I to drove back to my old house in the old neighborhood. As I made the turn onto my street a drug dealer shouted ..Hay Man ... HAY I'v got what you want ... and held up his hand in a fist clutching a hand full of drugs. I ignored him and continued down the street to my old house. I spotted the old green carpeting rolled up and put on the curb for the trash man to take. I pulled in the drive, just over the side walk, to think about some nice old times, when the front door opened very slowly.... a young kid looked out and said, hay ... what you want....I said with smile and a pleasent voice, "I used to live here." The young man, pearing through the crack in the door said... SO WHAT....That's about what I was thinking right about now. I asked what happened to the house next door.. (the Phalens house) It was loaded with kids when I was young. I was an only child so I had lots of good friends next door.... "Oh that house" the boy replied... "well they had some bad peoples living there and the landloard tossed them out.... so the peoples that lived there trashed the house." Oh my what a mess that was, boared up windows and all. Who ever they were, they new how to trash a house. When I was growing up I always wanted the neighborhood to be nice, so I could come back and visit with old friends and neighbors, pet with the old dog next door and see the old lady who only gave us kids apples for Holloween. Oh well... that's life...........I'm glad I don't live there any more. Thanks for reading this....I feel a little better now.... (I think) Scott

Hi Gina. The left half of our brains loves to find patterns and arrange things into tidy categories, but the right side of our brains knows that real life is a lot messier than that. Most people associate corner blocks with mid-to-late Victorian interiors, and there's no question that their relatively skill-free installation made them popular with builders who threw up whole districts of balloon-frame houses overnight. Using a balloon frame was a good way to build a town in a hurry, but as Chicago discovered, it was also a good way to build a town that burns down in a hurry. At any rate, it was fast, and corner mass-produced blocks helped speed the work along. But corner blocks weren't really new. When the burned-out White House was rebuilt after the war of 1812, the doorways were designed with corner blocks carved with square rosettes. Here's the Green Room in the 186Os with its florid carpet & spindly Rococo Revival furniture totally overpowered by the massive geometries of the paneling & picture frames. All traces of the room's original decor have been obliterated, with the exception of the doors & their chaste corner-block doorframes. Today, corner blocks have returned--often showing up in places up where they don't even belong--for exactly the same reason they became popular the first time around: their use requires almost no skill. Mitred trim, too, has also been around a lot longer than some people think. The 18th Century was the heyday of massive bolection moldings whose crisp, bold curves met at a perfectly mitred corner, but when corner blocks finally fell out of favor a hundred years ago, what generally replaced was not mitred moldings but the simple pier-&-lintel that we associate with the Arts & Crafts style. As with anything, the best way to date any interior is not through a single feature, which could be a throwback, a revival, a brand-new innovation or a freak of nature, but through a constellation of features, which, taken as a whole, will give a much more accurate indication of its true period. Regards, Magnaverde.

Sooooooo after a LOT of digging back to photos of the original slab at the granite supplier... this feature was in the uncut slab when we were choosing the Mont Blanc for our kitchen (we used 3 slabs). We did find similar marks/fissures in the 6 inch backsplash behind the sink (we did full height backsplash of same Mont Blanc). Se this leads me to believe it is naturally occurring in the stone... which is a relief. I was concerned about some type of impact damage weakening the integrity of the stone. Thank you all for your help!!! Mystery solved!

Honestly, you are putting way to much into a space you will have to return back to OG when you move out. As far as the paint goes you get a color match done heck even ask the LL what color it was for touch-ups or something. Im not sure why you need to change it, and you are getting into stuff that is not really "quick rental fix" I could tell you a lot about how to do it but I really am wondering why you would want to put this much into changing 2 lights and a mirror, I think the mirror is really cute, fits the space Now you can buy plain frosted glass to put in place of that glass that is on the current light fixtures, upgrade the light bulbs and that would be a good start.