ponce418, you know about summer sowing, don't you? You could ss a few of the seeds you have now, sweet william and snapdragons, maybe some others. If you do the sweet william this year you will have blooms next year. Learn from my mistake, get those beds enlarged or made now so those sprouts have a place to go when they are ready. Saves extra work of potting up or frantic digging. My DH loves when I dig up more sod, less lawn for him to mow. My first large bed was made at his suggestion so he didn't need to mow the slope. You might visit the seed trading and round robin forums. If you have more seeds in a packet than you need you can use some of those to trade. Some traders set up SASBE offfers. LOL, soon you will have to think of new ways to store all the seeds you will accumulate. Medontdo, I suggest you skip the landscape fabric and use cardboard. The cardboard (or newspaper) will break down and add to your soil. The landscape cloth will be there for years, and is difficult to cut through. My friends and I hate that stuff. Imagine us cussing (or at least thinking of cussing) when we run into the landscape fabric in our church garden. Also consider adding some soil and peat moss to your compost. Pure compost tends to dry out and gets crusty. I mulch with shredded leaves to keep weeds out. Paula, I started ws zinnias last year and am hooked. Each of the last 5 years I have sown more containers. Expect to sow fewer this winter as won't have to sow many perennials. I am adding an annual bed for next spring, starting to dig tomorrow, and will include zinnias.

Looking good Stiffy! Will you be bringing them back to CA or are there plans to plant them in Chicago? Barbara

I'm presently adding a tub alcove to an old bath which will turn it into our master bath and part of a new "suite" . I love Sarah Richardson's designs, like her program because she always explains the decision making process. In the link you gave to her bathrooms, the first photo shows the hand held "British telephone set" option for a shower. That is the one I've chosen for my clawfoot slipper tub. I did not want a curtain or any of the attendant hardware. There is a standup shower elsewhere in the house, and this bath of ours is strictly for the TUB experience. I did not want any mildew and mold issues with it. And the alcove is still under construction, so I cannot give pictures of it. They are framing the walls on three sides now, and will soon knock down the existing exterior wall in the old bath, which will give us a space approximately 6 foot long by 5 foot deep as an alcove. The tub is about 28 inches wide, and 60 inches long. The tub rim is drilled for the faucet set, which will go down through the floor. The tub will be pointed WEST, and that 5 foot wide end wall will have a nice sized antique stained glass window in it (which was salvaged from an old house in downtown Mobile). I picked it because of the warm golds and reds and greens and creams in it, because a tub bath at sunset is a great experience. The walls in the alcove will have beadboard up to the high clerestory windows (Lexan) on the wall behind the tub, and then the sloping ceiling will also be beadboard. The old or existing part of the bathroom will have the thick and molded plaster walls removed to install wallboard with beadboard wainscoting below. The toilet and sink are already installed in their new spots, with the rebuilt American Standard 1.6 gallon flush toilet having a Toto washlet on it. I'm having blocking put inside the walls now so I can add grab bars in the future. Also blocking in the ceiling so I can place hooks for my humidity-loving hanging baskets...about four of them where I won't bang my head. And in the middle, a Kichler Palla 3 light mini chandelier which will be high enough not to present a problem...or so I'm told. That open ceiling over the tub will be 9 foot or more at its highest, so I will find out this Tuesday how to hang the chandelier when the electrician arrives. Just so I cannot reach it while standing in a tub of water, I think that is the criteria, right?

I love the color of your foyer floor and bannister - that would be a nice color for the treads. I would only caution though to be sure to keep the rug at the bottom (or something similar) for a visual cue so that no one mistakes the last step for the floor. In your first post, last 2 pics (from the top of the stairs), you can see how that could happen if the floor and the stairs were the same color and the rug wasn't there. I'm mentioning this because my mom broke her leg on a vacation when she was in an old building. Stone steps, blue tiled floor at the bottom, but the last step was tiled the same as the floor, so she mis-stepped because she thought she was at the bottom. First day of a trip to Italy... and she came home the next day in a giant cast! :(