply Cville,” a blog about D.I.Y. design, entertaining, and home improvement projects. A UVA grad, Ed currently works as the Coordinator of LGBT Student Services under the University’s Dean of Students.

Safety first

A well-stocked and easily accessible safety kit will keep your D.I.Y. projects enjoyable and, we hope, pain-free. 

Protective eyewear is probably the most important element of your defensive arsenal. Like little wrap-around shields for your eyes, safety goggles and glasses prevent splinters, metal filings and the occasional splash of dangerous liquid from damaging your fragile peepers. Generally speaking, regular eyeglasses or sunglasses do not provide enough protection. Instead, opt for safety-specific eyewear, which offers more coverage of the eye area and is often shatter-proof and chemical-resistant.

Another key piece of safety equipment is a pair or two of quality work gloves. Cow-hide or deerskin gloves will put an extra layer of material between your skin and rusty nails, sharp tool edges and icky old carpet. If you are using any type of corrosive chemical (paint stripper, concrete etcher, etc.), you will need to outfit yourself with a pair of chemical-resistant gloves to keep your forearms and hands out of harm’s way.

No safety ensemble is complete without the appropriate face mask. For most projects a standard, well-fitting dust mask is sufficient. For jobs involving tinier airborne particles, such as painting or using urethane resins, a respirator with job-specific filters may be necessary.

Finally, don’t discount the benefit of wearing the proper work clothes. Go for maximum coverage in natural materials (skip the Daisy Dukes and bikini tops, please). Also, make sure that clothes are relatively form-fitting, as loose straps or extra fabric can easily catch on power tools or snag on exposed hardware.—Christy Baker

Christy Baker is a local Jane-of-all-trades. Whether it’s fixing furniture, building a chicken coop or maintaining her roller skates, this creative mom of two always keeps a toolbox (or at least some duct tape) handy.