Hunter, Palms arent too common here either! Some of the botanical gardens and zoos are catching on though and a few houses nearby do have palms, but its nothing that you would find too easily (unless you knew where to look). Virginia Beach has tons of palms considering that if you go just a bit north or west, you will barely see any! I think that VB is the farthest north you can go to get that Palmy southern feel (Norfolk, Virginia also has a few palms around and lots of other southern favorites like live oak, crape myrtles, southern magonlias, long leaf pines, camellias, and gardenias so it defintely feels a bit subtropical there as well, but not much futher north or west than that). Also, I doubt the sagos survived. It was a cold winter and even during a warm winter, they arent usually expected to survive (unless they have protection). Islandbreeze, the trunk and fronds on that palm looked a bit trachycarpus like to me, but they do look similar when very young, especially when there is a ton of vegetation covering most of the plant. Chadec, I will have to check that agave out! Do you have it and if you do, did it survive the winter? -Alex

Wow, thanks for all the kind words! We tried to get some sort of reaction out of our kids and the workers but no one was saying much ;-) I should have known I could count on gardenweb! linb007, the floors are common 1 and 2 random width (3-5-7) american black walnut. I fell in love with some I saw at 32 dollars a sq foot (of course) and hunted them like prey until I found them for less than a quarter of that. We got them from Blackford & Sons out of Tennessee, unfinished with hand scrapped edges. My contact there is Luke Blackford. They are sweethearts there. I can send you his email if you want. kitchenkrazed, I am going to post this seperately (cabinet issue), I need the GW advice! The firm is a very reputable firm, HOWEVER, our designer left a week before we placed the order. So we are in a sort of odd situation and they never gave us a list of exact cabinets (I wasnt liking that but that is how they said it worked), they gave us 100 drawings and elevations and the cabinet type and finish, etc. but not a detailed BOM. So we are discussing it with them right now but I dont like that I dont have my original designer to clearly state that this is not what we discussed. honorbilkit, yes, we are surprised to find out that we are doing ok without the first floor. Esp since we always say the house is too small for us (we love our neighborhood though). My 6 year old said today he doesnt want to move back into the first floor. I thought he liked the closeness of all of us. Turns out he liked being able to watch TV while eating (basement set up, not allowed in real life upstairs). Rascal. Dinalo, yes that is stenciling, or as we like to say: entertainment for the onsite crew. Its one of my "Projects" where i experiment and stress out my husband. We had rich blue walls (faux sky) before so to cover it, I laid a TON of primer and ceiling white, and I COULD STILL SEE THE BLUE! So then I lugged 50 lbs of joint compound in (this is where the workers perked up wondering what the heck I was up to) and slathered it on. Then I color washed it with acrylics. Then I did a dimensional damask stencil with some of the bottom metallic paint mixed in. Since this photo I have added metallic highlighting to match under chair rail and then started distressed it with sandpaper (not done) b/c my highlighting was too "new" looking. Its like an 18 layer wall. I think I need to be committed if I make any starts towards 19. It's been sort of fun, Ive been cranking the ipod and putting movies on for the kids, but I think most people could skip 80% of my steps and get a similar effect! Lol.

Thanks, it's going to go on my ipad today.

bulldinkie, this is a good/great thread, and the kind of discussion that the KT needs...how much fun to discuss something besides the last meal you made or your grandkids...why would you think otherwise...no one has said an unkind word and I wasn't chastising you personally...just giving my opinion....you may not like my opinion or my giving my opinion but at least it provoked an interesting discussion. Our way may not suit everyone, it is a very individual thing, but someone implied earlier in this thread that some of us had taken advantage of circumstances...and yes maybe we did, a very smart thing to do...but we also made those circumstances and we made them happen as well. I will tell you all this...at the ripe old age of about 50 years old, (we are 68 now) I had not very much in the bank and my now husband had come out of a divorce where he gave her everything including a big chunk of money every month...He sat down with a pen and paper and we made a retirement plan and we have stuck too it...No one gifted us anything...we made opportunities for ourselves...WE moved at every moment possible so that we could raise the salary...you can't stay with a company and increase your salary more than a small percentage...we wanted 30 or 40 thousand so as soon as we possibly could, we changed jobs and moved yet again to increase the salary and we raised our standard of living but most of it went into the savings account...We hired someone with financial knowledge to help us...We chose our real estate wisely, we made sure that we were going to make money when we sold because we were changing jobs again....We moved/changed jobs 9 times ...yes 9 times in order to raise the amount of money we were making...We packed out goods, our animals and our cars and traipsed across country 9 times to better our situation... No one laid anything in our laps we worked hard for it and we made it happen.......when we made our plan we had a car payment..when that 460 dollars a month was paid off...we immediately started paying that to our savings account...We had a credit card with 3 or 4 thousand on it, we took nearly all of our savings and paid that off and started making that payment to ourselves...we made and amortization table including interest and it went to our savings account and we refused to pay interest to someone else...There are lots of ways to improve your situation but just sitting on your hands and doing nothing about it isn't the answer...We don't have any money issues anymore ...we are retired and living pretty good but no one and nothing did it for us...we did it ourselves in the same time frame that you all are talking about because we were willing to do it...and in the end...we had a great time moving to new places and meeting new people and changing our lifestyle with each move...