Month: March 2017

One man’s trash is another man’s funky countertop. That is, if the other man is Evolution Glass founder Bill Hess.

“We take locally sourced bottle glass and transform it into amazing, blow-your-mind countertop surfaces suitable for homes and businesses,” Hess says.

And he isn’t the only local creating exciting new materials that let homeowners take risks to personalize their space. Here’s a closer look at Evolution Glass and the introduction of a unique hybrid from the Charlottesville Tile Company.

Wood you?

Carpenter Todd LeBack was crafting a laminated wood sink for a customer several years ago when an idea struck him: What if you could bring wood accents into kitchens and bathrooms in places where you’d traditionally see tile?

“I was thinking about situations where you could do a sink with a certain wood species and an accent wall behind it,” he says. “I just tossed it around in my head.”

Working during his free time, LeBack was able, over the course of two to three years, to develop a product that fit the bill. His still-fledgling line of wood tiles comprises any number of wood species as a base, which is veneered with water-resistant glue. For applications like showers, he’s developing a fully waterproof product using epoxy.

LeBack says his wood tiles are stable enough to be grouted like standard tile, and their only real limitation is in high-heat areas where they’d be a fire hazard. He’s still developing prototypes but is installing production wood tiles in two backsplash applications in the near future.

“It can be treated as tile, and there are certain wood species that are either expensive in solid form or not available, so by veneering it, you can get essentially any species you can think of,” LeBack says. “It can be used to match an existing wood, like a cherry vanity with a cherry backsplash.”

According to LeBack, the tiles are comparable in price to custom ceramics—$25 to $40 per square foot—and look like the wood accents you might find in luxury automobiles or on grand pianos.

Bottled up

Recycling is a tough business. And glass bottles in particular don’t recycle well. Most of the time they’re “downcycled” into products that have less value than the original bottle.

Hess had another idea when he launched Evolution Glass.

“There is no market for glass recyclers. They have to pay to get it hauled away, so by recycling with us they save money,” he says. “We take it for free. It keeps it in the local use area and it doesn’t have to be transported anywhere…using fuel.”

First working with a landfill in Ivy and later establishing a relationship with the University of Virginia, he’s come up with a way to melt and combine clear and colored glass bottles discarded locally to produce rich, swirled glass countertops and tables.

“We use varying amounts to create different looks,” Hess says. “Our process is totally unique. There is no other countertop in the world made like ours.”

On top of the signature look, Evolution’s glass offers structural properties comparable to stone, Hess says. The glass isn’t tempered, but its thickness makes it difficult to break. And it’s scratch resistant without requiring maintenance or a sealer like many stone materials.

Hess says he’s done more tables than counters since launching his material a year and a half ago, but his recent collaboration with Wes Carter of Albemarle Countertop Company is helping him move into more kitchens. Eventually, he believes he’ll be able to produce a material strong enough to serve as wall panels and stair treads.

“Stair treads are a cautious area—we have to be absolutely sure it’s going to work, but with the wall panels, we’re just waiting for the right customer,” Hess says.

It’s no secret that outdoor fabrics often make their way inside, too—they’re a great way to protect against spills, stains and smells and the patterns and textures are often indistinguishable from regular fabric. But, says Folly co-owner Victoria Pouncey, occasionally the right textile for the space just isn’t available. Enter performance fabrics.

“[They] are essentially regular fabrics that have been treated with incredible stain repellents,” Pouncey says, which means the treatment can be applied to a wide range of fabrics. “Many fabric companies offer collections that are already treated or they will take care of the process for you.”

But where should you use performance fabrics? Pouncey says seating is where it’s most important.

With her design partner, Beth Ann Kallen, Pouncey recently designed a kitchen banquette with the iconic Les Touches from Brunschwig et Fils and upholstered a sofa and loveseat with a Lee Jofa linen for a family with three children and a Lab. Says Pouncey, “After the usual mishaps and spills of family life, the furniture is still looking perfect!”

It’s not exactly a jungle out there. But if you’re buying a house, you do need to think like a tiger, and get ready to pounce.

Recent data about local real estate shows a market that’s heating up. The fourth-quarter report from the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors says that things are looking brisk both from the standpoint of inventory (it’s down 14.6 percent) and how quickly properties sell (they’re spending about 40 percent fewer days on the market, compared with this time last year). And though prices haven’t jumped, they have been on a steady rise. Detached homes in the last quarter of 2016 fetched a median price of $295,500, up from $270,000 two years earlier.

We’re not in the bubble zone, but at the moment, “It’s a seller’s market,” says Erin Garcia, Realtor with Loring Woodriff.

If you’re looking to buy, then, you need speed and agility. Garcia says she prepares her buyer clients for this reality: “You’ve got to be in the house within the first 24 hours. In particular, in the city, under $400,000, you’ve got to be ready to go.” This is not an entirely new situation, she says, but it’s recently gotten a little more acute. “We don’t have the ability to go back and look at the house three times” before making an offer, she says. Therefore, buyers have some serious homework to do upfront.

Number one, a pre-approval letter from your mortgage lender is a must. Number two, says Garcia, you’ll need to get familiar with a blank contract, ironing out any questions or concerns ahead of time and making sure you understand all the terms. When the time comes to make an offer, she explains, “We won’t have two hours to go over it.”

Those are the quantifiable things, but as we all know, homebuying is an emotional business. Garcia says buyers need to spend time thinking carefully about what they really want in a house—before the make-an-offer stage. “Setting up expectations helps dramatically in making the process go smoother,” she says.

What neighborhoods do you like? Answering this question, says Garcia, is a matter of “using the time more wisely”—since viewing properties before they get snatched up means a lot of last-minute jaunts to new listings. “We’re trying to make that a tighter sphere as far as what you’re looking at,” she says. “It’s an elimination game.”

What kinds of house qualities are must-haves for you, and which are more like wishes? Hash it out with your spouse, if you have one, sooner rather than later. “Being able to discuss needs versus wants is important,” says Garcia. “It’s purely intellectual as you’re figuring that out, but then that process can evolve into ‘This is more important than I realized.’”

So when the right place pops up, how do you come up with an appropriate offer? Sellers have been receiving, on average, 97.8 percent of their asking price for detached homes. Translation: You probably won’t talk ’em down too far.

“Sellers are pricing properties well,” says Garcia. “They are using informed and educated pricing analysis from the beginning.” And if you’ve found something good, chances are other buyers are finding it too.

What if, for some reason, that FOR SALE sign has been in the yard for a while? “There’s something to be said for how long a house has been on the market,” says Garcia, “but it’s seller perception as well.” Sellers, in other words, usually only feel they can come down so much without taking a bruising.

Consider not only how you can gently negotiate downward, but how far upward you yourself are willing to stretch. “If there are multiple offers, we might even bring full price and an escalation clause,” says Garcia. That’s one of those terms you want to get familiar with: It means that you’re promising to beat any other offer by a certain amount, up to a cap that you set.

The bottom line: Know thyself, and be ready to move. “You have to be decisive,” says Garcia, “in a way that holds true to what you know of value.”

When it burst upon the scene five years ago, boxwood blight put a big scare into Virginia nurseries and all who love the iconic shrub, though perhaps some who scorn it for its historical associations and acrid smell would just as soon see the genus in its grave. Much like a sci-fi movie, sticky spores attach to anything that’s been in contact with infected plants (pruners, shoes, gloves, old leaves) and pathogens live in the soil for five to six years. The afflicted drop their leaves, decline and die. Labeled a “devastating disease” by the Virginia Cooperative Extension, it wreaked havoc among old English and American varieties before nurseries learned to control it with strict hygiene and reliance on resistant varieties.

Robert Saunders, who grows boxwoods with his brothers just south of Lovingston, says things have settled down since the blight was discovered in 2011. He sees it now as manageable, but “the days of planting large numbers of English boxwood are over.” So, if you have some ancient specimens on grounds—soft fluffy English or burly dark American—now’s the time to protect them. Never prune boxwood in wet weather or subject them to overhead irrigation.

Unlike English and American (Buxus sempervirens), littleleaf boxwood (B. microphylla) produces cultivars apparently highly resistant to the fungus. Green Beauty, Wintergreen and Winter Gem are among the most highly ranked for resistance.

The gist is, if you have extensive old boxwood plantings, do not let people care for them who have tramped through lots of other peoples’ boxwoods until they tell you exactly what precautions they are taking (sterilizing tools, replacing coverings on shoes, etc.). It’s in everybody’s interest to do this.

In the meantime, keep your boxwoods well-groomed, with old twigs and debris cleaned out from the center of plants and do not overmulch. Air circulation and keeping infection out of the area are key. If you want to opt out of the whole drama altogether, consider inkberry and hollies for your deer-resistant evergreen needs.

Boxwood cares aside, spring is upon us, with winter jasmine and snowdrops having fully flowered at the end of January. Garden centers will be ready, with most opening March 1. Our last frost date still hovers around mid-May, so be careful setting out tender annuals unless you’re able to toss frost cloth or sheets over them on the frigid nights we’re bound to get at least through the end of March.

Cool season annuals like pansies, violas and sweet William are good choices for early color until the soil heats up. Buy tomatoes as soon as they go on sale to get a wide selection of varieties, but keep them potted so you can whisk them inside if needed before planting them when the earth has thoroughly warmed in May.

Now is the time to fertilize hollies, azaleas and dogwoods with an acidic product like Holly Tone. Pull back existing mulch, scatter fertilizer and lightly scratch in with a garden claw or rake before replacing the mulch. Boxwoods, however, need very little fertilizer and prefer a slightly alkaline soil, so keep Holly Tone away from them.

Resist the temptation to recarpet all beds with a nice thick layer of fresh shredded hardwood. If you’ve already got 2-3″, rake it up a bit to break the crust and wait until fall to add more. Too much mulch smothers plants and roots, sheds water and invites voles.

Always something to worry about in the garden. Love them or leave them, let us take a lesson in resilience from the boxwoods and welcome spring, ready to deal with whatever challenges nature has in store.

Spring checklist

• Drop off lawnmower blades, hand pruners and other cutting implements at Martin Hardware for sharpening.
• Check oil and gas for mowers.
• Clean and oil hand tools. Sharpen shovel and spade blades with a bastard file.
• Prune roses and fertilize with compost and well-rotted manure.
• Fertilize perennials with compost or organic slow-release 5-10-5 product.
• Top-dress bare spots in the lawn with compost before seeding and strawing.
• Start indoor seeds—tomatoes, cleomes, zinnias—for setting out in mid-May.
• Sow cool-weather greens —arugula, cilantro, kale, lettuce, mesclun—outdoors.