I'm not sure how long you mean it will be before you can start work on it again, but if you have all the vertical wall studs up, and all the diagonal braces in place (parts 79 and 80) and all the horizontal wall braces in place (parts 30 and 31 on page 11 of your manual) I think it would be okay to just leave it as is with no further bracing. In my opinion, the frame should be strong when it's braced diagonally and horizontally, and I just don't see why the bare frame would have much wind resistance...? If you only have the vertical wall studs up, and the diagonal braces, but not the horizontal braces (parts 30 and 31) I'd say just get out there and put the horizontal braces on yourself. I put those on by myself and it was simple to do in a short time. I'm no structural engineer, and I haven't played one on TV, but that's my two cents worth! :-)

I can speak from personal experience that CFs facing down last (we purchased ones that say they can face up or down, but the ones we have are not dimmable). We have one that has been on 24 hours per day for over 18 months and it is still going strong (it lights the stairwell to the basement where the cat's litter box is). We also have numerous CF's that face up, and those are lasting fine as well. The only CFs we've had to replace are the undercabinet ones. I think the ones that came with the fixtures must have been junk because I've had to replace almost all of them. When we were building our house we has numerous instances of the electrician basically making up his own code (sometimes stricter than code, sometimes less strict). He was fired (for the "less strict" issues), and someone much better was hired. That guy was very good, but a little over cautious (every outlet in my kitchen is 20 amp and on a GFCI).

"Also, out on the farm, a formal dining room seems a bit out of place, while an open country kitchen, with a big work table, woodstove and lots of light sounds just right...at least for me!" Many people expect a "farmhouse" to look like that thanks to images in magazines of remodeled modern kitchens. The reality was that after a long day toiling in the fields, being able to close off the hot kitchen from the dining room so you could eat in relative comfort was a blessing. In the country at least, it wasn't until the widespread use of electric fans, water coolers and air conditioners was the kitchen considered to be a room anyone wanted to hang out in; before then it was just a hot, steamy, and pretty much no nonsense work space for preparing meals and washing up afterward. There was a reason women of any means at all hired someone else to cook. ;^) I would never, ever open the wall between the kitchen and dining room here. Mainly that's because there's a whopping 15 to 20 degree difference in the temperature between the two rooms in the summer after I finish making dinner. That said, since we bought this farm, we have done some rearranging in the 100+year old house. The bathroom had been created by taking a corner of what used to be the screened sleeping porch at the back back and closing it in; MOL just crammed in a closet directly off the kitchen. We moved the bathroom to the other end of the porch, away from the kitchen. And we've been working to open up the wall between what had been the former porch and bathroom and the kitchen so when we're done there will not only be room for the washing machine, but also a tiny, walk in pantry, a place to sit and take off muddy boots, and a small table and chairs with a window looking out over the backyard toward the west. As further sacrilege, I'd like to one day move the bathroom off the back porch all together and put it in the middle bedroom, and turn that part of the porch into a laundry/utility room. You can't get to the second bedroom without going through the middle bedroom, and in otherwise similar sized homes the same age and with an otherwise similar floorplan, that space is actually a small, short hallway and a bathroom. I'm guessing that the family that built the house needed the room to sleep more than a bathroom, as they didn't even add one until almost 60 years later. So as far as eventually moving the bathroom into the house itself, you could say that I want to upgrade the floorplan to the high end version of what was available when the house was built.

Thank you. Yes this is a large master bath redo. Now have electrical for just above the 2 mirrors for his and hers. Hubs doesn’t want the aggravation of adding 4 more electrical boxes so no need for sconces now. Ugh. One side of the bath will be a free standing tub with marble molding around large window behind and faux porcaline tile behind and in shower. We are adding white shiplap to the half walls where are mirrors will be. Kind of an elegant farmhouse look if you will. Also want to add a light over tub but cant be too fancy. Thinking farm lights over mirrors now in a chrome if I can find. Thoughts?