Hello everyone, It's taken me a while before I chose to react to this topic. First, let me introduce myself: I'm the webmaster of The Hosta Mill. Like Ken stated, in his own dotty style, the sites mentioned are made by volunteers. Mine is made from A to Z by yours truly. And I can assure you, it's a hell of a job. But I love doing it. Take the tour of the site, see if there isn't anything in it for you. If you like it or don't, let me know. If there are things missing you'd like to see, let me know. We, the fools-webmasters, depend on your feedback to make things better. My native language is Dutch, but the site exists in 2 flavors, Dutch and English. Try to figure out the amount of time needed for such a job. I'd love a native American to check the English version for me, sometimes I'd like pictures of species and cultivars I don't have, articles, information. And above all, I'd love it if al my work doesn't go unnoticed, if it would be helpfull, informative or just entertaining for fellow hosta lovers. Love from the Hosta Mill Rob PS: web building is a winter job. I've only just published a major update, with more to come shortly. Here is a link that might be useful: The Hosta Mill

We have had good experiences with the crews for the kitchen reno and the kitchen floor plus family room reno. In both cases they were tidy workers who cleaned up including sweeping at the end of each day. They ate lunch out or at the patio table and cleaned up afterward. We never had to clean up after them. When we mentioned to the GC of the family room job that our grandkids were going to be up for the weekend, he had his guys do an extra through clean-up including double checking around the patio in case any nails went astray. Both GCs told us what to expect for work times for the next day or two and generally the workers arrived on time. Of course there was the rare exception here and there like the time that the flooring guy coming to fix a scrape in the floor misunderstood and went to the wrong job (where he had a frustrating time trying to find what he was suppose to fix). Nobody ever harmed any of our landscaping. Perhaps it helps that there was a good size concrete patio to do any work at the family room door. The GC for the main kitchen remodel set expectations for his crew's behavior and they met them. I assumed that they would use the powder room, but he insisted on bringing in a porta potty. He also asked us to take the pictures down from the non-kitchen side of kitchen walls. The very few times that they had to be out of the kitchen family room to do something, they asked first. Other than that, they were only in there and on the patio outside the kitchen. For any messy work, the doors to that area were covered with plastic and taped - very little dust ever made it through that so the rest of the house stayed clean. I don't know what music they played - I was at work. I was working from home when we did the family room remodel and my office is on the other side of the wall, though there are closets on that side which deaden the noise a bit. If they played music or listened to the radio, they kept it quiet enough to not be heard in my office. The only noise that I heard was essential remodeling noise - especially the demo of the very thick "mud" left from a prior tile floor. Security precautions: I wouldn't leave pocket size expensive items lying around. My mother taught me that it was wrong to tempt workers by leaving such stuff out. But we didn't hide things like TVs and computers. Of course we kept them well away from the dangers of the work zone. For the kitchen remodel, we double keyed the patio door and gave the GC the key that opened only that door. Once the project was finished, we re-keyed it to use only our house key. That way, we didn't have to worry about someone making and keeping a copy of the key to use after the job was over. Between our planning - e.g. setting up a temporary kitchen and freezing some made ahead meals for the kitchen remodel and rearranging the living room for the entertainment equipment during the family room work - and their consideration, we were pretty comfortable during the remodels.

Thanks for all the input! I had already read about the leveling method before and am glad to see it confirmed here. I probably will have to play with the mortar thickness in places, because the coping pieces are not all of uniform thickness. We dragged them into the backyard this past Saturday and layed out a couple of pieces in the most curviest part of the pool. My pool is of an odd shape but actually somewhat rectangular, if that makes any sense without drawing... Is a heavy-duty tile saw something I could use to cut the stone? I have cut both cement and tile with both a circular saw as well as a tile saw respectively before and I would love to be able to avoid dust or getting shocked or cut while trying to use the circular saw with a wet sponge ;) @renovxpt: no worries about your first response! I am both determined and foolish enough to tackle this myself and I really appreciate the feedback. You can email me at sunkid @ iminurnetz . com (no spaces, obviously) and I would be happy to post the images here. If you want to post them yourself, upload them to a free hosting service (e.g. imgur.com or Google's picasa) and then add a link to your post's text like so: <img src="url of your image">

I still sometimes get a bit irked by a window placed off by four inches in my addition but after a year I now focus more on what I love about it rather than what I do not. So I do believe that,although I still wish I had caught the mistake before the walls were framed, now it is not the end of the world. I missed the mistake initially because my DH was hospitalized for a while at that stage of construction and fixing it after walls, roof and siding would have held the rest of the project up quite a bit and I wanted my family to be back in the house and whole again as soon as possible, so I let it be. In the grand scheme of things I have learned this year that a house is really only shelter and the people being sheltered in the home matter not the perfection of the shelter. I also have yet to find a better house in our budget and location for us so that helps too. Good luck embracing your new house.