House and Hammer

home in reading, mass. - the best places to live around Boston, Massachusetts

★The best places to live in and around Boston

Updated on April 26, 2022 On Sunday, the Boston Globe Magazine published its annual “Top Spots to Live in Greater Boston” feature, which I’ve been fortunate enough to write for the past five years. For want of a better metric, the list is based on the spots with the biggest jumps in median home prices…

make way for ducklings statue on boston common - spring real estate guide home buying timeline

★Countdown to closing: A first-time home buyer checklist and timeline

As in baseball, winter is the real estate off-season; if you’re a first-time home buyer who’s been scouting homes on Redfin or Trulia or Zillow, you probably noticed there wasn’t much coming up for sale the past few months, which can be really frustrating (or a great opportunity, since many other buyers put their search on hold for…

new home checklist: couple moving into new house

★New home checklist: 12 things homeowners should do right away

The weeks leading up to a home purchase are super stressful. Between the home inspection and finalizing your financing, you also have to start packing up your entire life and maybe arranging for movers — or even selling your old house under a tight timeline. Then there’s the actual closing, when you sign your life…

subaru solterra charging in driveway - real world range and charging experience

Real-world range, charging, and fun: Our EV experience

Our house has been a power plant since 2017; now it’s also a gas station of sorts. In January, we signed a three-year lease on our first electric vehicle, a 2023 Subaru Solterra. We’ve never leased a car before, but felt it made a lot of sense in this case because a) EV technology is…

cat sitting in cast iron skillet for some reason

I used to love them, but gas stoves are really bad news

(Note: No cats were cooked or otherwise harmed in the creation of this blog post; Athena just likes to sit in a frying pan sometimes, like a total weirdo.) When we bought our house, one of my must-haves was a gas stove. My parents had an electric range growing up, and the first time I…

heat pumps cut tons of carbon - heat pump on the side of a Victorian house

In data: Here’s how heat pumps can cut carbon and save the world

We installed a mini-split heat pump in our home in 2021 — not a whole-home system, just one wall-mounted unit in the living area, because that was all we could afford at the time. (The rebates are much, much better now — you can get $10,000 back from MassSave, plus up to $2,000 in federal…

unplugged cable wire - cut the cord to cable

Are you seriously still paying for cable TV?

There is simply no need to be forking over $200 a month for cable TV in the year 2023. It’s a waste of both money and mind. Afraid to quit cable? I’d wager half of what you watch isn’t even on television anymore, but on a streaming service like Netflix or Disney+. Need further motivation?…

DIY mailbox: Build an British-style postbox with scrap wood

We recently got our siding redone, a whole upheaval that included, among other things, temporarily removing our mailboxes from the front porch. But after all was said and done — with our house finally looking nice for like, the very first time in our tenure — we decided the rusty old mailboxes we got at…

air source heat pump - converting oil furnace to electric heat pump

Step by step: Converting from an oil furnace to electric heat pump before winter

It’s hard to think about heating oil in the midst of the hottest 21-day period in Boston’s recorded history. But while gas prices started dipping downward the past month, the cost of heating oil in Massachusetts is still up 72% compared to a year ago, at around $5 a gallon. That could leave many New…

diy lemonade stand with bistro style chalkboard

How to make a DIY lemonade stand from an old kitchen cabinet

There’s something pretty all-American about kids selling lemonade on the sidewalk on a hot summer day. And yet, a lot of modern American communities — I’m talking about those car-centric cul-de-sac suburbs off the highway — just don’t lend themselves to this smallest of business enterprises. That’s one of the reasons we think Quincy is one…

house for sale in boston - home buying 101

I wrote a book! It’s called ‘Home Buying 101’

Listen, I’m as shocked as you are, but there you have it: I’ve got an honest-to-goodness book coming out on February 15, called Home Buying 101. It’s published by Adams Media, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It’s a soup-to-nuts guide to buying your first home, with practical tips on saving for a down payment,…

poland spring plastic water bottle on the beach - how to reduce plastic waste

10 ways to use less plastic at home

I was listening to Alie Ward’s delightful + insightful Ologies podcast the other day — an older episode about ocean health with Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. There are a million reasons to listen, and to do more to help our marine ecology, but there was one startling statistic Dr. Johnson dropped that I hope will haunt you…

aerial view of beacon hill and back bay in boston

How much is a year of your life worth? How about four?

What would you pay for an extra year of your life? A lot, right? People complain about the cost of housing in Massachusetts, and with good reason — it’s outrageously expensive to buy a home in the Boston area. The median price of an existing single-family home in the Boston area was $563,000 in 2020, according…

home for sale with realtor sign in chelsea mass - how much to offer on a house

How much should you offer for a house? Here’s the best advice I’ve heard

How do you decide how much to offer on a home? The best advice I’ve heard came from Realtor Al Norton. “You want to bid a number where you’re happy if you get it at that price, and you’re happy if you don’t,” he told me. “That’s the trick.”

marlborough st brownstones in bostons back bay

If you’ve always dreamed of living in the Back Bay, this might be your chance

Over the past decade or so, there’s been an accelerating “back to the city” movement, as young people and downsizing boomers alike seemed to prize walkable, vibrant, diverse neighborhoods. As prices in the urban core spiraled higher, many Millennials sacrificed size for prime location while retirees in desirable suburbs like Wellesley or Needham cashed in…