ARCHIVED BLOG POSTS
2015
In my many years as both a homeowner and homestyles journalist, I have observed that home repair and improvement projects tend to fall into three categories: the ones you need to do, the ones you want to do, and the ones you do solely to increase the value of your home. The urgent projects you fi...
01/27/2015
As I recall the walls of my childhood home, a simple row home in Philadelphia owned by a first generation Italian family with limited means to decorate, I see only the large obligatory parlor mirror over the sofa and one brightly colored watercolor of gladioli dated 1940 by my Aunt Helen, a self-...
01/19/2015
More than 25 years ago, my friend John Carr was the first person I knew who built his own home, and he was the first who taught me that installing hardwood floors cost pretty much the same as installing subflooring and wall-to-wall carpeting. And naturally, I thought, who would ever want carpetin...
01/13/2015
Ever since our first year of marriage, there’s always been something special to my wife and me about adding fresh cut flowers to our home decorating scheme and, to this day, mostly every week when I stop off at the A&P to pick up my copy of The Examiner, I look for the special bargains in the flo...
01/05/2015
Each New Year’s I gaze into my crystal ball (I really have one, but let’s be real here) to predict what will happen in terms of market conditions and trends for the year ahead and I do it quite jauntily for two reasons. For one thing, I cheat and look at the crib sheets of what various experts of...
01/04/2015
