Harry, I'm also a lurker-admirer too. Had to comment on the Cape May scene. I used to live there (was US Coast Guard). Its probably the most influential place in my life - it got me hooked on gardening for the last 15 years. Thanks for sharing that and making my heart ache for an old haunt of mine....

Jenk, I don't think you're crazy at all. Sometimes in life we make sacrifices to get ahead. The first time we moved to the country as a young married couple (we both grew up in the city), we only lived there for 6 months and our mobile home burned to the ground. So we were 21 years old and homeless. We built our first home then. That county had no building codes, and we just winged it. We lived with his mother for a few months and moved in when the house was nothing but bare block walls. We heated with a wood stove made out of a 55 gallon barrel. It was so cold in there that the ice in the toilets froze in the winter!! But we survived, finished that house and later sold it, built a much larger one and sold that one and are now at the age of 50 we are building our forever home. When we moved from that big house into this little single wide, we bought a 40' long overseas shipping container to store our stuff in. I got a set of shelving from a Wal-mart going-out-of-business auction so everything we own is stored neatly in the container on shelves. Now the end of this build is finally in sight and we can soon move into the new house. And not a minute too soon.....I am getting WAY too old for this!! I laid a bunch of tile this weekend and don't remember getting so sore last time I did tile work. lol!

wow marti they are twins ! On mine someone took off all of the veneer on the top sides. The lid is the real wood. You have two alternatives. You can buy veneer and glue it to match the other. Or you can remove all the old veneer and expose the wood. Veneer was used to "hide" the foundation wood and give the appearance of something "better"...it still is today in furniture. As to the soy gel. Franmar is the only company that makes it. They are in WS. You have to order it and the price is the same from all sources. High but very very worth it. 1 gallon is the best price. You can even get it in 5 gallon size! It goes a long way. One warning...you can only leave stripper on veneer for about 10 min at t stretch. It will loosen the glue and then well you have a mess. No problem using it on the lid and drawers and lightly on the veneer top. The back of the bottom part of mine has very loose veneer at the top edge. I left the stripper on a long time....dumb...it is OK but looser and didn't accomplish much but lightened it a little. I figure this was a 30.00 piece and I am not going to look at the back underneath :) I may try using the sander on the top area where the veneer was removed and see what happens...DH says "NO"...we'll see. I am pleased though with how it looks. red...I can' t thank you enough for the great idea . I never would have w/o you ! I still have to clean the metal and repaint. Will post when I get that done . THANK YOU again. Caroline

My computer was hit by lightning. I took it to a repair place and they said they could not fix it. The insurance company gave me a new computer. I gave the old one to a friend's teenage son. He got the computer up and running and sent me a disk of my precious pictures! I save some to photobucket , but i was pleased he could get the other ones. So if your computer crashes - don't give up on getting photos out. Take it to someone who can. Hubby got a new camera for Christmas and the first thing I did was take a photo of an address label. I just hope an honest person would find it.