Month: September 2015

At summer’s end comes fall’s bounty. Yes, it’s apple season alright – and also grape, raspberry, peach and pear season, with pumpkins on the way. Add in strawberries, blueberries and cherries, plums, apricots and nectarines, and central Virginia orchards offer something healthy and delicious year ‘round.

“Apples have been grown in Albemarle County since Jefferson’s time,” says Cynthia Chiles of Carter Mountain Orchard and Chiles Peach Orchards, whose own family has been continuously farming its land for 100 years. “He was a big horticulturalist and grew a lot of heirloom varieties of apples.” Yes America’s First Foodie certainly, er, plumbed the possibilities of fruit growing around here. Thomas Jefferson’s eight-acre, horseshoe-shaped “Fruitery” at Monticello held 400 trees, two small vineyards, plus beds for figs and strawberries, “berry squares” for currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, and a nursery to propagate plants and trees.

Jefferson grew eighteen varieties of apples alone, including the Esopus Spitzenburg, his favorite to eat, and the Taliaferro, his favorite for making cider. He grew no less than thirty-eight varieties of peaches, including the Heath Cling, Oldmixon Cling, and Morris’ Red Rareripe, and two Italian varieties, the lberges and Vaga Loggia, which he was the first to plant in the New World. He also distilled mobby, a popular Virginia form of peach brandy. “I am endeavoring,” he wrote in 1807 with some understatement, “to make a collection of the choicest kinds of peaches for Monticello.” In fact, with his characteristic curiosity and scientific methodology, he was experimenting with and improving upon European fruit and European growing practices in the New World.

Latter day Virginians certainly share his enthusiasm. A 2012 USDA survey ranked the commonwealth approximately sixth in the nation in apple growing, with roughly 11,929 acres under cultivation. 1,770 acres were devoted to peaches. Apples and peaches are high fiber, anti-oxidant rich treats, and the 2015 crop is ripe and ready. The following orchards are some of best places to enjoy them.

Chiles and Carter Mountain

“Our original orchards were planted back in 1912,” Chiles says. “My two great grandfathers planted our first peach and apple trees over in Crozet.” The Chiles family began operating Carter Mountain in the 70s, and selling peaches and apples in 1974 after a bad freeze left them with so little fruit at either orchard that the usual picking and packing routine wasn’t worth its while. Instead they put an ad in the paper, set up a card table, scales and a cigar box, and hoped. It worked. They sold out, and what was meant to be a one-time, emergency measure became an annual April through November, pick-your-own-fruit tradition at now much expanded farm stands at the Crozet and Carter Mountain orchards.

In Crozet their peaches come in familiar white and yellow, of course, but they also grow donut peaches, which are flat-shaped and thin-skinned, with white or yellow flesh, very small stones, and a very sweet taste. (And they sell peach donuts.)

Over on Carter Mountain near Monticello, “we grow probably 15-20 varieties,” Chiles says, starting with Gala and Ginger Gold, which ripen in the middle of the summer, all the way up through Pink Lady, which we harvest in early November. Carter’s most popular varieties are Fuji, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious and Pink Lady, but others include Stayman, Winesap, York – older fashioned varieties that are not as mainstream,” Chiles says.

Both orchards also welcome the public for special events. “At Carter Mountain we call September and October our Apple Harvest Celebration,” Chiles says. “Every day we have school field trips going on, apple-tasting available, and winetasting and hard cider tasting rooms available. Prince Michel winery has a tasting room here on Carter Mountain as does Bold Rock Hard Cider. We are suppliers for both of those with grapes and apples, so that’s a nice matchup there. On weekends we have hayrides and music and other events.” The Thursday night Sunset Series, from mid-May through September, features live music, hay rides, food, wine and hard cider, not to mention an excellent vantage point from which to see the sun go down .

At Chiles the last weekend in September is the Fall into Fun Festival. “A local church group makes apple butter,” Chiles says. “They start in the middle of the night and stir the pot for about 12 to 15 hours. We’re also doing games, activities like painting pumpkins and decorating donuts. We do wagon rides, face-painting, food and other activities.”

Vintage Virginia Apples and Albemarle Ciderworks

Another Albemarle County Family, the Sheltons, have been farming in southern Albemarle County since 1986. That’s the year Bud and Mary Shelton, nearing retirement, bought a small farm in North Garden, named it Rural Ridge after Rural Plains, the Shelton family seat in eastern Virginia, and built their dream house. Along with their four children, Bud planted about 20 fruit trees – apple, pear, peach, and cherry.

Inspired by the heirloom apple tastings conducted at Monticello by author and apple historian Tom Burford, in 1992 the Sheltons purchased trees from Burford’s own orchard. Today their orchard has more than 200 cultivars, including the GoldRush, a late 20th century variety developed by Purdue University, and the MonArk, an early ripening cultivar from the University of Arkansas. Tom Burford, known as “Professor Apple,” serves as orchard consultant. They have collected about three dozen peach varieties, plus plums, pears, cherries, nectarines and apricots, and they sell over 100 varieties of vintage fruit trees, many of them virtually unobtainable anywhere else. In 2000 the family founded Vintage Virginia Apples, and in 2009 it opened Albemarle CiderWorks.

On November 7 from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Vintage Virginia Apples and the Cove Garden Ruritan Club will hold their 15th annual Apple Harvest Festival. The Ruritan Club will make apple butter, and their Brunswick Stew, cooked over a slow fire, will be ready in the early afternoon. Fresh cider will be sold by the cup, half gallon and gallon, and hot cider will be sold by the cup. Hard cider will be available in the tasting room, and tours of the cidery will be given at 11:00 a.m. and 12:30, 2:00, 3:30 p.m. Dozens of craft and artisanal food vendors will be on hand. Gallatin Canyon will play at 10:00 a.m., Jim Waive & The Young Divorcees at 12:30 p.m., and Her Checkered Past 3:00 p.m. Families can enjoy hayrides on the ridge above the orchard. The events tent will hold apple tasting sessions and lectures on horticultural topics including apple pressing, apple tasting, herb growing, and tree planting.

Silver Creek & Seamans’ Orchards

Nelson County’s Silver Creek & Seamans’ Orchards (SCSO) is a family (or rather, families) affair as well, dating back to the 30’s. Today the orchards grow about 25 varieties of apples, plus pumpkins, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, and wine grapes that they sell to wineries in Virginia and North Carolina.

Silver Creek’s next Pick your Own Apples Days are October 10 and 11, from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday and 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sunday. Varieties available for picking include Jonathan, Red Delicious, Golden Delicious, Virginia Gold, Mutsu, Jonagold,  September Wonder (Early Fuji) and Empire. Containers will be provided.

The Seaman and Flippin families have held their Apple Butter Makin’ Festivals on the first and third Saturdays in October for over 30 years. They make their apple butter “the old-fashioned way,” stirring it constantly while it cooks in large copper kettles. The 2015 festivals, October 3 and 17 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., will feature pick your own pumpkins, children’s games, food, crafters, a corn maze and a clown. The Maury River Band will play bluegrass from 11:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. on the 3rd, and Bennie Dodd will play Southern rock and country favorites from noon to 3:00 p.m. on the 17th. Apples, Apple Butter, Jams, Jellies, Cider, and crafts will for sale. The SCSO Pumpkin Patches will be open daily from October 3rd through the 31st.

Paint Tyro pink is the slogan for Pink Lady Fun Day, October 24 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. A large selection of Pink Lady’s and other varieties will be available. Besides apple tasting and apple butter making, families will enjoy a scavenger hunt, kid’s games, and live music. Food will be for sale.

Drumheller’s Orchard

Drumheller’s Orchard in Lovingston was established in 1937, when Everette and Eva Drumheller purchased the property and planted peach and apple trees in its abandoned orchard. “My mother-in-law and father-in law bought this place,” Doris Drumheller remembers. “My husband went in business with his father from 16-17 years old until he passed away at 64.” That’s when Doris took it over, in 2005. “We’re just trying to carry on. My in-laws were the first generation, my husband was the second, and now my son is with me, so he’s the third generation and now his daughter is working with us, so actually we’re into the fourth generation here. It’s hard work, but it’s a good life being on the farm.”

Drumheller’s grows seven varieties of white peaches: Sugar May, White Lady, Klondike, Sugar Giant, Snow King, September Snow, and Snow White. Their yellow peaches include three varieties of Flaming Fury, Sentry, Starfire, John Boy, Sunhigh, Loring, Summer Breeze, Crest Haven, Laurol, and Victoria. They also grow five kinds of pluots (crosses between plum and apricots), plus making apple butter and cider, and peach jam and peach butter.

The annual Drumheller Apple Festival is on September 26 and 27 and October 17 and 18 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Along with crafters and food vendors, and hayrides to the pumpkin patch, “we have this thing called the Apple Slingshot,” Drumheller says. “People just go wild about it.” For the price of a ticket, festivalgoers shoot small apples; sharpshooters win bigger ones. Then there is the Drumheller’s Corn Maze. “We go through and cut out a pattern,” she says, “and they pay to go through. We give them a little card when they pay. We put about ten stations in there and they mark the stations, and if they can find every station and complete their cards we give them a peck of apples.”

Graves Mountain Lodge

Graves Mountain Lodge is a country resort in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Syria, with an educational farm with sheep, goats, cows, pigs, chickens, peacocks, ducks, and horses. The 2015 Graves Mountain Apple Harvest Festival takes place October 3, 4, 10, 11, 17 and 18 from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., with Bluegrass music, cloggers, hayrides, horse and pony rides, a hay mountain, a hay maze, and more than 70 arts and crafts vendors. Graves will cooks apple butter in kettles over an open fire, and its orchards will be open for picking Red and Golden Delicious, Stayman, York, Winesap, Mutsu, Fuji, Rome, Granny Smith, and Empire apples.

By Ken Wilson

According to a recent University of California (UCLA) study, U.S. households have more possessions per home than any society in all of global history. Furthermore, the study reveals that clutter attributes to increased levels of stress in many American households. In fact, cleaning up the litter in your home not only provides additional space, but it helps to clear your mind and makes it easier to focus on other important things like family time. If you didn’t have the chance to do some serious spring cleaning, then here’s an opportunity to plan a yard sale and clean up the clutter in your home, while lacing your pockets with some extra cash for the upcoming holidays.

Setting Goals and Ironing out Details

Before deciding whether planning for a yard sale is right for you, you should first decide what your outcome is. Sara Bereika of Abundance Organizing (www.abundanceorganizing.com) says that before planning a yard sale, you should first assess whether your items will sell. You can achieve this with a little research. For example, you can check online or visit a consignment store, just to see what types of items they are taking in. Providing potential customers with desirable items will help your chances of selling them and yielding a financial profit. However, keep in mind that most people visiting consignment stores are not necessarily looking for items sold at yard sales, but it will help homeowners determine whether certain items will likely sell.

According to Bereika, you also want a defined goal in order for your yard sale to be successful. You don’t want to be indecisive because it will make the process extremely stressful. Approaching this venture with a realistic outcome and mindset will help alleviate stress about the process. You don’t want the focus to be just on the monetary value of the yard sale, but rather on the space you will gain once your home is cleared of clutter. “Typically the goal isn’t really the yard sale but the goal is to clean out your basement or attic,” says Bereika. “So, if you are going into it with the mindset of making money, it’s probably not the best mindset to have…the mindset should be that I’m gaining space, not throwing things away that ends up in a landfill.”

Although earning money is your incentive and decluttering is your goal, many homeowners don’t have a clear plan of what to do with items that don’t sell. Kathryn McMillan of Clutter Conversions (www.clutterconversions.com) says that she runs across this with many clients that she consults. Her advice is to donate all unsold items to a charity or donation place, like Goodwill. In many instances, you can have various organizations scheduled to pick up items at the end of the yard sale. If you don’t have a follow through plan for unsold items, “it comes back into your home as clutter,” she adds.

Getting the Word Out

After determining what items you no longer use, need or want, it’s time to let the community know that you are having a yard sale. According to McMillan, before investing too much time in planning a yard sale, you first want to check with your locality or district to determine whether there is a fee or restriction for posting signs around the neighborhood. When placing signs around the neighborhood, Bereika says to make sure to include the accrual date of the yard sale, and not that it’s just on Saturday. Furthermore, you want to place signs at traffic lights and stop signs, making sure that they are visible and the writing is large enough to read. McMillan also suggests placing ads in free neighborhood publications, on Facebook and other social media platforms like Twitter, as well as online publications. In addition, Bereika advises using Craigslist or www.feecycle.com, an online website that allows you to advertise your yard sale provided you give a few items away for free.

In addition, Bereika suggests grouping with someone else so that you have a lot of items at the yard sale, making it more attractive to individuals. When you partner with others, you get the “most bang for your buck” because you are sharing the expense to advertise in the paper.” And, lastly, there is word-of-mouth or corporate bulletin boards.

Negotiating Pricing and Safeguarding Your Home

McMillan says that people coming to yard sales are looking for a deal, which is why you need to be flexible when negotiating price. In addition, having a clear goal about your outcome helps the process even more. You should ask, is your goal to declutter the house and get rid of unwanted items, or is your goal to make money? If your goal is to make money, then you may not be up for negotiating. Bereika typically tells her clients that yard sales will not necessarily yield a substantial profit. If you approach the process with the mindset that you are decluttering your home and gaining more space for items that you need, “then your negotiating will be a lot more pleasant, and you will get rid of more stuff.”  Having strangers coming to your home can be alarming for some homeowners, which is why Bereika suggests that you keep cash on you, work the yard sale with other people, keep your doors locked, and place a sign that says no public restroom available.

Now that the leaves are changing, the days are getting shorter and the nights are chillier marking the end of summer and the start of fall, take advantage of this time and plan a yard sale to get rid of the clutter in your home. Although having a yard sale could provide some monetary benefits, it should not be your primary goal. If you cultivate the mindset that you are reducing clutter, making space for new items, relieving stress, and keeping things out of a landfill, you can make this process rewarding and fun and end up with some extra cash for the upcoming holidays.

By Janet Thomson

Janet Thomson is a freelance writer, copywriter and military wife residing in Charlottesville.

What makes a home historic? Is it the age of the structure, the year it was built? Is it an historically significant architectural style, along with excellent craftsmanship that exemplifies and clarifies that style? Is it that headline-making history “was made here?” History is whatever we choose to value, but however we define it, we’re blessed with a lot of it in central Virginia. We have eighteenth century architecture; we have exquisite workmanship; we have stories we know and stories we can only guess at, and do.

Consider Findowrie in the hunt country northeast of Keswick, for example, and feel the lure of an old and well-preserved home. Built around 1778 in one account, but as early as 1733 in another, the four-bedroom, 1734 square foot house is for certain the earliest extant house in Albemarle County. Four guest homes, a stable complex and a cattle barn have been added to its 150 private acres with their open pastures, hardwood trees, and views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The house itself boasts many interesting architectural features including a chimney pent with shelves between the chimneys.

Or take Tipton House in Scottsville, a two-story, brick house constructed over a raised cellar, with a paired-column portico, five fireplaces, heart pine floors, and a beamed ceiling in family room. Built circa 1842 by John T. Blair, a Confederate Sergeant and later 1st Lieutenant, it’s been renovated in period style, the main floor painted in colors determined to be original through microscopic lab analysis.

Esmont’s Old Woodville was built in 1796 by a prominent Virginia planter John Coles II, as a gift to his son Walter. Politically, socially and militarily prominent, the Cole family eventually owned 11,000 acres in the area, and family members were friends and colleagues of Presidents Jefferson and Madison. The estate’s 176 acres of pasture have been continuously farmed since the house was built. A woodland path leads from its Georgian-style house to its five-acre lake.

Elsewhere in Esmont, Twenty Columns was built as a summerhouse for display at the Jamestown Exposition of 1907, then dismantled and relocated to its present location on a private lane on an 18.5-acre site. The current owner has upgraded the house while carefully preserving original architectural details like the wrap around porch.

Character

Historic homes typically possess “a distinctive character in terms of architecture, size, layout, and location,” says REALTOR® Jim Bonner, who’s been selling them about as long as anyone around here. “The setting is as important. When people developed this territory, they picked the prettiest sites to build their homes, so you have fabulous old magnolia trees or big oaks and boxwoods that you simply can’t obtain anywhere else. Oftentimes these homes are quite private, on large tracks of land, in lovely idyllic settings. That natural setting would be the home place for a plantation. It would be self-sufficient. So there are water resources nearby and good agricultural land, and often a beautiful mountain view.”

“It’s a pretty house usually,” is how another longtime veteran, REALTOR® Justin Wiley puts it, the kind of house that makes you say, “’they don’t make them like that anymore.’ A lot of people are accustomed to living in an older house and like the solidness and the good woodwork – the nice heart pine, high ceilings, and large windows. They like the fact that it has history and usually has established large trees around it, large boxwoods, etc. Buyers come from all over. Typically they’re a little older. They want a little bit more land, for privacy.”

An old Virginia home offers buyers, “an experience that’s different than a new construction house and development,” says REALTOR® Murdoch Matheson, who specializes in estate homes, equestrian and working farms, and large country properties throughout Virginia. “Where they live and what they own is an expression of themselves, and they are drawn to the soul, the character, the aesthetic, the narrative of the property. There is no story to a property that was built in 1996 in a development like there is to a property that was built in 1896 or 1886. Buyers who live in, say, California, don’t have properties as old as what we have here. The attraction of moving to Virginia is to own something that might be noteworthy.”

Renovation and Preservation

“There are a lot of folks here who are very sensitive and preservation oriented, and they want to preserve the sense of place that we have,” Bonner says. “They don’t want to see further development. These houses are little treasures because they’re so unique and so special.” To that end a number of public and private bodies designate older properties as historical, a recognition that enhances their appeal but allows only for renovations and enhancements in keeping with period style.

The National Register of Historic Places was established in 1966 and is managed by the National Park Service. It lists nearly 3,000 structures, sites, objects, and districts that embody the historical and cultural foundations of the nation. The Commonwealth’s own official list of historic properties, the Virginia Landmarks Register, dates to 1966 as well. It meets quarterly to consider which sites to add; nomination forms may be found on its website.

Preservation Virginia is a private non-profit group with a mission to preserve, promote and advocate for the state’s historic places, and for their cultural, economic and educational benefits. The group’s website includes online resources to help homeowners find artisans and other professionals skilled at preservation and restoration.

Some buyers drawn to older homes are looking for a project, and enjoy redoing an old house.

While official designations restrict the manner in which owners can renovate, they can provide financial benefit as well, since historically accurate renovations qualify owners for tax credits on both the state and federal level. It’s the owner’s choice. “If you are designated on the National Historic Registry, it doesn’t necessarily prohibit you from making changes that are not in the same language as the history of the building,” Matheson says. “You can put a big modern addition on an historic building; but you might lose the designation.”

“Some people think the designation is not worth getting because it might be putting limitations on the property in perpetuity,” Matheson notes, “but you can look at the tax credits as off-setting the price of the architect or general contractor. By utilizing the tax credit program you might be able to offset some of your expenses in restoring the property.” In fact property owners, Bonner says, “are usually the driving force behind designation.”

“The main thing is that they don’t want the facade or any of the original woodwork inside altered,” Wiley says of the designating bodies. “If an owner wants to have items changed, it has to be presented to make sure it’s allowed.” But few do. “Most of the houses could be given that designation because of their historic value, but do not have it, and owners are allowed to do whatever they want to. There aren’t many who go through with the whole historic easement. I’ve only listed two of those in my career.”

So what’s involved in restoring an historic home? “Money and patience,” Matheson says—and  experienced help. Owners can find a wealth of assistance from sources like the Albemarle Historical Society in downtown Charlottesville, and from architectural historians at the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. “There is a lot of documentation,” Matheson says. “There are a lot of old pictures. There are a lot of people you can talk to who can give you the back story on farms, land, and history, on what was happening there before the house, what was torn down.”

“Of course with anything that’s old, you’ll hear a craftsman say we don’t know what we’re going to get into,” Matheson cautions, and while that uncertainty intimidates some owners, it excites others. “You can get very, very specific about how restoration work is done,” he says. “Sometimes it comes down to renewing the chinking on the brickwork, or whether certain things are left raw or painted. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, and sometimes once people start on the project of restoring a house they can be fastidious about the details. They don’t really know when to stop.”

Restoring an old home and updating it with modern conveniences is meticulous work, but “we are very blessed in that we have a lot of period craftsmen in the community,” Bonner says. “Simply because we have a good collection of period homes we have a good collection of period craftsmen that do fine work.”

It takes a knowledgeable craftsman to know how to renovate and preserve an official designation, agrees Bill Norton, founder of Rockpile Construction. Adding a modern kitchen to an historic house might be fine, but “typically they won’t let you fool much with the exterior of the building. A lot of the design I like to leave to the professionals. There are a lot of really good architects around who have experience designing for historic renovations.”

But it’s up to Norton to figure out how to work new brick into old brick, for example, or how to cut new trim to match the antique stuff. “The old mortar is typically faded because it’s so old. One of the challenges is trying to match the mortar so that you can’t really tell when a wall has been fixed, or worked on, or when an opening has been changed. The other thing is, the trim back then had different profiles. You have to take some of that trim to a custom millwork shop. It can cost as much as $250-$300 just to make a knife that matches that profile.”

Pride and Responsibility

While renovation isn’t easy or simple, Matheson says, its challenges just add to the satisfaction of owning an old home. “People with historic homes love to point out all the little details and things that they’ve worked on, because as they were learning about the house, they were consuming its story and thinking about its history. It was fun, so they’ll be very keen to show you, ‘we did this, and we chose not to patch the concrete or the pillars on the house because if you see these divots here they’re from musket balls that were shot at the house during the Civil War’ . . . those kinds of details.”

Renovating an old home “is always a little more expensive, because you’re trying to save what’s there,” Wiley says. And the history itself doesn’t come cheap – the price tag is typically a little out of the ordinary for a fixer-upper. But there is a feeling of wonder that comes of inhabiting a home that has stood since the Revolutionary War, and has seen so many generations of human life. That feeling is rarer still.

An old property is “a connection to the past,” Matheson believes, and he recalls a home inspector who likened a house to a human body: “It evolves over its lifetime, and if it’s cared for it keeps on going strong. Country properties and farms and houses live much, much longer than we do. It’s our duty as owners of historic homes to be good stewards of that home, because that home is older than us and it’s going to live way past us. Stewardship is paramount. When you buy an historic home, you’re taking on that responsibility.”

By Ken Wilson

A home’s floor is, in many ways, the fifth wall of any room. Many people know exactly what they want on that “wall.” Case in point: Lorraine Krebs in Nelson County who had a couple non-negotiable house-hunting items. “I wanted hardwood floors,” she declares. “If there were stairs, I wanted hardwood steps. I wanted a hardwood entryway and real tile in the kitchen and bathroom.”

“There certainly is a trend toward hardwood floors,” confirms REALTOR® Sandra Collins, an Associate Broker with Roy Wheeler Realty Company who also says that, just like Krebs, many home buyers are very definite in what they want.

“Trends show up early in model homes,” Collins observes. “Right now flooring tends to be wide-plank, dark or grey, often manufactured flooring. You also see faux beat-up hardwood floors.”

She’s very enthusiastic about today’s floors. “They’re doing amazing things,” she points out. “We see luxury vinyl in some homes and you would honestly have to get down and touch it to see if you are dealing with ceramic tile or hardwood. It’s just an incredible look.”

Indeed, there is a remarkable variety of flooring available from the solid hardwoods of Colonial times to high-tech laminates, bamboo, and ceramic tile. Each has pros and cons and choices also depend on where in a home the floor will be. If you are replacing an existing floor, it can make a significant cost difference if the new choice can be “floated.” Floating means the new flooring can be installed without removing the old flooring and usually without needed glue or fasteners.

With the caveat that each flooring has a fairly wide range of prices, here is a quick primer on options. The dollar figure—from the World Floor Covering Association—is the lowest estimated cost per square foot installed. For the highest quality in each category the price can easily be several times as much.

VINYL is so tough that some manufacturers offer warranties of 15 or more years. Easy to clean, although subject to gouging and scratching, it can mimic stone or wood perfectly from a distance though not so much up close. It can often be installed over existing vinyl or linoleum, but once installed it’s difficult to remove. It’s available in tiles or planks that can be installed by experienced DIY-ers, but it is crucial to have a well-prepared base with no bumps. It also comes in rolls and can start as low as $1.

CARPET begins at $2 and comes in many materials, patterns, colors, and textures. It provides resilient footing and warmth. “Carpets in bedrooms are common even in homes with tile or hardwood elsewhere,” says REALTOR Collins, “although I find millennium buyers are less inclined to carpets because of fear of allergens for their kids.”

STAINED CONCRETE is very durable and starts around $2 for staining and sealing a new (easier) or existing concrete floor. Polished finishes come in a nearly endless variety of colors and shadings.

LAMINATE begins at around $3. It’s tough, comes in many styles and colors, even mimicking stone or wood. It can be dented fairly easily, however, and once the top layer is worn through, it needs to be replaced, so it’s not a good choice in heavy-traffic areas. Like vinyl, it comes in planks as well as rolls, and can often be floated.

LINOLEUM starts around $4, is considered “green” since it’s made from tree bark and linseed oil, and doesn’t scratch or dent easily, On the other hand, vinyl often costs a bit less, yet is more durable and easier to install.

CORK begins about $4. It’s durable, yet offers a bit of a cushion and warmth for feet in winter. It’s easier to install than other floorings and comes in panels, planks, or squares that often snap together without adhesive. It can be floated. Cork is sustainable, but it’s more sensitive to sunlight than other materials and is also vulnerable to denting.

ENGINEERED WOOD and BAMBOO both start around $4 and can offer the same beauty as solid-wood floors. They can sometimes be floated and some brands are snap-together. It can dent. Bamboo is sustainable and can be manufactured to mimic expensive hardwoods such as reclaimed maple or oak.

CERAMIC or PORCELAIN TILE starts around $4 for products that can be floated and around $8 for regular tile.  It comes in nearly endless choices of shapes, colors, and prices from the “chicken-wire” tile popular in ice cream parlors of yore to the large squares increasingly popular today. “Some porcelain or ceramic tile looks just like wood,” REALTOR Collins says. “It’s really amazing.” If tile cracks, however, it can be expensive to restore.

HARDWOOD in solid form starts around $6 and wide planks are increasingly popular. More difficult to install than other materials, it’s subject to dents and also to discoloring from sunlight, however it can be refinished repeatedly—even with a different stain—and is a classic choice. These days it’s used in kitchens and even in entryways.

STONE flooring starts around $8. It is definitely a “statement” flooring, classically handsome and highly durable, although repairs can be difficult and expensive.

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By Marilyn Pribus

Marilyn Pribus and her husband live in Albemarle County near Charlottesville, with hardwood, tile, vinyl, and carpeted floors.