Landscaping choices, like indoor decorating, are based on individual preferences. Maybe you’re looking for an attractive yard that requires very little maintenance? Perhaps you don’t mind a little maintenance in exchange for the liveliness of birds and butterflies visiting your yard. If so, this post can help.

It’s all in the plants
There are as many plant options to choose from as there are varieties of birds and butterflies, but there are several rules of thumb you can use to get started. For example, trees and shrubs that produce berries, such as hollies and nandinas, are attractive to birds, and make for beautiful borders around your property line or to mask the foundation of your home.

Also, flowering plants that produce a large amount of seed provide a much needed food source for songbirds such as cardinals, sparrows and finches. Depending on your color preferences, your options include goldenrod, sunflowers, aster, snapdragons and more. The key is to not cut the spent flowers off at the end of blooming season, but rather allow them to dry and hang in place – the birds will love them.

Butterflies are a little more finicky
While most birds migrate, butterflies have cyclical lives and only survive for a short period of time. Birds will often return over the course of a few years to the same spots they know they can rely on for food. Attracting butterflies requires a different plan, however.

Butterflies become most active when the temperatures are above 60 degrees, and it’s widely believed that they are nearsighted. For those reasons, the most successful butterfly gardens consist of brightly colored flowers in sunny areas of your yard. Also, like birds, butterflies will perch on surfaces that are comfortable to them. So place rocks that will warm up in the sunlight nearby.

The good news is that many of the same plants that attract birds will also attract varieties of butterflies. Great options for attracting both include goldenrod, aster, thistles and black-eyed susans. For a taller, more full option that works great up against your house or in a bed, choose from the many different colors of butterfly bushes available.

Whether you enjoy watching birds and butterflies from inside your home or from your deck, these tips will help attract them to your yard. This post is meant as an overview of available options, we’d love to hear about what you’ve done that’s worked for you. Better yet, find us on facebook and share some pictures of your garden!

Oh, one more thing – don’t forget the birdbath!

In the building industry, we talk a lot about communities, but sometimes it’s difficult to see beyond the ones in which we’re building homes. The reality is that the true definition of community is an entire locality, including all of its inhabitants. Our goal is to make a positive impact any time we have the opportunity to do so, no matter where it arises.

The StyleCraft Baby Pool – and how it came to be
Settler’s Landing Pool is a staple in the community. A longtime summer gathering place for friends and families, the pool is practically a southside Richmond institution. With time, however, facilities weather and age. The fence around the Settler’s Landing baby pool was a prime example. Repairs wouldn’t be enough, the fence needed to be replaced, which would have been a costly project outside the scope of normal operations.

That’s when Marc Mitchell, our Controller, stepped in with an idea. He knew of a connection linking StyleCraft Homes to Settler’s Landing: the little girl in one of the TV spots we created last year is also on the pool’s swim team.

That was more than enough reason for us to reach out to the pool board and offer our services. A couple of meetings and discussions later, it was all set. We gladly made arrangements to construct a new, safer fence around the baby pool, and Settler’s Landing has generously dubbed it the StyleCraft Homes Baby Pool. We’re extremely proud of this partnership.

“A noticeable improvement”
Chris Beach, a Settler’s Landing board member, was eager to talk about the improvement to the pool as a whole, and not just to the baby pool area. “The old fence was just not that great to look at. It definitely detracted from the setting we work hard to maintain here. But the new fence has been such a noticeable improvement that everyone is talking about. We really love it, and we appreciate the fact that StyleCraft approached us in the first place.”

And so are we.

We couldn’t be happier for them or more proud of the great work that all of our vendors put into this house, just like all the others we’ve worked on with them over the years. It’s also time for us to thank the Balsers once again for letting us chronicle the construction of their home.

If you’ve never heard, building a home and moving tends to rank fairly high on the list of most stressful life events. So we hope to have lived up to our goal of providing an exceptional buying, building and owning experience for the Balsers, just as we do for all of our buyers. To hear Beth talk about the process, we believe we did.

“In some respects, I can’t believe it’s been several months since the Townsend development caught our eye and we decided to build here. Everybody with StyleCraft, especially Josh, has been great throughout all of this. They’ve answered questions, they’ve given us advice, and we just felt like they were on our side the whole time,” she said.

We can’t ask for much more than that. We hope you’ve enjoyed following along with the Balsers as their house has transformed from an uncleared lot to a thing of beauty, and we hope you’ll consider giving us the opportunity to do the same thing for you. Stay tuned for one more mention of the Balser family a few months from now as we’re planning to do a walking tour of their home with them after they get settled in.

We take exception to, and challenge, those sentiments. Though we also understand them and that’s why we’d like to take a few minutes to tell you about something as simple as the paint we use – the builder grade paint we use – in every home we build: Duron Supreme.

We start with Duron because they work more with contractors than individual homeowners. Duron actually offers three different grades of builders paint:

• Masterpiece
• Edge
• Supreme – this one is the best

Coverage
We use the Supreme because it’s a quality paint that offers exceptional coverage. It’s not thin or runny like others that you can almost see through. Paint thickness is measured in mils (1 mil = 1/1000th inch), and the Supreme gives a 3 mil buildup. Most other builder grade paints will dry (unevenly) to a 1 or 2 mil thickness.

That extra bit of thickness can not only be the difference between a great looking paint job, but it also helps to seal and protect the drywall from moisture. Drywall is by no means a perfect wall covering, and it was never meant to be. The only way to truly remove all the surface imperfections is to put on a skim coat, but that’s an expensive step in most of today’s production homes. So the quality and finish of the paint is very important.

Finish
We use a flat finish, as opposed to semi-gloss or eggshell, on all the walls throughout the home. The Supreme paint provides a wipe-able surface for easy cleaning without removing any of the paint. Additionally, it hides many of the imperfections in the drywall. For trim, we use the highest grade Duron trim paint, which is a practically scrub-able white semi-gloss.

Application – spraying isn’t enough
Most builders will have a contractor spray two coats of 1 or 2 mil paint throughout your house in quick succession and move on to the next item on their list. Not us. Our crew does come into the home and spray the first coat. But then we send our drywall crews back in so that they can better see any spots they may have missed and fill them with drywall mud. Then the painters come back and rather than spray on the second coat, they roll it on to ensure an even thickness and then hand cut in all the trim. The difference is noticeable.

The guarantee
We offer 3 different colors of the Duron Supreme paint. Duron guarantees those three colors to match in touch up, so if you ever have to repair a spot or cover stains, the new paint won’t stand our from the old. We leave a touch up kit in every home so that those types of quick fixes can be handled quickly and easily by the homeowners. In the event the touch up doesn’t match, Duron will come back and repaint the entire wall for free. We do offer some custom colors as well, but they aren’t guaranteed to match, especially if it requires a deep base.

At the beginning of this post, we called our paint choice a simple one. And even with all of the expertise that went into the choice itself, we think you’ll agree now that you know the facts. It really is simple: no other paint would do for your house.

Many builders schedule the pre-settlement walkthrough just hours before closing. Some do it a day or so beforehand. We typically schedule it 7-10 days before closing. In this case, Josh worked hard to make sure the Balser’s house was ready that far in advance.

What does a walkthrough entail?
This is the time when the buyer gets to walk through the house and give it a thorough examination. Any issues, small or large, are documented. Every system in the house is explained from HVAC to irrigation (if the yard has an irrigation system, that is). It’s not uncommon for a pre-settlement walkthrough to last anywhere from 2-4 hours.

At the end of the walkthrough, the project manager and buyers both sign off on the list of issues that need to be addressed. The project manager then schedules whichever crews are necessary to fix the items on the list. Then, right before closing, the buyers walk through the house again to see that it’s all been taken care of, and that the house is perfect.

How did the Balsers’ walkthrough go?
Beth was impressed with the process. For her, “the fact that Josh spent so much time with us and went through the house with a fine tooth comb was great.” She also appreciated the detail to which he documented every possible ding or blemish, though as she said, “there weren’t many.”

As for doing the walkthrough a week before closing, Beth mentioned that she not only appreciated our need for the window of time, but she also sees great value in it for her family. “It’ll be great that we can move in and know that everything’s been taken care of, and we can focus on settling in, rather than waiting for a contractor to show up to fix something little,” she said.

Of course, there is at least one downside to holding the walkthrough that far in advance according to Beth. “Now I’m even more excited for the house to officially be ours, and can’t wait for the week to go by.”

We hear that a lot, and it never gets old.

The fact of the matter is that mosquitoes are called pests for a reason. They’re hard to get rid of, which explains why there are so many solutions out there for you to choose from. Some work, some don’t. We thought we’d take a few minutes to highlight some of the more popular choices and try to find the line between myth and effectiveness.

We all agree that bug sprays on the arms, neck and legs do a reasonable job of protecting us individually. That said, we’re going to focus on the choices you have for keeping the 30 or so species of mosquitoes found in Virginia out of your yard and off your deck.

Misters
General consensus is that mosquito misting systems do not work. Aside from their ineffectiveness, however, they are also hazardous to the health of your family. After all, they rely on spraying 30-60 second bursts of insecticide into the air around your backyard. Many are acutely toxic.

The wide diversity of mosquito species and their different behavior patterns make misting the least effective method of mosquito control.

Citronella
Citronella and smoke coils do actually repel mosquitoes, but there’s a catch. You have to stay firmly within the smoke plumes for them to do any good. Simply lighting torches or candles in a perimeter around your deck or yard isn’t enough.

In fact, Dr. Robert Novak of the University of Illinois tested these products for ABC News. He reported that when smoke from a coil covered a human test subject’s shin, the mosquitoes flew around the subject’s leg and bit them on the calf. So we’re going to call this solution ineffective.

Bug zappers
The good news is that bug zappers kill A LOT of bugs. The bad news is that not many of them are mosquitoes. The even worse news is that most bugs that zappers primarily kill beneficial insects like moths and butterflies. The EVEN worse news is that the UV light from the bug zappers makes any water in the area extremely easy for mosquitoes to find and then use for laying eggs because it makes the water appear polarized. The outright gross news is that since bug zappers are designed to explode bugs rather than just kill them, it’s not uncommon for small bits of bug to end up on you or in your food. Ew.

So it appears that zappers are great for killing bugs, just not mosquitoes.

Yellow bug light bulbs
This one is interesting because the yellow colored light doesn’t repel mosquitoes, it’s actually invisible to them so it just doesn’t attract them. The vision of flying insects is restricted more toward the shorter blue and ultraviolet wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum so they simply have no idea that your lights are on with these.
A side benefit here is that by not attracting mosquitoes at all, you also won’t attract spiders, which means you won’t be rushing out the door only to run face first into a spider web. We like that. Yellow bulbs = effective.

Ultrasonic devices
Simply put, they don’t work. Seriously, don’t even bother with these things. The explanations behind them make it seem like they should, but they don’t. 15 years of research has resoundingly proven this to be true. Please stop anyone you see getting ready to buy one of these devices and tell them not to.

Mosquito traps
There are a wide variety of mosquito traps on the market, but the common operational feature among all of them is that they mimic the cues given off by humans in some way. Most commonly, this is done by emitting carbon dioxide through the combustion of propane or from cartridges. Mosquitoes are attracted to the scent and then disposed of within the trap, either by sticky boards, electric current or net.

Mosquito traps are effective to a point but don’t be fooled by claims that they will wipe out populations within a full acre. They will reduce populations, but much of their effectiveness will depend on factors such as the original size of the population, weather, breeding habitats close by, even species. So while traps do work, they’re best paired with a good personal repellant spray.

In-irrigation system
A company in Fargo, North Dakota, has developed a product that can be added to your existing or new irrigation system. The product, SKEET-R-GONE, is a non-toxic repellant that comes in a quart-sized concentrate and is activated manually when your irrigation system is running.

In addition to its non-toxicity, it differs from misting systems because it is mixed with the water and therefore is less prone to wind drift. Depending on the number of zones in your yard, the entire lawn can be treated in minutes whenever you see a noticeable increase in mosquito population. Anecdotal evidence across independent reviews on the web indicate that this product is effective.

So there you have it, a somewhat thorough review of the options available to you for mosquito control. We hope it helps you choose the option that will work best for you and perhaps even save you some money. If you have solutions that have worked for you in the past, we’d love to share them with our readers, so let us know in the comments below.

It’s all about relationships
Whether they’re working with a homeowner in the showroom or us over the phone, the primary goal of the Evans Carpet staff is to provide exceptional service. But it doesn’t end with the initial conversation or the installation of hardwoods, ceramic tile or carpet in your home.

They know that follow up is the real key. Have you ever been frustrated after a sizeable purchase because you felt like the company took your money and now they have no time for you? Not if you’ve done business with Evans Carpet. Their policy is to guarantee installation for one year, but it’s not unusual for them to honor a call from a customer with a reasonable request even several years after an installation. Why? According to Carolyn, “We feel like it’s just good customer service to go back and take care of it.”

Working with Evans Carpet
Originally founded in 1981, Evans Carpet has grown to include a showroom in Richmond and one in Raleigh, NC. In both locations, you’ll be treated to personalized service from estimators and decorators with the experience to help you make the right flooring choices. Our skilled craftsmen will pick up where the showroom team leaves off by installing your carpet, hardwood, vinyl, ceramic tile, or laminate flooring with an expert touch.

If you’re considering an update to the floors in your home, we encourage you to contact Evans Carpet Corporation because we’re sure you’ll be as happy to work with them as we’ve been from day one.

Retail and New Construction
While we’re highlighting the great work that Artistic Stone does for us as a vendor, it’s important to know that you can also work with them on a retail basis. Our buyers select from about 12 consistent sample options (both in color and pattern) at our design center. Retail customers can select the exact slab their counters will be cut from in Artistic Stone’s showroom.

One-Day Turnkey Service
Retail customers of Artistic Stone can take advantage this service offering, unmatched in many ways by other granite shops. All in one day, a team of installers and a licensed plumber will:

• remove and dispose of your old counters
• install the new ones
• reattach the plumbing
• remove and dispose of your old appliances
• install new ones if they’ve already been delivered

Essentially, you can say goodbye to your old kitchen on your way out the door in the morning and hello to the new one when you come home that evening.

A pleasure to work with
One of the most difficult aspects of building homes is accepting the fact that you are, at times, at the mercy of your vendors’ schedule. We hold high expectations of the people and companies we hire because every step of the building process is a reflection on us whether it’s in our control or not. Artistic Stone Design understands that and that’s why we work with them.

Our superintendents stay in touch with them and keep them apprised of each home’s construction schedule. Usually about 10 days before counters are scheduled to be installed, a representative from the company will come out to the house to measure for the template. Production then begins on the countertops within a couple of days. The final product is then ready for installation a handful of days in advance of the scheduled date.

Even after installation and you’ve moved in to your new home, the folks at Artistic Design remain responsive if your counters need attention for any reason. From a warranty issue to a chip or pit in the surface, they take care of the problem. No wonder they’ve been around for over 10 years when so many other granite shops have come and gone in just the last 2-3.

A local, family-owned company named Better Kitchens & Baths, Inc., installed the Balser’s cabinets. In fact, Better Kitchens installs the cabinets in every home we build. They have developed a reputation for service during and after construction that sets them apart from other vendors. In particular, they maintain their own warranty and service department, which means that if a problem does arise it can be quickly and affordably addressed.

From selection to installation
Many builders send their homebuyers all over town to select cabinets from one place, light fixtures from another, and counters from still another. Not to mention plumbing fixtures and flooring. At StyleCraft, our buyers only have to make one stop at our selection center. Haley then walks them through every step of the process – just as she did with the Balsers.

Once the Balsers chose their cabinets, we let the folks at Better Kitchens know what to order and gave them our production schedule. Just as they do on every home, they tracked the schedule and contacted the project manager, Josh, when it looked like we were getting close to cabinet time. They came out in advance and marked centerlines and the space for the island so that lights and plumbing could be properly installed.

Then we scheduled the actual installation. Better Kitchens has been in business long enough to understand that while we build solid homes, construction schedules are anything but set in stone. So before they even load cabinets on a truck the day before installation, they call us to make sure we’re ready for them to come. We were.

Construction is one thing. Daily use is another.
Once the Balser family moves into their home, Better Kitchens will still be along for the ride. Most people call their builder during the first year for any problems that pop up. But what if something breaks or needs work after those first 12 months? Remember that warranty and service department we mentioned earlier? Better Kitchens covers every cabinet they install for 5 years – and that just adds to our commitment of a better ownership experience.

For more photos of the Balser’s home in Townsend during the construction process, please visit our Flickr page by clicking here.

Better Kitchens simply provides superior service, excellent craftsmanship, and they’re always on time. What more could we ask for? As Roger puts it, “anybody can start selling cabinets to a builder. But it’s how you go about providing service that sets you apart.”

One significant difference is that Better Kitchens operates its own warranty and service department. As the housing market shrunk over the last few years, other cabinetmakers and installers did away with this function that’s so vital to customer (builders & homeowners, alike) satisfaction. But Roger knew that Better Kitchens wouldn’t be the same company without it.

Craftsmanship
While Better Kitchens is a full-service dealer of stock cabinets and countertops, they also work with builders and homeowners to design and install semi-custom and completely custom solutions for:

• Kitchens & baths
• Islands
• Laundry rooms
• Home entertainment
• Home office
• Wine cellars
• Bookcases

Examples of Better Kitchen’s work can be found here.

Working with Better Kitchens & Baths
We mentioned before that Roger’s teams are always on time. That’s because they’re involved long before the installation ever happens. Once our buyers choose their cabinets, we let them know what needs to be ordered and we give them a copy of the home’s production schedule. Without fail, Better Kitchens calls us to set up a time to come mark centerlines for plumbing fixtures and mark out the space for an island so wiring for light fixtures can be centered.

Then once it’s time to install the cabinets, they give us another call a day or two in advance to make sure we still need them and haven’t been delayed due to an issue at the job site. Does this help them cut down on lost days and save money? Sure it does. That’s smart business, but it’s also an incredibly valuable aspect of our partnership that we appreciate.

Whether you’re building a home with us or considering a remodel at your current home, trusting your cabinetry to Better Kitchens may be the easiest decision you make. And you’ll definitely be happy with the results.