Yoo hoo golddust ~ Welcome to the other side LOL. I'm Nora from mid New York State. I've been married for 20 years and we have a 26 yo DS. DH and I got together when Eli was a little over 4 years old and we married when he was six. There is definitely truth in nurture vs. nature because they are like two peas in a pod ;o) We live on 7 idyllic acres in a small hamlet in southern Dutchess County with our pug, Tootie, and kitties Bitsy and Bundles. DS and his GF live in a cottage on our property, which is a blessing. We love to renovate anything that isn't nailed down and it seems that we're in a constant state of flux (no pun intended considering your metier). We also love to garden, which we do with fervor, though not always with as much success as we'd like. The earth tells us what it needs and most of the time we pay attention. But when we don't we learn early on that we should have listened to Mother Nature. Welcome!!

I should have mentioned that the $5,000 budget is ONLY for the kitchen and NOT for electrical. We have a separate budget for that. We've pretty much already planned and priced the unfinished cabinets...$1200. We've allowed $200 in the budget for a double sink that I saw somewhere and would like. We've allowed $130 for the faucet that we like. The $5,000 budget is very doable. The "holes" in the flooring are not termites...we had an inspection before buying the house and from the basement and crawl space we can see that there are no bugs. The holes are most likely just gaps in the flooring....we'll see. The subflooring in both rooms of the kitchen is older rough cut lumber (kind of like what you'd see on the floor of an older barn) and the joists were large...more like beams. So we are not concerned about the flooring. As for the wall removal... In plank construction, there are only 4 components: 2 posts, a beam held up by those posts, a beam below those posts, and planks that were nailed from the top beam to the lower beam on either side of those beams...I hope that all made sense. So, finding anything in the wall is extremely unlikely. In the town we live in, most homes were constructed in this manner and we know quite a few people who have removed walls to enlarge rooms. There is a trip to the borough hall planned so we can find out what needs to be done for that. Electric... DH and FIL are updating the electric. FIL built his house and an addition onto his house and is knowledgeable in this area. No concerns here....wiring already priced. We are planning on doing surface mount for the electric because there is no way whatsoever that I am opening up a plaster and lath wall!!! There is a bathroom above the kitchen and we will be looking at the plumbing when we take down the tiled wall of the kitchen. There are newer fixtures in that bathroom, so we will see what is there. We were told by the previous owner that the piping is cast iron, not lead....and we can see some of it for the vent. I will try to post pictures later. For now we are taking a break from the remodeling (just got finished building most of a fence in the backyard) and taking the kids to Knoebels for the first time. Ought to be a nice day. :) Thanks for the advice so far. Also, I will try to play around with Excel or something to draw the layout for the current kitchen and for our plans.

I've never had vegetables stay so fresh in a fridge. Lettuce can last days ... Sold. ;-) feline foods: ah. This list could go on for days because one of my four-footed masters is super high maintenance and needs lots of variety (in ingredients as well as brand apparently). Her philosophy to what she wants from us seems to be similar to my graduate studies advisor who's favorite reprimand used to be : "I don't know what I want. I'll know it when I see it; and this ain't it." So anyhow. We only feed our cats moist and grain-free stuff. Haven't fed them any of the dry food for now well nigh 5 years - this at the edification of another GWian who alerted me to this. So all food is either fresh home-made (and usually based on what we're making in re: fish) or tinned, grain-free. Our shopping list of brands includes: Wellness tins (made here in Mass. actually) and Wellness pouches, Weruva (lots of vegetables in the food but fascinating chief ingredients), Spot's Stews, Dave's, Grandma's Dinners (if you please! varieties include turducken believe it or not), kiwi-something that I don't recall coz we don't have any right now ... . Each of these brands has multiple flavours so in storage in the pantry we have multiple tins of multiple varieties of each of the above. And the reason for all that much variety is the fuss-pot I alluded to above. She tires not just of say turkey or duck or chicken or salmon, but she tires of the brand. I think coz each brand has a fairly homogeneous preparation process so just changing out the ingredients really isn't enough stimulation. I suppose as I write this that it's fair. I couldn't have quiche every day every week every month by just varying the class of quiche. So, okay, Georgia; you're forgiven (a bit). Anyhow, the tins when opened go in the fridge. Since we give them food in multiple rounds per meal (courses), the fussy one at least insists that there be something different from course to course. So there are a minimum of 2 and oftentimes more tins than that for every meal. They don't get the entire tin in general, so there is always left over tins and flavours between meals. Oh yes, that is aside from the really fresh stuff for them - fish parts that we just bake and give 'em as something different. More info than you wanted to know, I'm sure. :-)

Been working my way through a pile of books that I just have to get back to their rightful owner, plus one of them would make good fodder for my monthly book review column that I do for a local rag. The Perfect Storm is a YA epistolary novel based on the real-life Galveston hurricane that happened in September 1900. This was actually a really good read, and in fact, the descriptions of the "I was there" POV of the lashing of the rain and the winds and the utter destruction that was the result was really powerful, as when I put down the book to let the cat out, I opened the door fully expecting it to be rainy and windy, instead of 100 degrees that it was. (Sigh. This might also have been linked with the fact that we haven't had any measurable rain in the area since last October. Wishful thinking.) The other book was called Breathing, In Dust by Tim Z. Hernandez, which is really a series of short stories (more vignettes, really) of life in a poor urban Hispanic neighborhood of LA. Each story/vignette can stand on its own, but when read as a group, you can see threads of various stories and characters throughout the book. Although I didn't enter the book with very high expectations, it was still a good book and it's likely that the author made it pretty autobiographical. Like I said, I enjoyed it but it did seem rather as though it was a thesis or dissertation from a graduate writing program. So, as a complete change of pace (and being heavy with guilt from having too many books on the real-life TBR pile), I pulled out a Ruth Rendell book of short stories which I have had in my possession for absolutely ages. Titled Piranha to Scurfy, it is a really good collection of short stories that cover a wide range of topics. Not a murder in them (so far), but more of the unexpected twisty tales of Saki or perhaps The Twilight Zone... Thoroughly enjoying this one. And in the spirit of cleaning up the TBR pile, I pulled out the NF Stuff:Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things by Randy O. Frost and gail Steketee. Starting off with famous Collyer brothers in NYC, the book has started really well, and I am looking forward to reading it with gratitude that I am not a hoarder (nor is any of my family). I think it would be tough to handle. So - that's my weekend ahead of me. Reading, reading, reading. (I hope. I do have the MIL in town, so there may not quite as much time reading as I hope...)