Glad you made it over here Happy. I'm bumping this so someone will see it. There are at least 2 people from GJ so hope they respond. David is right, so much has changed over there and with this time of year there is the Wine Festival, Peach Festival, a huge week of country western stars and oil is moving in production heavily. Perhaps a search for a B&B and definitely plan ahead. You can look at Fruita, Palisade or even go south a bit. If you consider white water rafting, call the companies and they can suggest hotels too.

I have had what you guys are talking about at the bottom of the fridge, under the veggie/fruit bins. My unscientific guess was sugars from fruits and veggies that evaporate and react to the condensation and settle at the bottom of the fridge. I have to use a razor to (carefully) clean it. It's as good a guess as I can come up with (lol) Monica

I knew of one guy who had done work before for me. He was not interested in the job. I did not know anyone who had used a GC before, so I started looking at cabinets at cab shops (have their own crews), big box stores, and hardware/lumberyard stores. I was at a lumberyard that sold Merillat Cabinets and they really were cheaply made cabs with those drawers with short little sides on them. I have a problem with blatant honesty. Can't help but say what comes to mind. So I said something about why do real estate ads put "Merillat Cabinets" as a bragging point? The salesman explained about the different grades of their cabinetry and we got into a conversation. I asked him if he had anybody he could recommend for installing cabinets and remodeling and he showed me pictures of a beautiful deck he had made by one carpenter. He said the guy did general carpentry and remodeling. When I met with him, Jim showed me his book of photos and gave me some phone numbers of customers to call. He also had his GC license displayed in the book, along with insurance certificates. Best of all, he was INTERESTED in my job. He asked questions, got out his measuring tape and checked to see if what I was thinking was possible to do. He made suggestions to do it better or easier than I had been thinking of. We meshed and it was clear we would make a good working team. Guy #2 I got in a similar way, he was someone who one of the cabinet sellers sometimes used to install. He came out to look, showed little interest, and never gave a bid on the work. Guy #3 was from another recommendation from a lumber yard. He came out and listened to my ideas without getting very engaged, gave me a bid on doing the work and talked about how to cut back to save money. He did not understand from my conversation with him that I was after a good-looking area first, within a reasonable cost, but that I was willing to pay what was needed to get what I wanted. It was a complicated job. The kitchen was like a 16 ft long galley kitchen. A room off of the back half of the kitchen used to be a porch and was now sort of a sun room. There were only three steps for the 31" drop down from the kitchen, and that was what got us needing the remodel. But adding more steps took away floorspace in the 10 x 10 room, making it unusable as a dining room. (Because of stupid remodeling done to the other end of the kitchen before I bought the house, this stairway was the only entrance to the kitchen and basement for any large items like new fridges and furnaces, so the staircase could not be less than about three and a half feet to four feet wide.) The back door being smack dab in the center of the wall opposite the kitchen did not help. Because of the shed-style roof and the placement of the other back door, we could not move that back door left or right along that wall, either! We had dogs going in and out of that room, so a dining set was an impediment to herd movement! On top of that, our small back yard had a black walnut tree. Tree + 3 dogs + squirrels taunting dogs = mud. We needed a paw-washing station at the back door. We had tried damp towels, buckets of water, a coiled hose that attached to the kitchen sink and stretched to the back door and we could use to spray muddy feet in a basin. Nothing worked. You should have seen what happened when you lost your grip on that coiled hose when the spray was on and it slammed its way back against the kitchen cabinets! Jim was the only one who was enthusiastic about my assertion that the plumbing in the basement was not that far away and could possibly be used. He was willing to figure out if we had enough slope for a return plumbing run for waste water. He was willing to go into the auxiliary basement under the back half of the kitchen and insulate it properly, then do the plumbing to get the water and waste pipes to the old back porch. He was a real joy to work with. Jim took the drawings the cabinet guy and I had made and planned out the kitchen remodel. He faced each new challenge with a few choice words, a swipe at his brow, and a, "Nancy, can you come here, I need to show you something," followed by options for remediation and cost estimates (no support post on the right side of the "header" a previous owner had made going between kitchen and old back porch, three live electrical wires found with wirenuts on them left hanging in the walls, moldy drywall and rotted out rafters in that shed roof...) Pretty soon, Jim was checking EVERYTHING before closing up a wall, given that doodlehead's idiocy. I am sure Jim saved us a lot of trouble and heartache, if not our lives. He has done every job on both of my houses ever since, too.

Love seeing this photo! I had the chance to meet at least 6 in the area of Richmond and Williamsburg Virginia a few years back before leaving Yorktown to move back to Florida for retirement. I LOVED seeing the 'surreal' GIRLS IRL! They were exactly as I thought they were! And we were like strangers who already KNEW a lot of us... hearing 'This is like what you have in your house, MR...' was like... 'this stranger I am with has seen my house'!!! LOL how FUN..because we ALL shared a common interest! And even after I moved away from them, we are all still close friends on FB and by email... we still share ideas.... I will soon be searching out people in Central to South Florida area, I have already met some on FB. DID we EVER think that our days of being on decorating boards could turn into life-long friendships? LOVE stories like this and the photos!!! Thanks so much for sharing!