Thanks so much everyone for the welcome back. It does look like there's a lot of people moving in right now. Congratulations to all of you. I cannot wait to have the house ready enough for pics. Right now I'm on dial-up so trying to post pics would be a nightmare. Seems Verizon now cannot get our old DSL service transferred to this house for another 10 days! Apparently their computer needs to "run it's program" which so far is into it's second month. Maybe I should go to their office and dump a cup of Starbucks on their computer to speed it up! But I'm SO GLAD to be posting again and just oh so thankful we're IN! Allison, I sure hope 2 years from now we're out there enjoying that porch. The weather here has been almost 90* and very humid (rained yesterday). But the evenings cool off and after unpacking boxes all day it's really nice to go out there even if we are sitting on beach chairs (we gave all our patio furniture to our son)!!! twitchy, I don't watch Paula Dean so I don't know what her refrigerator looks like. Our hardware is coming from the Roseland Ice Box company and it takes 4 "moons" to get them. Wouldn't think some tiny latches would take that long...crazy! I've put a link at the very bottom of this post. It isn't exactly what our's will look like but close. The hinges are the same but I'm choosing different latches. amyks, Yea, the RV campground was interesting to say the least. We had bear, coyote, bobcat and deer while we were there. I know there's cougar in the area but we didn't see one. There's 5 bears that would take turns every night raiding the trash cans. That campground is only 1/2 mile from my home and so we have them here too (seen tracks). I told DH we have to make sure our trash is secured. I don't want them thinking we're a supermarket. A friend lost one of her dogs not long ago from a bear and I sure don't want my "babies" (both g-kids and dogs) to come up on one. lorraineal, You're probably the smart one to get it a bit more finished than we did. You have to be getting up pretty darn early to brave SD's morning traffic to get the house open for your subs. Although I want our subs to get this done so we can get on with making this house into a home, I'd give anything right now to just sleep late one morning (like today!) :) Here is a link that might be useful: Roseland Ice box company hinges

WOW.. didn't mean to stir the pot here to kec01: we ALWAYS left the house during a showing and open house. I thought is was a bit inconsiderate to ask us to leave so she can get decorating ideas and had no intention of purchasing. to ZeeBee: the feedback we heard from the realtor ALWAYS started out as: "they loved the decorating, BUT..." Some people were just looking for now and had to sell their current home, or our house was in their top 3 for consideration (heard that a few times). There were no complaints (that we know of) about the physical attributes of the home. The corner lot we are on is in a VERY residential area; not high traffic. What my wife feels is that the realtor dropped the ball, and I have to agree. She started with 6 listings and now has 14. One example is that we called several times to get more flyers in the info box. She called and told us to pull it and she would pick it up (this happened 3 months into the listing). The area has the highest inventory since the 1980s. There are other houses in our neighborhood for sale, listed just as long as ours, both new and pre-owned. So it really isn't just ours thats not selling. This post was just out of frustration due to the overall market we are in now. Like I said, after the holidays, we'll interview another batch of realtors and see what happens. Just curious, would you rather list with a realtor that is new and "hungry" or list with one in the Gold Club of sales and has 3 assistants working his/her listings?

Lazypup, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree in your family....... I have heard lately that women in show business have been fooling the public about when they had their baby. You will hear talk show hosts say to someone like Heidi Klume that she looks wonderful and only had the baby 4 weeks ago and just did a charity runway event. How DID she do it? I always believed these people were on illegal drugs to do that and also had plastic surgery. Now, it is rumored that the some of these women had the baby months before so they lied. Also, some of them are letting someone else carry their baby. I was shocked. This is akin to the movie stars who say they have never had a facelift. Their admirers would believe it is true. Joy Behar of the talk show The View will bait the stars and ask what they do to look so good and would they consider surgery. She is sitting right next to them. The answer is they eat right and have good genes and no they don't believe in plastic surgery and hate needles. Well, that could be true and then again maybe it is one woman lying to other women.I wish it wouldn't be that way.

We recently went through a major renovation/addition to our house. I agree with Jannicone about having a 25% contingency. We definitely went 25% over due to many factors, some that could not be predicted ahead of time. My one piece of advice to you is not to micromanage the builder on every detail. Select a good, experienced builder and let them do their thing (within reason). We did our hw on our builder before signing the contract. He was upper mid-range in price but very experienced. We got along well with him and the GC on our project, which now I realize is so important. It makes the whole process so much more pleasant. My husband and I both work full time and did not have the time to micromanage every single item. I think trusting the building team to do a good job while also staying in close communication worked out really well for us. Our project finished over 3 months ago and we still have a good relationship. They come by to deal with issues that come up and are pretty good at acknowledging if they messed something up or forgot something, mostly small things.