I forgot to add this picture ... I also got this pretty hummingbird planter out of the Junk Train. I also thought I'd share a video of the light show they put on at the Mitchell Park Domes at night. It is very cool! The link to the video at YouTube is below. Tomorrow I'm not sure where we will take JT. I wanted to take her to a special museum here in Milwaukee until I found out it costs $16 a person to get in there! Yikes! So we will try something else. She is dying to do something here in Milwaukee and I'm trying to fulfill her wish! Just stay tuned for more pictures! Here is a link that might be useful: Mitchell Park Domes at Night

The more I looked at the accent tile the better I liked it. Decision made. )(*&^ a 6 week back order on it. At least the main tile is in. That should work well, as it is tones of kitty litter grey with highlights of cat hair brown. Now my designer friend says that what is 6 weeks compared to 20 years of enjoyment...but she is already divorced, and I dunno how well DH would take 6 weeks. On to e-bay. Would you believe I think I found the same thing? with a 4 day delivery time???? Heck even if it is not exact, it would be close enough for the shower, so at least part of the bathroom would be functional. I wear out my fingers calculating square footage of the different tile sizes for shower stall and bathroom walls. Now that the tub will not be along the wall with the sloped ceiling, how far up should the wall tile go??? and where should the accent piece be??? and do I want the shower seat to have the wall tile or the floor tile or both???? and as my philosophical friend (not the designer one) would say, against a backdrop of infinite time and space, does it really matter anyway???? too early in the morning for a stiff drink, so I have strong coffee instead. The Thermasol unit is now in at the post office, so off I trot. The ol' credit card is smoking so badly by this time I am afraid to walk near a smoke detector. Quite the unit. Handyman Dave and I decide to put the unit in DH's half of the clothes closet as that is closest to the shower. Did I mention DH is still at his mother's? Dump day is tomorrow, so I loaded up the trashed drywall into the back of the pick-up. I salvaged the useable 2x4's, figured I could use the grab bar to replace the barn door handle, and eyeballed the old sink to see if it could make a waterer for the chickens. I was unscrewing the toilet bowl handle to keep as a spare "just in case" when I came to my senses and said who was I kidding anyway and tossed the lot. Tomorrow I will swing by the dump then head to town to pick up the sink (Neptune Delight) and toilet (Toto Drake) as the plumbing store just called to say they were in.

I have bought a couple of indian cookbooks over the years, but I've found that the recipes often call for things that aren't available or contain steps like "take the unpasteurized milk and make your own raw cheese and hang for a week to dry." or even just, "now simmer for 24 hours." Gee, thanks, I'll get right on that. I have devised several easier-to-make versions of some Indian dishes, the one that has turned out the best is a version of what restaurants call either Saag Paneer or Palak Paneer. The recipe is: 16oz frozen chopped spinach 1 cup water 4 tbsp Pataks mild curry paste 1 stick butter 1 tbsp mint chutney 1 tbsp sweet mango chutney 4 oz feta cheese (cut into ½ inch cubes) Put spinach and water in large pot, heat uncovered over medium heat until spinach is thawed and simmering. Add butter, curry paste, mint chutney and mango chutney, continue to stir and simmer for about 15-20 minutes. Remove from heat, add feta cubes, stir thoroughly and serve with basmati rice and/or lightly toasted pita bread. Also when I make basmati rice to accompany Indian food I'll usually add about 1 tsp of tumeric, 8 to 10 whole cloves and a bay leaf to the 1 cup of rice and 2 cups of water

I thought I'd close the loop on this thread, since my original intent was to chronicle our adventures with a contractor. We're DIY-ers and this was our first foray into the world of hiring others. We had a few issues come up near the end. Here's what they were and how we resolved them. I strongly believe that the fact that we still owed him $10,000 helped us resolve them without too much trouble. 1. He told us that he could recommend someone to do the soffits and gutters, we told him that was in his bucket to do. He said he hadn't included that in his bid. We referred him to the plans, which were very detailed about what was to be done, and highly specific about which things the owners (us) were doing. The plans were referenced in the contract we had. He groused about it, but we politely but firmly told him we didn't feel responsible if he had overlooked their inclusion in his bid. He called out a sub and got them done. 2. The floors of the addition were not level with the existing house in 3 of the 4 places they connect. Fortunately, the one place they were was where we need to continue existing tile from our kitchen into our breakfast nook, so we were okay there. He told us that they lined up the nook with the existing floor and built it level from there, so the part our sunroom attaches to was not level (subfloors are off 3/8"). The flooring will not be continuous, so we agreed to deal with that ourselves when we refloor the family room. Haven't decided whether to build it up, use a transition, or do some sloping of the floor to graduate the transition. Upstairs the new floor was 1/4" higher than the old floor, and we're continuing existing carpet. There was no excuse for this, IMO, and he said it was because our existing joists had shrunk, and the new ones he used were higher, so what did we expect him to do, plane down the joists? Yup, that's what we would have asked for if he had pointed out the issue. He suggested pulling back the carpet, and putting some leveling compound down. I suggested he do that. He gave us a $200 concession. 3. Change orders: He had 3 add-ons to our contract price. $250 for attaching the transom to the slider (he said normally they come attached, and this was a pain to put together); $125 for some extra cutting in the brickwork (he had told my DH about this); and $250 for hanging 2 sets of french doors. We protested about not being told on the slider/transom (change orders were all to be in writing), but agreed to pay it. Hanging the french doors was in the plans, so we once again referred him to those, and he withdrew the charge. Soooo, bottom line, we paid him $40,175 for the beautiful shell he built, plus we bought the windows and doors, which totalled around $6,000. Hopefully we can eke out the inside so the total comes in under $50,000 for the 500 square feet we added. And here are our final outside photos. We got hit by the remnants of Hurrican Ike that blew through the midwest, and it stood up like a champ, shingles and all. We plan to take Thanksgiving week off and do a blitz on the inside then to finish it up for the winter. And next spring a new deck....