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Central Virginia Federal Credit Union

In today’s market, should I buy or renovate my existing home?
Many homeowners today are making the wise decision to update and renovate their homes instead of buying due to higher rates and home prices. A home equity loan or line of credit can help make this process easier! Our experienced team at Your Community Credit Union can help you decide which one is the right option for you.

What is a Home Equity Loan and how does it work?
A Home Equity Loan is based on the equity (value minus the amount you owe) available in your home. You can choose a fixed loan amount with the benefit of knowing your payment amount and how long you will be making payments. If you are borrowing for a large remodeling project, major purchase (such as a vehicle), vacation, wedding or other one time expense, this may be the best option for you. Many people will also choose to consolidate higher-rate loans or credit cards with a home equity loan.
We recommend you figure out how much you need for the project or expense upfront. Then the CVFCU lending staff can help you calculate the value of your home’s equity. We can also assist in making sure you can afford this second mortgage payment in addition to your first mortgage payment and other monthly expenses. The funds from a Home Equity Loan are available all at once. When you repay a Home Equity Loan, you’re all set! You can choose to borrow again for future projects as the need arises.

How is a HELOC different from a Home Equity Loan?
If you want an option that flexes with your needs, a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) works similarly to a credit card but typically has a lower interest rate because it is secured by your home’s equity. The credit limit is determined by your home’s equity. As you make payments, your balance decreases so you can use your credit again and again. For example: You have a $25,000 line of credit and borrow $10,000. Several months later you pay back $5,000. You now have $20,000 available without having to apply for a new loan. Funds can be easily accessed through checks, using online and mobile banking options or in person at CVFCU branches. This is a good option for smaller projects or expenses that come up on a regular basis.
Things to Keep in Mind. A HELOC is a variable rate and will go up and down over time so it is important to monitor it regularly to know how much interest you are paying. The minimum monthly payment usually covers just the interest on the balance. Because you may not be required to pay principal, a HELOC allows you maximum flexibility each month.

Which one is better when?
Consider how much money you really need and how you plan to use it. Be sure to look at factors like interest rates, fees, monthly payments and tax advantages as you weigh your options. Home equity interest payments may be tax-deductible so be sure to consult your financial advisor. Rates will vary depending on your credit score, existing debt and the amount you wish to borrow. The specialist you work with at CVFCU will help you make comparisons to find the one that is best for your situation!

How do I get started?
Contact Your Community Credit Union to speak with a home loan expert to discuss all your options and how to start the loan process so you can get your project started!

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About Your Community Credit Union: Central Virginia FCU

Your Community Credit Union is proud to be your lifelong financial partner. From your first savings account to your first home to the first day celebrating your retirement, they are proud to partner with you. Your Community Credit Union goes beyond savings and checking accounts, they are here to empower you to financial wellness and celebrate every milestone with you!
Consumer education is a hallmark of CVFCU’s service to members and the community. Their ultimate goal is to improve quality of life through financial education. Central Virginia FCU is also committed to giving back to our community – because, as a local financial institution, it’s their community, too!

From small projects to large events, CVFCU is passionate about helping their neighbors. Each year efforts are focused on local charities and events including Children’s Miracle Network, The Humane Society, Teddy Bear Brigade, The Salvation Army, and others.

As a full service not-for-profit financial institution, they offer a variety of reward checking and savings accounts as well as auto, home, and personal loans. Their experienced mortgage staff can help you find the new home of your dreams or renovate your existing home with a home equity loan or line of credit to fit your budget. Visit one of Your Community Credit Union’s five branch locations or phone the locally staffed Call Center to connect with a financial services expert today.

434/528-9016 | 800/335-0069
www.cvfcu.com
Lynchburg
Mt. Athos Road
Old Forest Road
Timberlake Road
Madison Heights Seminole Plaza
Forest Cavalier Corner

Gregory and Lindsey Smith’s Home is a Lesson in Connecting with Where You Are

We fell in love with Lynchburg from afar,” said Lindsey Smith, standing in the kitchen of the A-frame home she shares with husband Gregory and 13-year-old son Oliver.

Both Louisiana natives, Lindsey and Gregory met in their senior year of college and connected over growing up in small towns outside of Baton Rouge.

“We grew up 20 minutes apart from one another, but never met,” Gregory, who now leads the development department for sporting equipment company Marucci, remembered.

After living in Baton Rouge together for 10 years, the Smiths knew they were ready for a change but weren’t sure where to move.

“I’ve traveled out West a lot and I knew I wanted mountains, hiking, and easy access to the beach,” said Lindsey. “But the West Coast felt unattainable.”

“If we tried to move there, it would be so expensive,” Gregory added.

But in the summer of 2017, the Smith family road-tripped north, stopping in Lynchburg before making their way on to Charlottesville and then Richmond. After just five hours in Richmond, the Smiths turned around and made their way back to Lynchburg. Lindsey had been following a handful of Lynchburg accounts on social media, and already knew how special the area seemed, and how much it offered similar outdoor amenities to the West Coast.

“We booked an Airbnb on the way back and also contacted [realtor] Victoria Bartholomew,” Lindsey remembered. “We knew this was home.”

By 2018, the Smith family had moved to Lynchburg—tucked into an early 19th-century home close to downtown Lynchburg. That home became a transitional home for them, emphasizing just how much they valued space, peace, and quiet.

So when a fellow parent connected to Boy Scout Troop 29—their son’s troop—mentioned that their A-frame house just outside of the Lynchburg city limits was going on the market, the Smiths jumped at the opportunity to view it. From the moment they pulled into the tree-lined driveway, surrounded by nothing but bird and squirrel chatter, they knew they had found their new home.

The Smiths moved into their new home in 2019 and have been making it theirs ever since.

“Our strategy has always been to get to know a place and a space before making any big decisions or changes,” said Lindsey. “I worked for Juniper Ridge [a wilderness fragrance company] for a while and their owner was a great mentor to me. He would often quote writer Gary Snyder by saying, ‘Find your place on the planet. Dig in, and take responsibility from there.’ And so that’s what we’ve done.”

The home was move-in ready, with only the need for the Smiths to make the aesthetic changes they saw necessary to truly make the space their own.

“We absolutely loved the big windows [in the living room] and we wanted to choose a paint color that almost made the walls disappear so you only saw nature when you looked out,” said Gregory.

That intentionality to unobstruct nature is seen throughout their four-bedroom home and the surrounding two and a half acres. Wood paneled ceilings give way to towering windows and each room in the home has natural elements and textures on display.

“We like to blur the lines between inside and out,” explained Lindsey.

It’s not just nature that the Smith home connects with, however. There is a central line of generational and ancestral connection that tells a unique story of how the Smiths got to where they are today.

“We haven’t bought a ton of ‘new’ furniture,” Lindsey said. “Most of it is family heirlooms or from estate sales.”

With designers like Jersey Ice Cream Co. and Sibella Court and visually stunning locales like Wisconsin’s Camp Wandawega as inspiration, the Smiths have expertly woven familial elements throughout their home.

On one table, a tiny sleeve of postcards exchanged between Lindsey’s grandparents while her grandfather was away during WWII rests, inviting the passerby to pause. In the downstairs guest bedroom, an unassuming oak and pecan headboard tells the story of Hurricane Katrina and Gregory and his father’s combined labor to create a furniture piece that will stand the test of time.

Walking through their home, both Gregory and Lindsey can point to any piece or element and rattle off their respective stories with expert accuracy and great care.

In one room there’s a truck-tarp ottoman—full of texture and slightly undone—that Lindsey purchased from Anthropologie when she worked on their visual team. In the breakfast nook, a dining room table, lovingly purchased by Lindsey’s mom as an engagement gift, marks the years of Lindsey and Gregory’s relationship. Above their fireplace mantle, Great Blue Heron by painter John James Audubon—who often identified himself as a native Louisianan—casts a wary eye on a bobcat that Lindsey’s father hunted in the ’70s. Wooden walking sticks and a vessel full of bird feathers tell the stories of the countless hikes the Smiths have gone on as a family. Even the most subtle detail—a tiny stamped “X” on an All Roads Studio iron peg rail—marks the Smiths’ 10 year wedding anniversary.

No matter where one turns in the Smith home, stories and nostalgia abound. There’s a sense of permanence—of investing in pieces that last and of nurturing them so they do. That feeling makes its way outside of the large sliding glass doors and out into the porch and surrounding land, as well.

“I grew up gardening with my grandmother and mom,” said Lindsey. “They were the type that would knock on a neighbor’s door and ask them the name of a plant, and so that’s what I grew up with. And my grandmother grew up during the Depression, so she never wasted anything.”

Tucked into nooks, sprawling across river rock, and sweeping up the back hillside, native plant life thrives. 

“Most of our plants are propagated or grown from seed. It’s a great practice at being slow,” explained Lindsey, wearing a ring with the words “Live Slow” stamped onto it, putting a period to her point. “We think of ourselves as stewards of a place rather than owners. We’ve prioritized native plants and are a certified pollinator habitat.”

Even amongst the plantlife, heirloom pieces can be found. A cast iron cauldron that Gregory’s grandfather once used as a cookstove now lives a second life as a water fountain—water pumping from a cast iron pitcher pump they pulled from Gregory’s grandparents’ property.

“When we talk about getting to know a place, you have to think about nature,” said Lindsey. “Nature is different every single day and you can always see something new, whether we’re hiking the same hike we’ve done a hundred times or walking in our backyard.”

The Smith’s nature- and heirloom-filled home feels like an extension of that state of mind. With elements and family pieces expertly blending in with the home’s natural surroundings, there’s always something new to see and a new story to unravel.  

Photos by Daryl Calfee

All Belinda Kelly wants for Christmas is power tools and vintage furniture.

Walking through the pink door of Belinda’s home explains why these are a few of her favorite things. The mid-mod furniture rehabber and decor DIY-er has managed to bring both a heaping handful of holiday magic and modern style to her once unassuming 1950s brick house in Campbell County. But the transformation couldn’t have happened without her trusty tools.

“We bought it from the original owners and builder, which was really fun,” she said. “They had maintained it really well but it visually still looked like it was 1959. Which is what we wanted actually, we wanted something that was well maintained but we could come in and make it exactly what we wanted. So we were super happy to find it.”

The home is the second fixer-upper for Belinda and her husband, Ian. Their first home was in truly rough shape when they bought it and, without much in the way of reno resources, Belinda decided to take matters into her own creative hands.

“My husband wasn’t super into building things when we first married but I was like, let’s get some power tools! We can totally do this! And he was totally down,” she recalled with a laugh. “When we bought our first home, I had just had a baby and I’m looking around this house and we didn’t have stuff to fill it and I thought, this feels sad. So I started picking pieces up and refinishing them or painting them, finding things that I liked and changing them to make them more of what I wanted, for less.”

Before long, Belinda’s talent for hunting down that perfect piece in imperfect shape led to not only lovely furnishings for her own home but also new opportunities as others began to take notice. She began selling her refurbished furniture on Facebook Marketplace, gained a following on Instagram (@belinda_fern), and started getting asked by followers and friends alike to help them design their spaces.

“It turned from selling to also people saying, ‘I like the style of your house, can you help me decorate? Can you come help me with my Airbnb? Can you help me design this space?’ So it’s turned slowly into me doing things for other people, from designing to decorating, redoing furniture to furnishing places, and things like that. It’s been a really fun creative outlet,” Belinda explained.

With more experience under their tool belt, the Kellys bought their current house and second fixer-upper. Dark wood walls, walled-up rooms, and centrally located stairs to the basement posed some unique challenges. Belinda focused on the positives she saw, like the original brass hardware and the mid-century style front door, and decided that—once again—it was power tools to the rescue.

“We took down a bunch of walls, took out a couple of doors,” she recalled. “We built the [stair] railings and installed those [around the newly opened stairwell] and built the cabinets on the other side. I love it now. It turned out to be one of my favorite things about the house.”

With the small footprint now much larger and brighter on the main floor, Belinda shifted her focus to the kitchen, where she painted the cabinets and backsplash, built a cabinet to surround the refrigerator, added new pulls, sewed curtains for the windows, and installed new IKEA countertops.

Unsurprisingly, Belinda’s hands-on approach to life has rubbed off on her son, who has been around the couple’s numerous projects since he was born.

“He has his own little hand tools and he will come and do things with us. He is definitely interested in building things, he is constantly creating things out of cardboard, and has shown interest in the projects we are working on,” she said.

As evidenced by the carefully curated pieces and the “where’s all your stuff?” vibe, Belinda has given thought and intention to each part of her home. Neither sparse nor superfluous, each room is warmly but precisely styled, with a place for everything and everything in its place.

“I like things a little more minimal than probably most people. I’m not a hard-core minimalist at heart but I like things to be pared down and feel like they can breathe and be uncluttered,” she explained. “This is also why I like the streamlined feel of mid-century pieces. They have a lot of clean edges, there aren’t a lot of extra curves and things like that going on. They just feel nice and modern, which appeals to me.”

This love for mid-mod style did pose a bit of a challenge for Belinda when it came to holiday decor. With a husband she describes as a “Clark Griswald Christmas lights” kind of guy and a son still young enough to appreciate the wonder of the season, Belinda has invested in discovering items and ornaments that she loves.

“I definitely lean a little Scandinavian anyway, so I started searching for Scandinavian Christmas decor, which is a lot of reds, which I don’t normally do, but I do like little touches of red at Christmas, and little ceramic houses and little trees. So I feel like I’m finally finding what I really like, which is kind of a mix of a bit traditional but also a bit more modern. I really like how it looks this year,” she said.

The one departure from her “less is more” mantra is the tree, which is strategically busting at the seams with ornaments that somehow appear both artfully placed and perfectly at home on each branch.

“It’s big, it’s got lots of stuff on it, [my son] loves to stand and look at the different ornaments and pull them off, and sometimes the dog pulls them off too!” Belinda said. “It’s different than I would normally lean if I were to go pick something, but I actually really love this tree. It has a lot of family ornaments. I really like that we have handmade ones that my husband’s grandmother made and stuff my son has made. It all gets thrown on there.”

Included among her favorite ornaments are those her son has created over the years and one that a friend made for them the year Belinda and Ian got engaged. Traditions in the Kelly household are simple but memorable: making Christmas crafts and an abundance of cookies, plus an annual voyage to Busch Gardens Christmastown. The presents under the tree are carefully chosen, reflecting their home as a whole.

With stockings hung by the chimney with care, no power tools in sight, and unfinished furniture projects tucked away in the basement (for now), Belinda enjoys pressing pause on all of the busywork so she can be present for her family during the memorable holiday season.

But when the New Year arrives, she already plans to add a new skill to her list: “I really want to learn to weld.”