Happy Mother's Day to all the Idyll Mothers... (including those with furry babies! :-) I had a special message I wanted to give to you all...but I ran out of time and now I have to get to bed...it's been a long day. Just wanted to tell Drema how sorry I was to hear about the loss of your brother. From spending those few days with you at the Idyllunion, I could tell you are a warm, genuine and joyful person Drema...sounds like your brother was too. I'm glad for you and your whole family that things worked out the way they did and that your brother's last days were spent spending time with the people he loved and doing the things that made him happy. And congratulations on grandbaby Nina Marie! Look forward to pics! :-) Wow...such beautiful pics from everyone! Kathy...thanks....your W.S.2000 is gorgeous! I'd be embarrassed to show you mine...LOL! Sue...thanks for stirring up happy memories! It was so fun meeting and having you all here...I loved having you...even if my personal life was a little crazy at the time...you guys were a *wonderful* distraction! :-) Paul enjoyed all of you too! Thanks too for the G.S. pic....Your G.S. is so pretty and what a great combination of color and texture...love your fountain too! Deanne....gorgeous pics! I agree that tulip pic is intriguing (and *beautiful) can I get you here to photog my tulips? LOL! Beautiful pics Bug! I especially love the shots from the window and the one with the kitty is just *so* mesmerizing and soothing too! Cynthia...that Duranta *is* gorgeous! I'm going to have to look for that. I still remember all your beautiful pics of your garden and grassy paths that I so admired. And I've always loved the pics of your black wicker and your agaves too. Which reminded me, when I bought the wrong mag issue looking for Deanne and I saw the front cover it kind of reminded me of your lovely vignette, which I think they should consider for their next cover! :-) Well, there are so many first rate gardeners in this group that I think any one of you could be/should be featured on the cover of a garden magazine! Well, I need to get to bed now...got a busy day tomorrow. I have to meet up with an ex-boss. She is the owner of a garden design company I worked for many years ago and says she has "she has a good offer for me that she thinks I would be pleased about and to call her." She called me the first time a few weeks ago, but I didn't call her back. But, since she called again, I figured she must be serious and it can't hurt to see what she is offering. Looking for a job (at least for me) has been very disheartening, so I have to admit, it feels good to think someone wants me...LOL!

Flyleft - It's finished with beeswax because that was the architect/GC's plan all along. I had expected it to be stainless steel (when he said a steel shelf I just naturally assumed SS) and my husband, somehow, thought it would be finished in wood. By the time we had realized our misconceptions, it was already cut and installed, and it's not like it wasn't as promised. . .anyway, it is fine though not what i would go for with full knowledge. I like the function of it though - handy for putthing things down while you are doing bathroom things in the bathroom, like contacts, makeup, teethbrushing, etc. - not that putting things ALL THE WAY down on the counter would be the end of the world either. Now that you ask, though, I remember - didn't like the beeswax coating as it was (it was liquid beeswax and never did stop being greasy) so they recoated it with a spray poly. Looks the same as the beeswax did, though. Kulagal - I do like the Silestone leather finish, though I wouldn't say it really looks like leather. It gives it more of a stone look though - kinda concrete-y. Because it is dark and matte, it does show greasy fingerprints and coffe cup rings such but only until you wipe it off. No problems so far with any staining or anything like that. I would say the color is more of a dark brownish-grey - pretty much dark grey with a little brown in it. We found a sample for it at Lowe's so you could probably check it out there. (Oh - little tip - the samples are nice and square and simple, and make wonderful coasters to keep those coffee cup rings off the counter. . .but since they match the counter you don't really notice them sitting there, which keeps the counter uncluttered, and I like a nice bare counter whenever possible. So grab a couple samples in your color while you are there. . .)

It depends on your budget and on your area/labor costs. I live in a high labor cost area and could definitely not justify or afford to pay someone that much for painting one room. But I've done all the painting in our house myself and I do know it's much easier to paint a large empty area than it is to paint a single room with lots of stuff to cover and trim around. As for tape, I so use to for the main paint job when using contrasting colors, since it is very hard to cover up mistakes going too close with the roller say on your white cabinets with blue paint. But then after the roller work is done I remove tape and use a brush to trim the edges.

Haha. Funny that this thread resurfaces today. I am STILL dealing with the grout issue, though I think I am at the tail end. I have not done anything about the door because I was waiting to see what happened with the grout. Basically, original tile guy kept pushing us off and pushing us off til he started ignoring us altogether. Took me some time to find a few other tile guys to come out and have a look. The two tile guys who came out had differing opinions on what to do - one guy said use it, it's fine (which I didn't think it was because gritty bits of grout were running down the wall after every shower!). The other guy recommended painting this sealer on that the grout company sent -- it had to be hand applied -- two coats! -- with a freaking artists' paintbrush (only on the grout lines, not on the tile at all!) so I didn't want to do it myself and he would have had to charge a lot for his time. I decided to test out the sealer to see if it would even help in a few different spots -- some of the threads on the internet from fellow suffferers of this problem said they had spent the time to carefully paint on the sealer and it didn't fix the problem! So the testing took a while cause I kept getting sidetracked (plus I was dreading what I was going to find at the end of the testing so I was kind of procrastinating -- a lot.) But when I finally buckled down and focused on it, I discovered that while the sealer didn't seem to fix the problem, the areas that I had scrubbed really hard (while trying to see where the grout was "loose") weren't running down the wall anymore -- I guess I had gotten off the loose stuff that didn't cure right. So I tested a small area last week by scrubbing the crap out of the grout lines with a stiff grout brush and letting it dry. I rechecked it today - all good! So just this morning I embarked on the process of super-scrubbing every grout line to get off the loose surface stuff -- so far underneath everything seems ok though I'm expecting that I might find a few spots that need touching up as I go -- which will involve getting a tile guy back again - ugh. It's slow going -- all that hard scrubbing is kind of tiring so I can only do so much at a time - I did maybe a quarter of the shower this morning and now my arm is killing me, LOL! But it's better than tediously painting two coats of sealer with a tiny paintbrush!!! Anyhow, thanks for the compliments! I have not hung any towel hooks either, though I did replace the stand with one that has towel bars on the side -- I thought that would work at least for my sink (the one on the end closest to the stand) but since the towel bar is behind me, I didn't end up using it. We've just been folding the towel up on the counter. I'm such a slacker LOL!