Author: Susan Sorensen

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For three decades, the Lorenzoni family has kept Charlottesville runners on the right track

If a picture is worth a thousand words, the walls of the Ragged Mountain Running Shop are Charlottesville running’s Library of Congress. It’s impossible to take more than a few steps into the store without examining a photo—or six. Even the ceiling, from which poster-sized images of victorious high school running teams dangle, is part of the pictorial history of both the 30-year-old Elliewood Avenue store and of running in Central Virginia.

In addition to visual shout-outs to superstar area runners, the photos that paper Ragged Mountain tout the achievements of non-elites who’ve finished their first Discovery Dash or posted a personal best in the Turkey Trot. Or maybe they just dropped by for a new pair of shoes. Like A.W. and Velma Norvelle.

Mark and Cynthia Lorenzoni opened The Ragged Mountain Running Shop on the Corner’s Elliewood Avenue during the winter of 1982. At a mere 500 square feet, the newlywed’s store had space for two customer chairs. “When both seats were occupied,” Mark said, “we were having a great day.”

On a Saturday afternoon last month, the 91-year-old Norvelles didn’t get far before receiving a hearty “how ya doing?” from Mark Lorenzoni, the infectiously friendly and indefatigable co-owner of Ragged Mountain. When Mark learned that the couple has been married 70 years, he commanded his daughter Audrey to get the camera. Write down their names, he told someone else, before announcing to anyone who would listen that the Norvelles, who met at Red Hill back when it was a high school, would be on Ragged Mountain’s Facebook page next week.

Cynthia Lorenzoni, Mark’s wife of 31 years, the store’s other owner, and the long-time volunteer race director for the Charlottesville Women’s Four Miler (which, by the way, has raised millions of dollars for the University of Virginia’s breast care program), took it all in from a slight distance. The first woman to cross the finish line of the 1981 and 1982 Marine Corp Marathon, she eventually turned from Mark’s photo-op to admire a coat modeled by a Ragged Mountain employee. On a cold evening last week, Cynthia learned that the young woman didn’t own a decent winter jacket. Today, she’s comfortably bundled up in the pea coat that Cynthia gave her from the Lorenzoni’s closet at home.

Unless somebody points it out, it’s easy to miss a black-and-white photograph that hangs behind the shop’s old-school National cash register. But that image, of a smiling, hopeful-looking couple, illustrates Chapter One of The Ragged Mountain Story. Taken during the winter of 1982, shortly after 23-year-old Cynthia and 26-year-old Mark opened a much smaller Ragged Mountain Running Shop a few doors down from its current location, the photograph is a constant reminder to Audrey Lorenzoni, 25, and a store co-manager with Alec, her 26-year-old brother, “how far my parents have come. Every time I look at it I smile. I get a happy warm feeling, and am glad I’m part of this place.”

Thirty years ago, tiny Chaminade University upset the Ralph Sampson-led University of Virginia men’s basketball team. The Vietnam War Memorial was dedicated, and Prince William—Kate’s husband and Diana’s son—came into the world. Mark and Cynthia Lorenzoni, newly married after meeting as students on a Michigan State University field trip, realized a running boom was afoot, and the university town where they’d settled was woefully underserved. So they decided to do something about it.

Cynthia, a champion college runner who worked part-time at Olympian Frank Shorter’s East Lansing store, recalled that she and Mark had surprisingly little trepidation about their iffy new business venture. “The nice thing about being young was we had nothing to lose—we didn’t own a house or have children—which made it less scary,” she said. At a minimum, she told Mark, “we’ll sell a lot of socks.”

What they didn’t sell much of that first year was running shoes. The store averaged three shoe sales a day, which required Mark to take a second job cleaning, painting, and fixing up rental units for a real estate company. Looking back, Mark said those years were “a lot of work, a lot of stress, exhausting…and fun too.”

Sales at Ragged Mountain have picked up substantially over the past three decades. But monetary success has never really driven the Lorenzonis.

“I’d like to think we had a vision,” Mark said one afternoon, leaning against a wall in the chaotic, jam-packed office he shares with Cynthia, Audrey, Alec, and the shop’s three assistant managers. “Honestly, though, we never thought beyond surviving the first year. On the surface, it seems sort of reckless and stupid, but we were happy working at something that came naturally to us: people and running. Cynthia and I wanted to fill a niche with a passion we shared.”

“Cynthia kept saying, ‘What do we have to lose?’” Mark recalled. “Everyone else said, ‘Don’t do it!’”

The couple started with 500 square feet, eight shoe models, and two seats for customers. “That’s all we needed,” Mark said. “When both seats were occupied, we were having a great day.”

Bill Guerrant, a retired Western Albemarle English teacher who’s been buying shoes at Ragged Mountain since it opened, never doubted that the Lorenzonis would make a go of their business. “They arrived at the right time,” he said. “There was nowhere in Charlottesville to buy running shoes, and Mark and Cynthia were so knowledgeable because they’re runners.” Then and now, “they take what they know, their own unique, personalized experience, and use it to help their customers. They value friendships and their customers, and they feel obliged to put you in the right shoe. They take it personally and feel responsible if you’re not happy, if you’re uncomfortable or dissatisfied.”

Shoe in
Purchasing running shoes used to be a straightforward activity for a sporadic, my- ass-is-getting-too-big-so-I-better-do-something-about-it runner like me. I’d walk into a store, find two or three visually appealing pairs of shoes, flag down a salesperson, try on the shoes he’d fetched, walk over to a mirror to check them out, and pay for the most comfortable pair. Then I moved to Charlottesville, where I decided to train for the Women’s Four Miler. Which explains why my eldest daughter and I found ourselves surrounded by shoe boxes, and sharing a bench at the Ragged Mountain Running Shop.

Alec Lorenzoni looks up a customer’s shoe-buying history in Ragged Mountain’s antique library card catalog cabinet, which came from his mother’s home kitchen. (Photo by Nick Strocchia)

“See that kid with all the hair over there?” Mark Lorenzoni asked my daughter nearly a decade ago, pointing to one of his teenage employees across the room. “He was the homecoming king at Albemarle last year. He’s smart, and a really good guy.” That’s the kind of boy you want to date, he told her. Leave the handsome hot-shots to the other girls; they’re not worth the trouble. That was the message she left Ragged Mountain with that June morning. Plus a new pair of shoes. And a pink t-shirt emblazoned with the store’s logo: a silhouette of a younger, pony-tailed Cynthia Lorenzoni crossing the finish line, victorious in the Charlottesville Ten Miler.

I overhead the dating lecture while lacing up my tenth pair of shoes. After I turned 40, my left knee began to bother me, a minor irritant I assumed I’d have to put up with. Nonsense, I was told at Ragged Mountain. Seems my pronation (inward motion of my foot and ankle) was to blame, something a proper pair of shoes and inserts would solve. Finding the shoes took a while—and entailed a lot of lacing and many laps around the store, until my (non-homecoming king) salesperson was satisfied.

The ability to visually assess a runner’s gait and foot type isn’t a skill that Ragged Mountain employees are born with. It’s what they learn after months—an entire semester, to be precise—spent shadowing seasoned employees, as well as writing up sales, greeting customers, restocking shelves, and retrieving shoes from the back room. By training period’s end, they can confidently and competently find the right shoe for runners with high arches (probably something well-cushioned and soft), flat feet (they tend to over-pronate and do well in sturdy “stability” shoes with firm midsoles), and every foot or gait in between.
Working at Ragged Mountain is a good gig, but it’s not an easy one. Mark and Cynthia can be tough taskmasters, because it’s their job, Mark said, to teach young staffers “life stuff. People will call me for job references and I need to tell them that my employees were motivated, self-driven, self-directed.” Hats and gum are no-nos, as are cell phones. It’s important to “look people in the eye, and give our customers the best, most positive shopping experience. I want our employees to be the very, very best they can be.” And that includes “facing the music when you make a mistake.”

“Kids don’t like to make mistakes,” Cynthia said. “There’s nothing wrong with mistakes, I make them every day, but sometimes it’s hard for people to admit they’ve done something wrong.”

There are no computers at Ragged Mountain. Sales are written up by hand, and the extensive inventory is tracked with pen and paper. A customer’s shoe-buying history lives on an index card filed alphabetically by last name in an antique library card catalog cabinet that came from Cynthia’s kitchen. (Periodically, Audrey and Cynthia conduct mandatory employee alphabetization refresher sessions.) Once a sale is concluded, Ragged Mountain employees always walk around the counter and hand customers their bags. (“It’s a people thing,” Mark explained.) And they must never—ever, ever—leave for the day without saying goodbye to Mark, which, said Cynthia, “is a family thing.”

All in the family
Frequent reprimands aside, the genuine affection the couple has for their dozens of part-time workers is obvious from the photos of the staff parties the Lorenzonis throw every year: homemade lasagna in December; competitive games in the spring; and a summer pool party. Plus a graduation get-together for those—most of whom have been at Ragged Mountain for four or five years—who’ve completed college and are about to leave for jobs in the real world.

Garrett John, who, like every store employee, shadowed seasoned workers for several months before being allowed to wait on customers, assesses gaits and feet before recommending running shoes. (Photo by Nick Strocchia)

In his world, Mark is pleased today with one of his workers because she noticed an approaching Fed Ex deliveryman and held the door open for him. “See how Rachel greets him right away,” he said. “She treats him with respect. That guy has a job to do, and he’s double-parked outside, so he’s in a hurry.” Maddie, another employee, has just arrived—on crutches. A competitive college runner, like many Ragged Mountain employees, she’s on the verge of tears as she tells Mark she’s been diagnosed with a stress fracture. Mark hugged her, and said, “You’ve hit bottom. You don’t know this now, but this will serve you well. It will make you a better athlete and a stronger person. Plus, as a bonus, guys always want to help girls with crutches.”

Crutches, tears, and deliveries successfully dealt with, Mark, a long-time Virginia Institute of Autism board member, turned his focus to one of three intellectually-disabled Ragged Mountain employees who has recently discovered the shop’s bathroom pump soap dispenser. “He spends hours in there with the door locked, running the hot water and watching the soap level go down,” Mark said, shaking his head. “The rest of us can’t get in there when we need to use the bathroom.”

His mood brightened, however, when he noticed high school senior Adam Visokay, the 2011 Central Virginia male runner of the year. An All-state member of the Albemarle track team that Alec Lorenzoni has helped coach for the past four seasons, Visokay stopped by to say hello during a tour of Grounds with his parents and one of the UVA track coaches. He’s greeted by the Lorenzonis like a long-lost family member. His mother, Alison, tells an observer, “Whenever I need a boost, I just stop by the running shop and listen to them say nice things about my son.”

Part clubhouse, part support group, part town square, the Ragged Mountain Running Shop is “a place to gather,” said Peter Lorenzoni, Mark’s architect brother, at the store’s 30th anniversary party in January. With Facebook and texting and Twitter and Skype, “these days our culture is devoid of community,” he said. “Being part of a community is important. Mark and Cynthia’s store is very human, and they care so much. Their business is a reflection of that. They’re good business people, but, more importantly, they’re good citizens.”

Mark Lorenzoni says it’s his responsibility to give customers the “best, most positive shopping experience” possible. (Photo by Nick Strocchia)

Eliza O’Connell, two-time women’s winner of the Montalto Challenge, said one of the best places to find evidence of the Lorenzoni commitment to community is the University of Virginia track at 5:30 a.m. every Wednesday. “Rain, shine, snow, or earthquake,” O’Connell said, that’s where you’ll encounter about 50 runners of varying abilities, training for everything from a 5K to a marathon, literally being put through their paces by Mark Lorenzoni. In 2004, when O’Connell first showed up, “there were about six of us,” all elite runners. Nowadays, participants at every pace, distance and ability can find a group—“your zip code,” as Mark refers to it—to train with. When asked about cost, O’Connell laughed.
“Mark and Cynthia give every ounce of their being to the sport of running,” she said, adding that the couple has voluntarily organized northwards of 500 races over the years. “They don’t ever take compensation. Back before there were so many of us, Mark would stay up until midnight hand-writing our individual running programs. There are still people in this town who couldn’t function if Mark didn’t tell them what to do.”

“No athlete should have an incomplete scrapbook,” Mark said, which is why, in addition to working with all-comers at the UVA track, he, Cynthia, and several other members of Charlottesville’s running community started the Ragged Mountain Racing Team in 2008. “We wanted to provide post-collegiate runners an environment and community in which they can develop both professionally and personally, with the ultimate goal of achieving success on a national and even international level. No runner should leave the sport with should’ves, could’ves, or would’ves. Or any regrets.” Thanks to the Ragged Mountain Racing Team, those runners who qualify now have their equipment and travel costs covered and even receive a small stipend. One of them, Donnie Cowart, is an All-American graduate of the Virginia Military Institute and a nationally-ranked steeplechaser who hopes to compete in this summer’s London Olympics.

“Listen,” Mark said when asked how he and Cynthia find enough hours in the day, “we sell shoes. We work hard at it, but we’ve been blessed to make a good living doing what we enjoy doing. And how lucky am I that I get to come to work every day with my best friend and my children? Cynthia and I started talking more than 30 years ago on that Michigan State bus, and we haven’t stopped since.”

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News

Greg Thomas wins hearts, trophies at Albemarle High School

From where he stands on the Albemarle High School football stadium bleachers, band director Greg Thomas has a good view of about 80 teenage musicians. Gathered in a haphazard semicircle on the track below, the Marching Patriots have just completed their final run-through of “Pursuing Red,” a show they first clumsily attempted at the beginning of August, when temperatures soared into the mid-90s and Band Camp ran daily from noon to 10pm.

(Photo by Ash Daniel)

The sweltering summer heat is history. Ten-hour days gave way long ago to 20-hour workweeks. “Pursuing Red,” now a well-oiled machine, will be performed for the last time tonight at the Virginia State Championships near Richmond.

Before sending his students off to scarf down bagels, crank up Cee Lo Green’s “Forget You,” and dress for the competition, Thomas has something to say: “You never learn anything—anything—until you try to teach it to someone. As bossy as I am, I am constantly surprised by how wrong I am about everything…how much I enjoy learning from you. How much I learn about marching band, about people, about all kinds of things.”

Since it’s the last time the band’s seniors will be together on their home field, Thomas singles out each of them to share what he’s gleaned during their time together. Patience, loyalty, leadership, determination, kindness, artistry, being your own person, and smiling through adversity are on the list, as is shoe design, cake-baking, and “a throw-it-out-there-and-try-anything kind of attitude from one of the quietest guys I know.”

“It’s been an awesome ride. Thank you,” Thomas says in closing. “Now say, ‘You’re welcome.’”

“You’re welcome,” they dutifully respond, some wiping away tears. And then they quickly remind Thomas of a few nuggets he’s passed along to them: how to clean up the band room; the importance of being on time; to dress appropriately; and, finally, a willingness to do anything for free food.

Big band theory
On most mornings, I have a better chance of scoring a date to the SPCA Critter Ball with Justin Timberlake than I do of getting my teenager out the door on time. “Wait!” she’ll shriek, as I put the car in reverse. Then she hops out, runs back inside, up the stairs, and into her bedroom to hunt for her tennis shoes. Or maybe she’s neglected to brush her teeth. Or feed the fish. Once we’re finally en route, she groans and sighs and rolls her big brown eyes because, having left 10 minutes later than planned, we’re stuck behind a school bus that repeatedly stops to pick up passengers on the long and winding Earlysville Road.

Greg Thomas warms up the Marching Patriots before they take the field to perform their half-time show at the final Albemarle High School home football game of the season. (Photo by Nick Strocchia)

From the end of August through November, however, that same 15-year-old can be found impatiently waiting in the car when I walk out the front door at 7 a.m. She, like every member of the “100 percent volunteer marching band” at Albemarle High School, has read, and takes seriously, the fine print in the written agreement Thomas presented to her on her first day of Band Camp. My daughter understands that “being late to, or cutting rehearsals is a slap in the face to the band and to our musical ambitions.”

The marching band, like all the other teams at AHS, is highly ambitious. But unlike the football or soccer squads, every member of this team is required to play every minute of every competition. They’re all on the field 100 percent of the time. No substitutions. No time-outs. If someone is late or missing, not only will it potentially derail the show, it can also discombobulate the sousaphone player next to you.

When my daughter read that her “attendance at rehearsals is the single most vital part of our preparation, grade and success,” she knew the guy who wrote it meant business. That’s where the unit starts, with that shared sense of responsibility.

Early on a recent overcast and chilly Thursday morning, bleary-eyed band members hoisted nine 3′ tall, hand-painted drums onto a wooden trailer hitched to a red and blue ATV with a lead-footed snare-drummer at the wheel. A large rolling cart was carefully piled with bass drums, cymbals and a tom-tom. Marimbas, xylophones, chimes, congas, and a kettledrum were rolled out of the band room door, past a football stadium and tennis courts, up a hill and into a parking lot. Dozens of musicians, carrying at least one instrument each, followed closely behind.

Eight hours later, they did it all again.

As they made their way up the same hill for their second rehearsal of the day, a freshman on drumline told a couple of flag-carrying members of the color guard, “I won’t know what to do with myself next week” when marching band ends. “I’ll get a lot more sleep,” he said. “But I’ll have to start riding the bus again.”

All the chatter ceased, and the band fell quickly into formation, when Elaine Golden, one of three drum majors, raised her arms and shouted, “Marching band warm-up!” She counted to eight, directing the band through a series of scales as they marked time.

Saxophonist Brian Brown stands at attention while waiting for the signal to strike up the national anthem. (Photo by Nick Strocchia)

“Forward! Backward! Halt!” yelled Golden when Thomas, a lanky, bespectacled 53-year-old, pulled up on a red bicycle. He dismounted, climbed into the basket of a scissor lift and pushed the “up” button. Twenty feet above the band, he picked up a microphone, and said, “For the next two hours, we’re going to work our butts off. Let’s take it from the top…”

The top to which Thomas referred was the beginning of “Nachos,” the band’s nickname for “Tapestry of Nations and Chaos,” the first of four songs that comprise this year’s show, a byzantine production of stop-and-goes, jam-outs, corners and curves on which the group’s been working its collective butt off during hundreds of rehearsals over three-and-a-half months.

“You’ve already decrescendoed at the beginning of the decrescendo,” Thomas scolded the trumpet section. “It takes 10 beats to get to where you were at beat two. If you want to get better, this is where it lives, in these details. Don’t drop that phrase so early. Musically, the difference between a score of 94, and where we want to get, is very difficult. Don’t give up; you can do it.”

Worst to first
Winning, to paraphrase Gordon Gekko, is good. But winning as often as Albemarle High’s Marching Patriots do is worth its weight in gold (and silver)—as evidenced by row after row of trophies, displayed on nearly every flat surface in the band room. Several best-in-show awards have been added to the shelves this year, and the band has earned a coveted “Superior” rating and re-claimed the Jefferson Classic championship trophy, a bust of Thomas Jefferson, which immediately went missing. But that’s another story. And Thomas isn’t in it for the hardware anyway.

“I’ve been on the winning side, and I’ve been on the losing side,” he said one Friday afternoon while washing dishes at a sink in his cramped office, one wall of which is inexplicably papered with a trail of food photos cut from Lean Cuisine boxes. “Competition is artificial, it’s not the point.”

Freshman drummer Konnor Roeloffs marches on. (Photo by Nick Strocchia)

Collaboration, he added, is what really matters, and “after four years, I want these kids to look back and think this was a place where they were nurtured and grew and learned about themselves and achieved what they thought they couldn’t achieve.”

In 1993, when Thomas arrived at AHS after eight years as the band director at Walton Middle School, things were pretty sparse in the achievement department. “A disaster. Horrible,” is how James Tobin, a senior at Albemarle High that year, described it. “We were on our third band director in three years, and we were bad. Greg was hired a few weeks before school started, and there was no show plan in place. There was no real pride in place, either. Greg started with nothing.”

According to Tobin, now a music teacher who played in the Virginia Tech marching band, the AHS band didn’t amount to much that first year.

When asked about building the program from nothing, Thomas, a Virginia Commonwealth University grad who plays most instruments, including trombone with Big Ray and the Kool Kats, smiled, and said, “I don’t think of myself as having a really good work ethic. But I was doing something I really liked, something I found joyful. The kids knew then and they know now that I care about them. And if the kids trust you, you can get them to do anything.”

Maddie Pericak, a senior and baritone section leader, explained that dynamic from a student’s perspective: “We’re taught from the beginning that we’re the ones who have to strive to be better. It’s not our directors who will make us better, it’s up to us. It’s empowering,” she added. “You won’t find anything like it anywhere else.”

Mentoring new marchers who are invariably overwhelmed by the impossible-seeming task of learning more than 100 pages of difficult music and complicated drill, is another responsibility of the band’s veteran members. “It’s the older kids’ job to be nice to the younger kids and share their skills,” Thomas said. “I constantly remind them that when they were beginning marchers, they had their own monumental struggles. They all know leadership isn’t just relegated to the official leader.”

Trumpet section leader Emily Kuhn found herself responsible for more newbies than usual at the start of this year’s Band Camp. She admitted that, while initially somewhat daunted, she came out of the experience stronger and wiser. “If you can play an instrument while walking or running,” and keeping 18 trumpeters pointed in the right direction, both physically and musically, “sitting down and playing seems pretty easy,” Kuhn said.

Sitting down is something Greg Thomas, perpetually in-motion, rarely does. In addition to instructing the Marching Patriots, Thomas conducts four other Albemarle High bands and teaches a guitar class. A father of three, Thomas is married to a teacher and the son of the one-time head of VCU’s music department. He learned to play the trumpet before he learned to talk. But when he left home for college he was certain of one thing: “I wasn’t going to be in music or go into teaching. I was going to carve out my own thing. Obviously, I failed,” he said happily, adding that it didn’t take long for him to figure out that playing and teaching music “was fun. Every second.”

Well, maybe not every second, which was clear back at the AHS parking lot rehearsal, where he chastised some of his percussionists for their lack of enthusiasm. “You look like your birthday party just got canceled…by your parents,” he said, before acknowledging that it had been a very long day. “I know you can give me 30 more minutes of energized performance.”
So they did, beginning with the baritone horn solo that opens “Baba Yetu,” Christopher Tin’s irresistibly joyful Grammy Award-winning composition, and the third number in the show. The solo became a duet, and four senior trumpeters and a piccolo player joined the baritones up front. With their instruments at their sides, and the marching band for back-up, the seven-some belted out Baba Yetu’s Swahili lyrics: “Baba yetu, yetu uliye/Mbinguni yetu, yetu, amina/Baba yetu, yetu, uliye/Jina lako litukuzwe…”

As the singers resumed their marching, an observer’s eye traveled to members of the award-winning drumline, who raised large, padded mallets. In perfect unison, they came down on the nine student-painted drums. Soon, they were throwing their entire bodies into it, and, mallets flying, they kept the African beat by playing not only on their own drums, but also the ones next to them.

Gregory Lewis, a former percussionist with the Marching Patriots who’s now at the University of Virginia, pointed out that “so many activities emphasize leadership, but marching band [also] teaches how to follow, how to take criticism from directors, section leaders and judges and turn it into something productive.” An engineering student, Lewis plays the MalleKATs in the Cavalier Marching Band, and credits Thomas—“one of those teachers who genuinely wants his students to succeed, not only in his classes, but in [everything]; in life in general”—with showing him “how to win graciously and lose with respect,” and “to make sure that you love what you end up doing.”

The show must go on
Though one more “Pursuing Red” performance remained, Thomas and Craig Jennings, chorus director at Burley Middle School and the marching band’s assistant director and visual coordinator for the past 14 years, were already discussing next year’s show. “We pick the coolest music we can find,” Thomas said. “The craziest stuff. Craig will write a ridiculous drill, and then we’ll try to marry the music to it. The kids will knock themselves out to surmount the challenge.” They start in August, he said, by “biting off small chunks. A little bit of drill with a little bit of music. Then we repeat it a couple hundred times, kind of like building a skyscraper. Tiny step by tiny step, with lots of moving parts.”

Because it’s so physically demanding, Thomas said marching band “is distinct from other musical things. Since they’re laying out an enormous amount of energy and time, the kids who make a commitment to it take a real leap of faith in their instructors. So our plan better work—and I don’t mean trophies; I mean it better come together and be something they can be proud of.”

In addition to Thomas and Jennings, three other instructors keep the band in step: percussion arrangers Andrew LaPrade and Will Muncaster, and color guard choreographer Chris Sirard. Then there’s Donna Robertson. A 1981 AHS graduate and professional instrument repair technician, Robertson is never far from two heavy cases that, in addition to a wide array of parts and tools, hold a mouthpiece for every instrument. According to Thomas, she was waiting in the band room on his first day at Albemarle High. “I’m here to help,” he recalls her telling him. “For how long?” he asked, expecting her to say a day or maybe, if he was lucky, the entire week. “As long as you stay,” she responded.
Nearly 20 years in, and neither of them have any intention of leaving anytime soon.

It’s well past midnight, and, after returning from Richmond with more trophies to add to their collection, the exhausted musicians of the AHS band are waiting to be officially dismissed from the band room. They’ve turned in their 20-year-old, tattered and yellowed-from-too-much-wear uniforms (a fundraiser is currently underway to raise money for 100 new uniforms at a cost of about $500 each). Lydia Bock, a sophomore flugelhorn player, is near tears and slumped against Tim Wersinger, a senior trumpeter. When asked a couple days later about her mood, Bock’s eyes welled up again. She struggled to explain her feelings, and finally blurted out: “It’s that we work so hard, and then it all just ends.”

Until next August. When temperatures will more than likely hit the mid-90s. And Greg Thomas will certainly grab his microphone, and, from the basket of his scissor lift high above the band, tell the Marching Patriots to “take it from the top.”

Categories
Living

November 2010: Inside out

Blame it on the empty room. That’s what designer Kelly Witt does when she recalls the momentary panic she felt the day she hung “a wire and crystal atom-shaped chandelier, lit from within by large holiday lights” in the furniture-less dining room of the brick colonial she and her artist husband, Clay, have spent the past eight months renovating.

“I was afraid it might be too wacky,” Kelly says of the “comet” pendant light she ordered from the Horchow Collection website last spring. Her solution: Add some old to the new. Specifically, Kelly moved in an inherited antique dining table and china cabinet. A rusted candelabrum from a Ruckersville antique store takes center stage atop a 19th-century English mahogany sideboard because “Clay and I both have a rusting-metal affection,” Kelly explains.

When putting together a home, the owner of Kelly Witt Design + Decoration says it’s important to “work with what people have and like,” as well as the environment where they live. “We own a lot of antiques—some really nice things with a story—that have been in the family for eight generations,” and “the heaviness of the antiques balances out the lightness and whimsy” found elsewhere in the room. There’s the ocher-colored vase bought several years ago at Quince that holds a manzanita branch, purchased at a New York market. The citron and floral linen draperies, with a branch that appears to climb to the ceiling, complement the taupe grass-cloth wallpaper hung above the chair rail. Kelly installed café shutters both here and in the living room because the dark gray “blends into the darkness of the windows, but you can still see the tree tops; we’re making our own country retreat,” she says. A fluid gallery of paintings—a Dean Dass, a Dick Crozier, a Clay Witt, among them— hangs on the walls.

Kelly, who studied architecture at the University of Virginia, admits that as a designer it’s her nature to be “always changing things up because I don’t want to be too settled.” But after months of demolishing, building, stripping, sanding, plastering, painting and moving, “it might be nice to be somewhat settled.”

The Witts made a powder room off the screened porch into a full bath and installed a new floor and ceiling.

Kitchen redo

Especially in the kitchen, or what Kelly calls “the focal point of our house.” When the couple purchased the 1930s Rose Hill neighborhood home in March, Kelly and Clay’s focus truly was on what was then a “blue and white Tuscan experience.” Clay removed seven layers of linoleum flooring before unearthing the original heart-pine. To enlarge the room, they knocked out a pantry—and pretty much everything else—replacing what was once there with custom-made cabinets, honed-granite counters, stainless steel appliances, a farmhouse sink and a tongue and groove ceiling. A large, neodymium magnet was added to the top of a counter next to the stove so Clay, the family cook, wouldn’t have to worry about dropped utensils.

According to Clay, who has an exhibit opening later this month at Les Yeux du Monde gallery, renovating a home is “more overwhelming at some times than others.” But both he and Kelly were committed to the project from the beginning because they found “a perfect house at a good enough house price,” Clay says. It was also “a long-term house; not the kind of place you buy now in hopes of some day moving to a bigger house. And we didn’t want to pay for other people’s renovations.”

When it came to renovating the kitchen, Kelly, who was intent on creating a “masculine space” for her husband, admits she wasn’t initially “100 percent positive” about staining the kitchen’s cabinets and floors dark gray. She calls it “an experiment,” but thanks to “layers of light”—including pendant lamps made from conical lab glass that reminded the couple of Erlenmeyer flasks—and plenty of shiny tile and metal surfaces, her experiment proved successful. “The darkness actually makes the cabinets recede, and the variation of the stain, the lighted cabinets and white subway tile cause a reflection that makes the room—even though it’s painted dark —light.” A 1950s industrial metal shop chair, purchased at an Ashland, Virginia antique store, resides beneath a large window and the portion of the counter that functions as a desk. “We’re always looking for junk shops and stuff we can transform or bring back to life,” Clay says.

WITT’S DESIGN WISDOM

Sure, an empty room can be intimidating. Unless, that is, you liken it to a blank canvas: A space where nothing can become something extraordinary. For inspiration, Kelly Witt offers the following design tips:  

Make your curtains long, and hang ’em high. Tall curtains, says Kelly, will exaggerate the height of low ceilings.

Match the scale of your furniture to the size of the room. Too-large pieces make even the biggest rooms seem smaller.
Roll on plenty of paint when testing a color. Leave the swatches in place as long as possible because color changes drastically in different light. Be certain you love your paint color—even on a rainy day.

Consider large-patterned wallpaper in a small space, such as a powder room. It’ll make the room look grander.

Dress your house for the season. Seagrass or sisal rugs and white denim or linen slipcovers are perfect for summer, while layered oriental carpets work in winter.

Keep your more permanent fixtures and furniture classic and neutral, and add color with accessories and accents. According to Kelly, “my favorite color changes frequently!” 

Install dimmer switches for your overhead lights, something you can easily do yourself.

Embrace grandma’s furniture. Reupholster it or mix it with modern pieces to freshen it up.—S.S.

Color solutions

“I had a general plan for the furniture and the feel of each room,” Kelly adds, leading the way to the living room. But “that gradually evolved because, for example, this sofa wouldn’t fit through the door to the third floor,” a slant-ceilinged, bookcase-filled, sky-lit sitting room with access via a 2′ doorway in the master bedroom. Design, explains Kelly, “is about being creative when looking for solutions to problems that always arise.”

It’s thanks to that third floor space that some second floor rearranging occurred last summer when the couple, who initially claimed another (and the largest) of the three bedrooms, realized “we wanted the access to the third floor…and we also love the morning light in that room on the east side of the house.” Another, “sort of accidental,” design decision is the placement of a fold-out desk with milk-glass knobs in the dining room, where Kelly first put it to “keep it out of the way,” but decided she liked it there—“so that’s where it’s going to stay.”

Like the couple’s couch, all the living room furniture is neutrally hued, with accents coming from “pops of color,” such as 1960s floral pink and orange pillows. (“I love pillows,” Kelly says. “They’re an easy way to change a room and brighten everything up.”) The space is accented by other finds, including an antique mirror and 18″ frond-shaped candle sconces above the fireplace mantel. “Ramsey,” a consignment shop ram’s head that “was an important piece in the living room of our previous home,” oversees all the goings-on from his perch on a wall. “Before we even bought this house, we thought about where Ramsey would go,” Kelly says.

Space travels

Because the Witts’ abode isn’t too large (about 1,800 square feet), Kelly was able to make everything flow almost seamlessly from one room to another via warm shades of gray paint. She points out that differing heights—“working in the vertical plane”—are important in a room, as are smaller “conversation areas,” such as the one by a front window, where a pair of off-white club chairs form a cozy reading space.

In the first floor powder room-turned-full bath, an enamel flowered mirror “that began life as a frame” hangs above a Signature Hardware porcelain sink. “I wanted to go as simple as possible in here,” explains Kelly of the “pavilion blue” room with subway wall tiles and hexagonal floor tile. The couple replaced a “popcorn” ceiling with tongue and groove, and added two chrome Restoration Hardware wall sconces and a rusted metal trunk because “we needed something to break up the clean and shiny.”

A screened-in porch off the back of the house is just big enough for a French bistro table from Rosewood Antiques and a couple of wrought iron chairs that Kelly’s owned since college. An entire wall is covered by a canvas painting that Clay did in grad school “and has been carting around—rolled up—for years,” says Kelly, obviously pleased that they’ve finally found a place large enough to properly display it.

Neutrally hued furniture is offset by “pops of color” and original artworks, including one of Clay’s pieces, center.

 

The second floor, including a small bedroom that serves as Kelly’s dressing room (metro shelves, curtain racks, a Philippe Starck lamp on an antique make-up table—“instant, cheap closet!”), and a full bathroom, remains a “work in progress.” Kelly’s determined to keep this space “really light and airy…and serene and clutter-free” because “we have a lot of stuff crammed downstairs, and I want to keep things more open up here.”

Although the entire project has been “more expensive and taken a lot longer than we expected,” Kelly says, “you really don’t need tons of money” to design a home. “The key is discovering things you can afford, and then making them usable. Pieces you don’t find in other people’s houses, that’s what makes a home wonderful.”

 

Correction: Due to reporting errors, the following facts were misstated in this story: The sideboard in the Witts’ dining room dates to the 19th century. The downstairs bathroom sink was purchased at Signature Hardware. The 1950s metal shop chair was purchased in Ashland, Virginia.

Categories
Living

An offer they can’t refuse

You’re no dummy. You peruse the local newspapers and pore over real estate websites. Then there’s the TV news, always rife with reports about a bleak real estate market. And it’s hard to miss the plethora of For Sale signs—very few of which have the words “Under Contract” tacked onto the front.  

So you figured you knew what you were getting into when you put your house on the market last year: a long slog.

But you optimistically planted some flowers, pruned the trees and replaced your front door. The once-red dining room walls are now a neutral shade, and you’ve made several trips to the landfill in an attempt to de-clutter the joint. Heck, you even shelled out a few hundred bucks for a “stager,” who deep-sixed an expensive rug in order to better show off your home’s hardwood floors.

Still, it’s been close to a year, with nary a decent offer. You just dropped the asking price—for the second time. Now you’re wondering if it’s time to sweeten the pot even more by throwing in an incentive or two.

Beth Monaco, an agent with Roy Wheeler Realty Company, isn’t so sure. She says items such as vacations and club memberships “are bonuses, but when it comes down to it, purchasing a property is a huge decision, and football tickets won’t be the deciding factor.”

Sure, if a buyer is looking at, say, two similar condos and one seller is offering a “pricey bonus,” such as a car, a trip or a high-definition TV, that may help sway them, Monaco says, but the bottom line is “there is no sense of urgency to purchase now because [buyers] have so many choices.”

Since the stakes are higher these days, and upgrades such as granite countertops and Wolf stoves aren’t the enticements they once were, it might not hurt to throw in association dues for a year or a summer’s worth of free pool service. Problem is, more and more folks have caught onto the allure of dangling goodies before home shoppers, so that Caribbean cruise you’re offering may not hold the appeal it did a year ago.

“Buyers are being told that it’s a buyer’s market,” says Monaco, which means not only have some come to expect sellers to pick up closing costs or pay annual property taxes, they also “think they can offer significantly less than asking price, regardless if [a house] is fairly priced.”

Then there are those who have absolutely no interest in your family room furniture or a year’s lease on a car. They’re after something much more basic: a place to call home. And odds are good that they’ll know within minutes of entering your place if it’s right for them—and a trip to Italy probably won’t convince them one way or the other.

According to Monaco, people are “taking more time in making their decision to make an offer; making home decisions with their minds instead of their hearts.” She considers this a “luxury buyers have now that they didn’t have several years ago when houses would go under contract a day or two after going on the market.”

Bottom line? Offer an incentive if you want; it can’t hurt. By throwing in the patio furniture and a decorating allowance there’s always the chance you can turn “We’ll think about it” into “We’ll take it.” But don’t go beyond your comfort zone, financially or emotionally. And don’t expect an incentive to draw hordes of buyers—you’ll have to wait for the next seller’s market for that.

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Living

How You Can Succeed in the Housing Market

For the past couple of months, Gini Carl’s mornings have consisted of seemingly endless rounds of bed-making, dishwashing, vacuuming and trailing after her 11-year-old daughter “to pick up everything she drops.”

No, Carl’s not some Type A, neat freak Martha Stewart wannabe. She has, however, been playing one since early April. That’s when she and her husband put their Albemarle County home on the market.

But staying on top of dirty dishes and a messy fifth-grader isn’t the worst of it. That honor goes to cleaning up after two dogs, a pair of cats, guinea pigs and hamsters. Oh, and then there was that unfortunate encounter with a skunk.

Carl awoke early one morning a few weeks ago, knowing that her Realtor planned to show the house later that day. I’m ready, she thought, until she stepped outside and got a strong whiff of something nasty.

What Carl didn’t realize—until she went back indoors and the smell didn’t dissipate—was that one of her pets had a run-in with Mr. Smelly and then decided to spread his bad fortune around. Specifically, a cat, who proceeded to make himself comfortable on beds, a couch and carpeting. Everything he touched reeked, Carl recalls with a laugh. “I was doing laundry at 6am. I called work and let them know I’d be late,” and then she got out the vinegar and Dawn dishwashing liquid.

“I didn’t have any tomato juice, so I used tomato sauce. I opened all the windows, threw down some carpet freshener and sprayed Febreze everywhere.”

Susan Veach, a Realtor with RE/MAX Assured Properties, applauds Carl’s deodorizing efforts. “It’s more important now than ever to have your house show in A+ condition,” she says. “In 2004, the average days on the market—from the time you put your house on the market until closing—was 50 days. Now it’s 171 days.”

Inventory is way up, she adds, “so the way for your home to rise to the top of someone’s list is to have the house in model home condition when you show it. Make the beds, send Lassie to the neighbor’s house, light some candles, bake some cookies and leave.”

When her Earlysville home was on the market, Debbie Philkill says that in addition to “frantic morning clean-ups,” she vacuumed twice a day, every day. She also burned through a lot of vanilla candles, “always wondering if the buyers noticed the just-extinguished smoking wick smell when they walked through the door.”

When you’re trying to sell your house, there’s always something to worry about, Philkill adds. Did the kids remember to flush the toilet? Was it a bad idea to cook fish for dinner last night? Did my husband put that stack of just-washed underwear in his drawer?

Letting your guard down even briefly can be costly, but Veach says if a client is at work and she schedules a last-minute showing, Veach will give the place “a quick once-over and pick up a bit. Everything helps, and our clients expect us to take care of all the little things” they may have forgotten.

But you can’t always count on a volunteer to clean up your messes. So why not have your home professionally cleaned before you put it on the market? A deep, top-to-bottom tidy will last a long time and all you’ll have to do is maintain it. And if even maintenance makes you nervous, pop for someone to come in every week or a couple times a month to help you keep up until your home sells.

As for pets, Carl jokingly suggests that if “you’re going to sell your house, it might be a good idea to sell your animals first.”

Categories
Living

Book ’em

I like to get stuff done. Most mornings, before my feet even hit the floor, I’ve composed a mental to-do list for that day. Mail the taxes, buy some milk, write a book review, bathe our dog, read to my daughter’s first-grade class, pick up a fifth of vodka. You get the picture.

Some days I even manage to check a decent number of tasks off my list. More often than not, however, too many unexpecteds—the puddle of cat vomit I step in when exiting my bed, a forgotten permission slip that has to be delivered to school, a phone call from a long-absent pal—prevent me from crossing anything off. And that bugs me.

But why? Who gives a rip if I don’t change the sheets or weed the flower bed? I can do it tomorrow. Or the next day.

Then again, maybe I need to get the rest of my family in on the act. No, I don’t want them carrying around silly, Sisyphean to-do lists in their heads. Instead, I need to delegate some of what’s on my list to them.

The first pass-along item came to me while wading through a sea of books, papers and clothes on the floor of my oldest daughter’s bedroom. Too many possessions, too little storage space, I thought. So I suggested she and her father visit Lowe’s to buy an assemble-it-yourself bookcase.

They took their assignment quite seriously, and quickly began calculating which belongings would call the new shelves home. They also measured where the bookcase would live, and decided on its height and the number of shelves it should have. Notebook in hand, they headed out.

A couple hours later they pulled back into our driveway. Instead of the expected large box, several pieces of lumber were sticking out the rear of our SUV.

“Nothing in stock satisfied our needs,” my husband explained. “So we’re going to build something ourselves.”

In addition to the wood, they’d purchased wood screws, primer and a quart of Pepto-Bismol pink paint. For their plans, they turned to Google Sketchup, a free application that allowed them to make a 3-D model of the final bookcase, with exact measurements for the required parts.

All right, I thought. We’ll be lugging the thing up the stairs by bedtime Sunday night.

But for weeks, Project Bookcase didn’t move past the planning stages. I had to step over the raw materials whenever I needed something from the storage shed on the fringe of our property. It was both a nuisance and a constant reminder of how little tolerance I have for started-and-abandoned projects.

But I kept my cool. O.K., there was the one time that I threatened to saw the wood into tiny pieces and feed them to our gerbils.

Then I decamped for a long weekend in Washington, D.C. The day after I got home, I opened the door to the storage shed, fully expecting to see a still-untouched pile of lumber. Shockingly, the lumber had morphed into a bookcase, freshly primed and drying atop a small plastic picnic table.

Well that’s interesting, I thought. In the ensuing days, dinner table conversations were peppered with reminiscences of a noisy electric saw, mixing up shelves and sides during assembly and plugging ill-drilled holes with wood putty.

On a rainy Saturday a few weeks later, my husband and both daughters disappeared. I went shopping. When I returned home and toted my purchases upstairs, I caught a whiff of something not entirely unpleasant—fresh paint.

I peaked into my daughter’s bedroom, and there is was: a three-shelf, Pepto-Bismol pink bookcase that fit beautifully between the desk and closet. It was perfect. And took only three months to complete.

Categories
Living

How you can succeed in the housing market

It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sign on for an adjustable rate mortgage and get more house for less of a monthly payment. Heck, you weren’t planning on staying in the place for long anyway. By the time the initial 4.25 percent loan hit 6.25 percent, you’d be history. 

Seems you forgot something: What happens when a hot real estate market cools? The obvious answer is a bunch of houses with For Sale signs out front that aren’t drawing all that many interested buyers. But if you’ve taken out an adjustable rate mortgage (ARM) and your home isn’t moving, you’re also looking at a mortgage payment that’s a lot more than it used to be.

ARMS used to be mostly taken out by folks who knew they weren’t in a house for the long haul. Then home prices exploded and ARMs became a vehicle for homebuyers to get more for less. Nobody expected that when the enticingly low initial interest rate changed, which it does periodically based on a predetermined economic index, they’d be in the precarious position of struggling to pay mortgages that often exceed the value of their homes.

ARMs “are inherently more risky than fixed-rate mortgages,” says Daniel Rothamel, a Realtor with Strong Team Realtors. “The key for borrowers is to manage the added risk. They need to stay on top of their ARM and know exactly when the rate is going to be adjusted, and how much the rate could go up. Usually, there is some sort of cap on the adjustment, but you need to know what it is and when it occurs in order to plan for the adjustment.”

If you can’t afford the new mortgage payment, Rothamel says you may wind up refinancing the loan. “Because so many loans are sold to investors in the secondary market, lenders have an interest in keeping you in the mortgage. As a result, your lender will probably give you plenty of options to refinance.”

Some markets around the U.S. have seen big jumps in their foreclosure rates over the last year; Nevada, for instance, saw three times as many foreclosures in March 2007 as it did one year earlier. Still, Rothamel doesn’t expect to see a significant jump in local foreclosures due to ARMS. “Right now, interest rates are still historically low, so rate adjustments won’t be as drastic as people may have feared.” And even if the foreclosure rate were to increase “as a result of unsuccessful ARMs, it probably wouldn’t be enough to have a significant impact on the overall market.”

The bottom line is that before making a mortgage decision, it’s up to you to know what’s going on in the real estate market. Ask questions and become familiar with the risks involved. And don’t talk to only one lender or consider only one mortgage option, says Rothamel.

“Arming yourself with knowledge will enable you to make an informed decision, which is usually the best decision,” he says. “Your mortgage is probably your biggest source of debt, so you owe it to yourself to be as informed as possible before making a decision.”

Categories
Living

Back Porch: Call of the wild

Nobody’s ever accused me of being a nature girl. It’s not that I have anything against the great outdoors, but my idea of a killer hike consists of trekking from book store to coffee shop to shoe sale. I can identify almost no varieties of plant, tree or bird. And gardening is a pastime I’ve never really embraced because I don’t like to get dirty.

Why then, I’m often asked, do I live in a home with a massive yard surrounded by a couple of wooded acres a dozen miles from Downtown? Good question.

My husband and two daughters have no trouble answering that query. The space, the air, the freedom and ever-changing nature of our surroundings is both irresistible and fascinating to them. They like nothing better than to while away an entire afternoon in the woods. But what do you do, I ask when they return home filthy and scraped. We walk and we listen and we watch, says my husband, all David Carradine-as-Grasshopper-like. You should join us sometime, he adds.

I remind him that the last time I spent a substantial amount of time outside, my reward was a nasty case of poison ivy. I decided that the forest knew I was an interloper, and wanted to make sure I didn’t come back anytime soon. So I didn’t. Until a couple of weeks ago.

It was a warmish early spring afternoon; one of those bright days that reeks of the better weather to come. I was wrestling with an impossible article when my youngest daughter poked her head into my office and asked me to go for a walk in the woods. It couldn’t be any worse than this, I thought, and closed the lid on my laptop.

Once properly shod, we crossed the street and struggled down a thorn-laden hill. Well, it wasn’t much of a struggle for them, but I managed to get slapped in the face with a branch, rip my jeans and fall on my tush. Not the most auspicious of beginnings, I thought, and figured that nature’s fatwa against me was probably still in effect.

On we tromped, my daughters and a friend pointing out a fuzzy tree and warning me not to hug it. (As if!) Poison ivy, the two Girl Scouts and a Brownie explained. Even though it looks dead, there’s still enough oil to cause a rash.

We stopped at a small stream, where the children began turning over rocks to see if any critters were stirring. Too cold, they decided. When the weather warmed, the girls promised to bring me back to hunt for frogs, crayfish and water striders, often called Jesus bugs because of their ability to walk on water. Further down, I spotted what looked like a beaver dam, but my woods-savvy young’uns said no, it was obviously man-made because the edges of the sticks weren’t chewed to points.

My eldest daughter rushed ahead to a mossy natural bridge, the preferred water crossing venue during chillier months. Next we encountered “the open grave,” a mysterious 4′ by 2′ trench, currently filled with a foot of water that the girls reported is a favorite hot weather hang-out for our neighbor’s dog.

We kept on like this for some time, the children excitedly recounting how they spend their afternoons in what, to them, is a magical place filled with all sorts of adventures to be had. I peered into a couple of small caves they’ve discovered, and marveled over their encounters with deer and attempts at identifying all manner of animal tracks.

Near the end of our walk we came upon a small tree next to the stream. This, my eldest confided, is the best spot out here. The flatness of the ground around the tree’s base makes for an ideal place to lay out a blanket and a picnic. Its leaves provide equal amounts of shade and privacy during the summer. All you need is a good book, and you’ve got a cozy afternoon hideout, she said. Or maybe, I thought, the perfect space to finish an overdue article.  

Categories
Living

Get Real: How You Can Succeed in the Housing Market

Buyer’s market. Buyer’s market. Buyer’s market. Seems to be the real estate mantra these days. So buy already, why don’t you. But maybe if you hold off for another month or two, housing prices will drop some more and you’ll get a better deal. Or will you?

“I certainly wouldn’t recommend that someone sign a lease for another year,” says Greg Slater, an associate broker with Real Estate III and the director of sales and marketing for Church Hill Homes. “But you don’t have to rush into anything either. Today’s market isn’t like it was when you had to pounce on a place fast, before someone else got it.”
We get it: plenty of inventory means that the bad old days of bidding wars, writing an offer without a home inspection and composing love letters to convince sellers that you’re a worthy purchaser are history. Does the same go for falling prices?

Broker Greg Slater declares now the time to buy. "You should be shopping, shopping, shopping," he says.

“Some of the national information out there shows that we hit bottom last year, and I tend to agree with that,” says Slater. “I think the market’s bottomed out and leveled off.” 

Bottom or no, there was definitely an adjustment, which means “buyers have a lot more negotiating power than sellers,” Slater says. “I do think that now’s the time to buy. You should be shopping, shopping, shopping. See what’s available in your price range. Find a place you love, and then negotiate. If you think the house is overpriced, you don’t have to pay that price.”

In other words, it’s the buyer, not the seller, who sets home prices nowadays.

“There are a lot of really great deals out there,” he says. “Builders with finished inventory; houses on the market for more than four months—both indicate that there’s room for negotiation.”

And as long as you’re the one calling the shots, why not throw out a lowball offer, especially if a house has been sitting around for a while? Maybe the owners have grown desperate, and now must sell because of a job transfer, a divorce or financial woes. It could turn out that your bid isn’t so outrageous after all, especially if it’s the only one the homeowners have received.

Another upside to a down market is that the all-important comparable values—a list of recent sales—become less crucial. You certainly should take a look at public real estate records (realestate.charlottesville.org or albemarlevapropertymax.governmaxa.com/ propertymax) and real estate info websites such as trulia.com and zillow.com. But don’t feel that what you see there carries the same weight it did a couple years ago, when homes were being snapped up before Open House signs could be jammed in the ground. Look at these numbers as more useful to sellers, a guide to what they should ask, but perhaps not an indicator of what they’ll take.

Keep in mind, though, that even if you snag the real estate deal of a lifetime, it has to be for the right dwelling—in a neighborhood you like with good schools. Oh, and you should plan on living there for a while because, according to Slater, the odds are slim that after six months you’ll be able to flip it and score a 20 percent profit. That kind of market truly is history.

“But houses are still an excellent investment,” Slater says, adding that “all the things that make our real estate market good, and Charlottesville a great to place to live, are still here.”

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Living

Back Porch: Color me nervous

My friend Erin has a real knack for color. Whenever I’m at her place, I marvel over the fact that not only did she paint the walls in a high-traffic downstairs room deep pink, but that they don’t look completely ridiculous. And then there’s a green room, which flows seamlessly into a yellow space.

Once upon a time, I decided we too could use a little yellow in our abode. I’ve always considered it a cheerful color, and thought I’d be doing everyone a favor by applying a coat of happiness to our foyer walls. I imagined folks walking through the front door and, without understanding why, forgetting all their woes and smiling.

Shortly after cleaning the yellow from my brushes, I came across a study that claimed the use of too much of the wrong yellow could cause people to become uneasy and aggressive. I don’t recall any knock-down-drag-outs in our entryway, but I do remember that the walls made me sick—literally. 

O.K., part of the problem might have been that I was a few months pregnant with our first child and suffering from such dreadful all-day sickness that even the smell of soap made me nauseated. The fact remained, though, that whenever I entered my own home, there was a decent chance that the sight of my freshly painted, very bright yellow walls would cause a mad dash for the loo.

Eventually I sweet-talked my husband into re-painting the space beige. And pale blue is as crazy as I’ve dared go, wall-color-wise, since.

It’s not that I don’t like color. On the contrary; our home is rife with it. Just not applied directly to the walls. Yet whenever I tire of a room, I know that a couple gallons of paint are the cheapest, simplest and most satisfying way to transform a dull space.

So I optimistically head for the paint store. And once inside, I’m immediately drawn to the reds, oranges and purples. These are colors of paint that I’ve never actually purchased, but do have a thick stack of sample cards of, should I every have a hankering for a Mango Tango bathroom. 

After a recent week of snow, ice and cold forced me to spend an inordinate amount of time indoors—surrounded by my uninspired walls—I decided that four years is long enough to think about what color to paint one’s living room. I needed to act.

I knew from all those afternoons spent ogling Nate Berkus on “Oprah” that I’d be happier with my paint job if I first selected a focal point—a piece of furniture, a pillow, rug or drapery fabric—and attempted to match my paint to that. After much deliberation, I decided to be bold. I would find a hue to complement the red in my favorite reading chair. 

The next morning I was on my way out the door, large chair cushion in hand, when my husband asked where I was going. I ‘fessed up, causing him to stop mid-whip in his pancake batter preparation. “Two words for you,” he said. “Yellow foyer.”

Ah, yes. The vomit-inducing entryway.

Maybe, I thought, it’d be best if I hold off on any paint shopping until I consult with my color whiz pal Erin. Besides, the ice is mostly melted outside, and the thermometer’s supposed to hit 60 degrees in a couple days. I really should forget about the inside of our house and focus on the garden instead.