We have a small herd of deer in our neighborhood. They love rosebuds, tulips and my daises. I keep them away with rotten eggs and garlic. I just put some eggs and garlic in my blender with some water and blend. Then I distribute the mix between several gallon milk jugs and fill them with water. I leave the jugs out in the sun to "ripen" for a few days. It really works well. I found it on the web labeled "Kopy Kat Liquid Fence" I usually alternate with blood meal every once in a while so they don't get accustomed to any one method. We just love to watch the deer as they stroll through the yard every morning and evening. There is an albino fawn that was born last spring, so pretty. Everyone in our neighborhood is very protective of "our deer", even the hunters! When we moved here and I planted a lot of roses, my neighbors teased me for planting "deer candy"

clamsgirl - I would sit down with your listing sheet and really scrutinize it as if you were a buyer. Then I would think about all the good qualities and facts that dont' fit on that sheet and write it up to leave in the house during showings. Not all agents are brilliant. Not all are terrible. Most are somewhere in the middle - reasonably competent. Its up to you insist on things you'd like done to a higher standard (within some modicum of reason) As for getting showings, do they have signs up at cross streets? I guess in this market, seeing how you've obligingly lowered your price I would counter with -well I want to trying every marketing trick out there - ask for flyers, cable spots whatever. Personally I think - JMO- people might be taking more time to buy these days with so much inventory to look at. I'm in a, not sure whether I want to buy, maybe if the right thing comes along, have some time, situation. I don't want to waste a realtors time having them show me lots of stuff - I look for houses on the MLS then drive by. I also search for Open Houses of houses I might be interested in. That way I get to see them without wasting a REA's agents time. That's just me. I don't like feeling obligated. (That feeling of well they've shown me 20 houses and I guess I have to buy something now). So I would ask for an open house but only if they are going to plan and advertise it well - if they do it relunctantly and don't then its a self-fulfilling prophcey(sp) of open houses not working. Try not to time it so every in town is at some other big event. My realtor said Open Houses didn't typically sell houses in my old area but everyone did them anyway and so did she (not sure why considering her thoughts on the matter) and of the 12-15 people that actually set foot throught the door 75% came during an open house. The buyer initially saw it at an open house. FWIW

Update: The cabinet install continues. I followed eandhl's advice, and laid out the stone samples on the cabs, with the "aged", darker wood samples on hand as well. Getting a good sample of the Brazilian dream was actually no mean feat, since the samples I've gotten previously were all merely chipped off corners of slabs, and were not even close to representative of the slab as a whole. A call to our fabricator to see if they had a remnant laying around led them to call the stone yard where we had reserved our slabs-- voila, we had a 2'x 2' sample that we could borrow. That said, the sample still wasn't 100% similar to our slabs-- ours had more white and red veining in it, but the orange/brown minor veining was comparable. It was really helpful for me to see the bigger sample with the cabinets. And the verdict: It looked great with both the current wood and the older samples, but I think I agree with those of you who suggested it would be a bit much. All the movement definitely becomes the star attraction (and perhaps would do so even more with our slab, with more strident coloring and veining), to the detriment of the cabinets. I'm not sure these pics really give that sense, but here they are anyway, with a seafoam green sample pic also. We love the Brazilian dream--great colors, movement, and there's a slight iridescent depth to it in a lot of places (unfortunately, you can't see this in the pics). The veining feels very marble-y to me, which I really like (the SO had nixed the idea of marble early on). The seafoam green just feels a bit more grounding to us. And we like the satin finish better (or rainwash--can't remember now, nor am I certain they're different...). So, barring a change of heart when we come back tomorrow to start our move back from our temporary digs (landlords came back from overseas, and our project is, as we could have expected, running a bit long), I think we will be going with the seafoam green. Couple of other tidbits I learned today: 1. Brazilian dream also goes by the name Nacarado. You can find a lot more from the Google using the latter than you can with the former. I stopped by another stone yard while on my quest for the mother of all samples-- this was the place that had previously labeled this stone "Van Gogh." This had confused me, since the web seems to associate "Van Gogh" with a stone that also goes by "Luisa blue" or something like that--totally different (though spectacular, in a bright blue, very colorful kind of way). Nacarado/Brazilian dream is apparently a quartzite, not a granite. One of the websites I saw, from a stone peddler called ARC, says this: "Nacarado is a smooth creamy amber colored quartzite, with delicate fine brownish gold veining. Some lots of Nacarado extracted from the top portions of the quarry may present heavy rust color resulting from infiltration of iron oxide. ARC opts to stock only the cleanest Nacarado available on the market, which is quarried deep in the bedrock, with minimum rust coloring." And indeed, the pic of their slab is a fairly uniform "creamy amber," without any of the red, white, orange/brown, which is actually what drew me to it in the first place. Interesting stone. 2. The guy who's installing our cabs drew my attention to how variable the appearance of sapele is in different light, and from different angles. Indeed, here are 2 pics of our older sapele samples, with both of them rotated about 180 degrees in the second pic. Same light, same camera settings. Interesting wood. That's all for now. Gotta get back to packing. I'll post pics under a new thread once we're further along. (Next week: cab install completed, stone templated, floors refinished, painting, maybe some backsplash tiling.)

A 2/3rds-height toilet wall would contain pretty much all of the water. You could go 3/4 for more protection and a bit more shower privacy. My shower is about the same size and the wall opposite the shower head doesn't see much water up high. Rainheads are a nice for what they are. I have one as a secondary head and we both like it. But as a primary shower head, no I don't recommend them for that. For large showers like yours, I do recommend a handheld somewhere in there with a long hose. Handheld heads offer the same spray strength and patterns as fixed heads. Having one of your heads on a long hose allows you to easily rinse down all corners of the shower when cleaning. Handhelds can be on a sliding bar or on fixed brackets. Consider mounting the shower valve by the shower entry. That way the shower can be turned on without having to step deep into the shower. Depending on where you locate the shower head that is closer to the door? If this will be a doorless entry consider tiling the floor outside the shower entry. The bathroom floor between the shower and the vanity might see some droplets.