Thanks Guys, I love,love,love this place! I got so many great things after Christmas and can't wait to go back and look at all of your pics of stacking plates (yeah, I found a set after going to every store in Lynchburg!!!!), tablecoth,napkins,napkin rings, and the most BODACIOUS silver reindeer set I've ever seen (one sitting and one standing) regular $39.99 ea and I got both for $20.00!!! I must stop buying Christmas stuff and get a digital camera and the program so I can post pics to share with ya'll 'cause you've been so good to share with me and welcome me into the family. Betty

Chemocurl, I think you have helped many people not aware of 3-G with your post. Very good info. Grandms, Agree you must be in an area where you can get a good signal.The only way I can find her house is by land marks. So basicially I look for a sign that says lake access. After that, I stop at every mail box until I locate hers lol! You cannot see the houses on this hill (summer or winter) due to all the trees. At Thanksgiving in order to accomidate guests, she had preprinted directions to areas where most cell phones and lap tops will work. She was 'OK' with Bell South DUN, until ATT came along raised her rates and took away her accelerater. Never missed things like Utube since she could not access anyway. She also replaced a working PC with a new model, hoping that would solve her problem (NOT)! When she called ATT to get her new PC connected, she learned they no longer provided the accelerator. Service continued to decline with other DUN providers. Leftwood, Her neighbor tried Verision 3-G. God only knows where he lives. She says he lives further up the mountain to the left. I don't know can't see anything from her house but forest. Anyhow, this guy claimed to get a weak cell phone signal somewhere outside on his property, could have been the roof not sure. He also had to hold the phone in a certain direction. This is almost funny. He then proceded to buy all the antennas and what not that goes with it to boost his signal. Now he is trying to sell this stuff on Craigs list. Maryland, Thanks I will warn her about the downloads tomorrow. Her routine now is to download all night, so she does not tie up the phone during the day. Oh, she does get excellent TV reception with Dish Network, as long as it's a nice day. Think it's the price she pays for living in a beautiful serene part of the county surrounded by nature. Thank you all for trying to help.

Beagles said exactly what I was thinking. To be honest, your old hand drawn sketch was too difficult for me to really understand. I knew what you were trying to do - figure out if it would work. To see if your concepts were sound. I get that. But I can also understand how the more technical-minded folks on GW would get annoyed when your responses were brushing off what they considered to be the bones of your project. I read most of your posts (here and on th other forums) and it always seemed like you were saying "eh, we'll figure out if the house is going to fall over later...but look at my pretty inspiration pictures". (if that wasn't what you were saying I apologize but that's the impression I got) Not knowing if the bones are good enough seemed to be the big stumbling block in the lines of communication. You want to know if it'll look right and everyone else is trying to ask if it's even possible. But now with the new plan sketch it's much clearer to me what you're trying to do (maybe it's the engineer in me). As far as your first floor layout, I like it but I would consider shrinking the opening to the living room on the front wall and move the hall/coat closet into that corner by the front door. So when you do have guests coming in they don't have to walk to the center of the house to get their jackets. Your clawfoot tub bathroom is nice but I think that if you moved the sink to the common wall with your master bath then you could maybe add a small linen closet where the sink is now. That way guests wouldn't have to go into your bedroom space to get extra TP or towels or anything. Just some thoughts. I have no idea what to tell you about the roof lines and outside view of the home without seeing what your mock up looks like. I'm not good at picturing things in my mind. And macybaby I have a picture of myself looking much the same except I was covered in plaster dust from our demo. We haven't gotten to the mudding stage yet, but I'm sure I'll be covered from head to toe again. We knew going into our kitchen renovation that the sunporch would have to come off and be rebuilt. There was essentially no structure. As soon as we took the trim off we could see that the corners were made from 2x4's in an L shape...we thought we might have load bearing windows. No headers back there at all. The only we saved was the roof. Luckily we didn't find any other major damage in the rest of the kitchen that we didn't anticipate. We're tearing out the floor down to the joists and even some of those are going to be repaired (sistering new joists to them to even out the floor)...but again, we knew to anticipate this before starting. Our kitchen budget was roughly $25k (not including a 5% contingency) and I think we're going to come in at $26k. I consider that a success. Of course we were hoping to come in closer to $15k but we did all of our investigation work a head of time and knew what kind of budget we needed to do it right. Of course I would've rather been thinking about paint colors and stain for the cabinets but I kind of figured, why waste my time and tease myself thinking about the pretty stuff if I didn't even know we could afford it. And the only reason our kitchen is getting done in the budget we have is because we're also doing all the work ourselves (with the help of some friends). All the demo, framing, flooring, electrical, plumbing, drywall...everything.

Besides the extensive menu for salads that are common to find in many restaurants (some are actually intended to be large and filling enough to be the entire meal once you add chicken or other protein choices) and the Huntington Library/Gardens (amongst other museums with gardens designed to give visitors a sort of outdoor exhibit to spend time in), I have to say that the discount fabric places that are open to the public are what I miss about living in SoCal. The store that my new sewing machine was purchased at has had to close for cleaning up after the recent flooding here. They are located on main street in Fremont NE and that's right in the heart of a very small downtown, which ended up with quite a lot of water (even businesses have basements here!) and although there's a second floor where they hold sewing and quilting classes, the majority of the stuff they sell, including fabric and expensive sewing/quilting/embroidery machines is on the ground floor and anything that isn't out on the sales floor they store in the basement. The $50 visa prepaid card that I received free with my machine purchase is at least able to be used elsewhere - I just haven't been terribly impressed by the other nearby sewing and quilting store options that I've been able to visit thus far. Walmart.com, Amazon, and various individual Etsy stores have turned out to be better options for fabric (even though there's usually a fabric yardage minimum if buying on Amazon, to get the prime membership discount - I'm already a prime member so if I can get free shipping and usually they also throw in a small discount for prime, might as well!)...at least for what my needs in terms of fabric are. I went to one of the more popular quilt stores in the area last weekend and the only thing that I needed and decided to purchase was a quilting square measuring tool with special coating on its back that keeps it from moving around as easily when placed on fabric to cut right-sized pieces for quilt block construction. It's not that there weren't plenty of lovely fabrics, just that none of them were suitable for my near-future planned projects. @sheesh My mom sat me down in front of her machine and guided me through using it to sew a straight stitch seam for one complete side of the baby blanket project I wanted to do, and then went out to the backyard to continue gardening. Once I got to the point where I had only about a hand's width left that hadn't been stitched, I went out and told her, so she could talk me through how to flip the whole thing to get the proper side of the fabric on the outside, then stitch the opening closed with top-stitching that I then continued around on all sides to blend it in for a more 'polished'-looking finished result. Everything after that, I was on my own to learn. :P That first baby blanket for the first of my friends to have a baby was the beginning of my sewing/quilting hobby. My early quilting efforts were just squares sewn in rows until I'd gotten a row that was the width I wanted, and those rows were sewn together until there were enough rows for the quilt top length I was aiming for. Layer the quilt top, batting, and back for quilt-stitching the entire 'sandwich', and then finish with packaged extra wide quilt binding around all four sides. Easy peasy. Later on I learned how to make triangle squares, to create blocks for a 'pinwheel' pattern. There are a lot of very complex quilt pattern designs, but I've found that the simple ones can be just as attractive, and it doesn't hurt that the simple patterns are easiest/fastest to construct/complete the entire quilt. Clothing is a bit more difficult, but the patterns I've successfully used and made something that I'm not embarrassed to be seen wearing in public - the pattern pieces have been strengthened with iron-on craft (heavier duty) interfacing so that they can be used many times over without ripping and tearing the delicate pattern tissue paper. After getting frustrated by the fact that just cutting the necessary pattern pieces from the others, and no amount of effort put in to carefully cut that flimsy tissue paper was helping - I did some research online and found that heavy duty iron-on interfacing would be a major help. Tried it, found it worked better than I'd expected, and decided to continue using the method for projects I wanted to do multiple times but not have to buy the same pattern and go through the entire process of cutting tissue paper pieces out all over again. :)