I'm interested in the energy savings that people mentioned above. Skywarrior, how did you choose a company to do your energy audit? I wonder what they charged and what tools they used to audit your house? Marilyn Lewis

Hi. I wrote the article about house moving and became convinced me that this is a cool, do-able project for some people. Emphasis on *some.*   You'd need nerves of steel, to be prepared for surprises and to be ready to do a lot of work to get the right property into habitable shape. The big keys seem to be finding a...more

I've been looking through real-estate listings lately, fantasizing about changing, upsizing, etc., and what jumps out at me, as a prospective buyer, is how quickly I am repelled by other people's wild decor. It's all a matter of taste, of course. It seems to drive home the the advice that real-estate "styling" professi...more

The best advice I've heard on winter gardens is to plant for color year around. Looking outdoors in the bleakest dark of winter is so much more pleasant when there are colorful foliage plants to rest the eye on -- coral-striped New Zealand flaxes, red berries on naked barberry branches, orange-berried pyrocanthus, gree...more