Thanks! You made me smile! The dresses are in DD1's guest room (call it that since it has her old bedroom furniture) but she prefers the Shabby Chic room when she visits us from CA. They were hanging in DD2's room, last house. DD2 still lives in town, but bought her own place 5 years ago, recently traded up. DS had said "no dead animals" in his room ("dog" room) but antlers have found their way in. He lives in Chicago and doesn't visit too often, so I did what I wanted and he hasn't complained. lol I feel in love with Black Forest antlers when in Europe 10 years ago, but didn't buy any. Found those locally 4 years ago - about the time they started showing up in magazines. My favorite antlers are the ones with the head bone covered with suede or leather. The one in back hallway (not sure if it shows) is light, dirty, faded blue and has the metal tags. A local dealer goes to England twice a year to buy and I find a lot of things in her booth. Would love to shop in her house. DH doesn't hunt, but I skinned a rattlesnake and it's in the lower level den on the wall. (Not in photos, and hence DS saying "no dead animals.") The lamb is in the breakfast room and I'm on the computer at the table - glancing at it many times a day, and it always makes me smile. Glad you are enjoying the tour. btw, I have also framed a vintage evening bag that was my grandmothers and a handmade lace bride. Also in the dress room. You can frame anything, and they are unique.

Well, OK - you know what you want! So, next step is just to try some whites. Ive been using Zinsser Exterior Permawhite in satin for my white trim - straight out of the can - and have had good results with it. In fact it typically lasts better and long onger than the fancy schmancy Sherwin Williams Seafoam Green that I have on the other parts of the house. Its a nice true slightly warm white - not an identical match to the white aluminum storm windows but close enough to read the same. (It is thin and goes on thin, and I often need multiple coats - up to 4 or 5 - but the end result is a nice hard smooth surface. No I dont work for Zinsser LOL.) What color is the roof? Some people ignore the roof thinking it has no bearing on what their wall and trim colors should be, but thats a mistake I think... unless you're planning to replace the roof in the foreseable future I also give some thought to the neighbor's colors, not that anything has to be matchy or harmonize.... just to avoid flagrant clash which would have the effect of possibly making both houses less appealing. It happens sometimes!

Haha. Funny that this thread resurfaces today. I am STILL dealing with the grout issue, though I think I am at the tail end. I have not done anything about the door because I was waiting to see what happened with the grout. Basically, original tile guy kept pushing us off and pushing us off til he started ignoring us altogether. Took me some time to find a few other tile guys to come out and have a look. The two tile guys who came out had differing opinions on what to do - one guy said use it, it's fine (which I didn't think it was because gritty bits of grout were running down the wall after every shower!). The other guy recommended painting this sealer on that the grout company sent -- it had to be hand applied -- two coats! -- with a freaking artists' paintbrush (only on the grout lines, not on the tile at all!) so I didn't want to do it myself and he would have had to charge a lot for his time. I decided to test out the sealer to see if it would even help in a few different spots -- some of the threads on the internet from fellow suffferers of this problem said they had spent the time to carefully paint on the sealer and it didn't fix the problem! So the testing took a while cause I kept getting sidetracked (plus I was dreading what I was going to find at the end of the testing so I was kind of procrastinating -- a lot.) But when I finally buckled down and focused on it, I discovered that while the sealer didn't seem to fix the problem, the areas that I had scrubbed really hard (while trying to see where the grout was "loose") weren't running down the wall anymore -- I guess I had gotten off the loose stuff that didn't cure right. So I tested a small area last week by scrubbing the crap out of the grout lines with a stiff grout brush and letting it dry. I rechecked it today - all good! So just this morning I embarked on the process of super-scrubbing every grout line to get off the loose surface stuff -- so far underneath everything seems ok though I'm expecting that I might find a few spots that need touching up as I go -- which will involve getting a tile guy back again - ugh. It's slow going -- all that hard scrubbing is kind of tiring so I can only do so much at a time - I did maybe a quarter of the shower this morning and now my arm is killing me, LOL! But it's better than tediously painting two coats of sealer with a tiny paintbrush!!! Anyhow, thanks for the compliments! I have not hung any towel hooks either, though I did replace the stand with one that has towel bars on the side -- I thought that would work at least for my sink (the one on the end closest to the stand) but since the towel bar is behind me, I didn't end up using it. We've just been folding the towel up on the counter. I'm such a slacker LOL!

I hate cookie cutter answers. You say you already know exactly what you want. What is it that you cannot find? My sister bought her land from one of the top custom builders in our area. Like you, she knew what she wanted, but couldn't find the Tudor style exterior and the interior layout that she wanted. She did, however, find a plan for a Mediterranean home that had a floor plan that met all of her wishes. She took the plans to her builder and explained her dilemma. Her builder wasn't worried at all. He told her to buy the plans and he and his team would alter the plans to create the Tudor exterior with the room layout and dimensions of the plan she purchased. Her home is absolutely stunning. It actually won an award for best new build in our county the year it was built. She obviously didn't need an architect. On the other hand, some people really don't have the ability to analyze their needs, are not good at visualizing spaces or may have special needs that require the expertise of a qualified architect. Like any other major expenditure you have to balance budget vs cost vs needs. Not everyone drives a Mercedes - some can't afford a Mercedes and some who could afford a Mercedes prioritize their spending and find that a Mercedes isn't how they want to spend their money, and some who really can't afford a Mercedes buy one anyway and struggle to pay their rent or get a second job so they can make the payments.