“Cooking completed,” intones a microwave oven from knee height, while in the bathroom a scale blurts out someone’s weight. Through a wide doorway, the front-loading washer and dryer are elevated to eliminate stooping. A ramp offers easy access from the side door to the kitchen.
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Offering Access to All
Q Do you recommend companies with pitches such as “we buy ugly houses” or “we pay immediate cash for your house”? What about people who knock on your door offering to assist you by paying off your mortgage, or by buying your home and allowing you to rent back until you get back on your feet?
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Avoid a Scam: Thoroughly Vet Offers to ‘Help’ With Your Mortgage
Q DEAR TIM: The next project at my home is a screened porch. I have looked at many plans, but none of them really excite me. But after looking at some pictures, I have some good ideas about what I want in my design. What should I take into consideration in planning so that I end up with the perfect…
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Drawing Up a Screened Porch That Isn’t Just a Mutated Deck
I have heard from numerous readers who were confused by a recent column on how to clean up your credit history (also known as a credit report) and credit score.
Continued here:
Understanding Your Credit History Is the First Step Toward a Higher Score
The flooring of the screened porch is important. It should be weatherproof and good-looking. Be aware that tiny bugs can come up through any cracks or gaps in the floor unless you have screening that extends all the way to the ground around the structure. The roof will protect the flooring from much…
Originally posted here:
The Finishing Touches
BOUNDARIES: Westbury Drive and its connecting streets and cul-de-sacs, from Riva Road to Beards Creek
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ANNAPOLIS LANDING
Takoma has had an activist spirit from the start. An early example: Georgia Avenue was a toll road in the neighborhood’s early days, and residents built out Piney Branch Road to avoid the payments.
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Its Name Lacks a ‘Park,’ but Not Its Vibe
In the collection of magazine clips and photographs that Faye Guercio gave her architect for her home renovation, she began to notice an inadvertent recurrence of turrets and towers. It wasn’t long before she realized she wanted one, too.
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For Modern Whimsy, A Reach Back to Towers and Turrets
Rates on 30-year mortgages edged up this week to the highest level since March as investors worried about inflation threats.
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30-Year Mortgage Rates Inch Up Again
Q DEAR TIM: Can you tell me how to build a retaining wall? Are retaining wall blocks a good choice? What critical things do I need to know so that I don’t have a collapse or other failure in the years to come? I have access to lots of large stones. Can I just stack them to make a retaining wall from…
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Well-Built Walls Can Hold Back Forces of Nature
Tysons Corner presents an extraordinary challenge and opportunity. No longer suburban, Tysons begs to be properly urbanized through visionary planning. Such planning could radically yet constructively transform one of the nation’s most unattractive and dysfunctional environments.
Excerpted from:
A Chance to Make a Real City Out of Tysons
W hile I was hosting a radio show recently, a call came in about whether to buy a house that was in foreclosure.
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Overcoming the Noisy, the Dirty And the Just Plain Eerie
Retaining walls can be constructed with many materials: wood, poured concrete, concrete block, decorative stackable concrete block and others. The science and engineering of retaining walls is complex, so do not try to build a tall wall without an engineered solution.
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Don’t Fight Physics
BOUNDARIES: In Northwest Washington, with Georgia Avenue to the west, Tuckerman Street to the south, and Eastern Avenue linking the two in a triangle.
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TAKOMA
You have to be more than 6 feet tall to peep over the wall off 13th Street NW and catch a glimpse of Edward and Juliet Gill Cunningham’s patch of paradise in Petworth.
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Paradise Gained
