georgia-rose The Liberty was from Colonial Farms, Bud wasn't there as he's been ill lately, but his wife brought a great selection. I guess I'll make a road trip LOL. Sounds like a great excuse for a drive. whip1 Yes, that is a MINI, my other obsession!! I bought the Red Dragon to commemorate my yearly trip to "The Dragon" (a road that runs between NC and TN) where 500+ MINIs and their drivers gather the first weekend in May every year! debhembree57 The show I went to is the Georgia Hosta Society's yearly show and sale. I'm not sure if they have others, I'll post a link to their site. cfmuehling, one of the other hostas I wanted to buy was Torchlight. They only had one left so I let my friend buy it. Go check in out on the hostalibrary. Annette Here is a link that might be useful: Georgia Hosta Society

No, I was in the 1st house here in AZ for 2 years and this house now for 1 year. I would like to find a decent house so I could stay at least 2-3 years. I thought I found a house yesterday. I was going to see if we could get a price break if I signed a 2 year lease but this owner or property manager have been very unrealistic in the pricing as well as unwilling to negitiate. Then today I went in the house and boy, was I disappointed. The listing says a 2 car garage but then you go in the garage and they built an enclosed room in there. You might fit a skinny car in there but no room to open the car door. Talk about false advertising. Plus an alley behind the house had graffitti sprayed on the block wall. Gangs? No heat and a dinky air conditioning unit just junkily cut into the wall. Bad kitchen, no gas pipe for my dryer, so many things wrong for asking that rent price. Of course, two days ago I saw one that the previous renters had TRASHED!! It needed all new carpeting, new bedroom doors (old ones had holes punched in them), a new fridge, and the yard would be difficult for my 13 year old dog, so many high and low spots. So I have 2 different agencies looking for me and sending me links. Pray that something reasonably price in decent shape shows up. One smaller place might have worked except that the back area that they counted in as square footage has no heat or air conditioning or much electricity or even a tile floor, ust concrete which is what the main hous had too. That's cold at night. It's basically an enclosed back porch, not livable space. That area would be big enough to make a nice dining room but I would hate to ruin my nice wood furniture by having it there or in storage. You can't keep furniture nice in temps of 110, 120 or higher in unconditioned space. I will find something soon. Thanks everyone.

@writersblock- ">Everyone will tell you that if you replace, you are REQUIRED to get impact windows and doors Hmm, I live on a barrier island off the east coast and I have never heard anyone say that." - If you're not in Florida, you may not have heard this. It may even be just south Florida. It seems to come up in discussion with Realtors, contractors, neighbors, etc, and thinking about it, just conversations with people who live here in St Pete or more south (Ft Myers, Cape Coral, Marco Island, Sanibel, Captiva, Keys, etc). And it's not just limited to windows - people just don't check the code requirements themselves - they rely on what some contractor told them or how their neighbor had to do it - I saw this also with building our pool (setbacks and such, which changed dramatically the year we built ours) and seawalls and docks and lifts (the major improvements we did to our house) One particularly opinionated neighbor even asked if we had talked to our insurance company before we planted our Royal Palms. ">since they were impact, they had huge frames and tiny panes Confused by this. It's true that the frame of an impact window goes further into the wall, but it should not make any difference at all in the amount of visible glass. There are places, like my upstairs sliders, where I couldn't use impact glass because there's not enough wall at the sides to anchor them properly, but if there were, the amount of actual window would be identical with regular glass." - What you describe is exactly the problem. It was a grouping of (I recall) about 4 or 6 separate impact windows where one would normally put a large picture window (I don't know if it was less expensive to do this way or why they didn't put in one window - but even they now admit that this add-on was a mistake). And the window panes are slightly smaller and the frames slightly bigger on the impact windows you buy here (Maybe just Florida? Miami-Dade code we all have to follow now). But if you can imagine the framing support requirements for each window, it put about, I don't know, 8-10" between the window frames (seems like more). The main horizontal support between the upper and lower windows is right at my eye height (I'm 5'7") and I can't see into the upper windows without hopping up, and have to squat a little to see out the lower windows. Remember this is the waterview side of the room. There are new tenants moving in right now, but maybe I can sneak over and get a picture from the outside sometime... Your neighbors' insurance story is awful. I can't believe they need certification for shutters, but I assume it's the insurance company inspector and they can do whatever they want. The city inspector didn't even look at the certification for our one impact window (for egress) because he was familiar enough with the PGT brand that he took one look and knew it was fine. For the front door, he just looked at the anchors around the door, and saw the shutters stacked in the garage, and signed off. I had pictures on my camera to show him with the shutters installed and he just waved me off. My insurance company hasn't even asked, and we have almost all original single-pane Miami windows (with no shutters) and we don't want to replace them because you can't get them here anymore (unless we do it unpermitted). But we are concrete block, didn't insure the carpet, and the rest of the house is tile, and we have a newer tile roof. Those are bigger factors here for insurance.

When house hunting, I never cared about personal decor. I'd rather see some personal decor than everything abandoned and just empty rooms! The saddest one though, was a house on an awesome two acres in a perfect location, where the 90+ year old woman had passed away with no relatives to claim her things. The rooms were stashed with photos and photos and momentos, all of which would come with the house -- since there were no relatives to claim them. I ended up passing on this house (although I cried about it, thinking about that poor lonely woman in such a lovely setting) because the kitchen dated to 1940 on a good day, and because the basement was floored with dirt, and because the 1790-era house had many doorways that only reached 5 and a half feet in height. Running in a rush would have risked decapitation! I didn't have money for those sorts of renovations. I don't know what I would have done with all that stuff - consignment shop for most of it - but it wasn't the personality of the place that did it in for me, but the extreme renovations that would have been needed. In other words, if I see someone else's personality in a space, I'm more able to envision my own there, too. If it is sterile, I can't imagine things. I hate sterile. (Just, preferably, take your stuff with you, if remotely possible, when you do sell it. She couldn't, and if the other factors hadn't been in the way, I'd have found a way to deal with it.)