Here's my 2cents on the topic. Poochella has me by 1 year on this growing, storing dahlia process. With 150 clumps to deal with , I have used every method in the books and at the end I have even said thats enough and blasted than with a hose , thrown them in a basket and said you are on your own, don't complain and be quite down there in the basement for the rest of the winter, Amen!!! From my experience , it is much easier to separate tubers in the fall than spring, first of all the tubers are at their juciest? lol and much easier to cut apart and store. If you do wait and I have, when spring comes and you are tilling and preparing soil and hemming and hawing about where to plant this and that, the last thing you want to do is divide dahlias. There's just to many other things to do and I found my dahlias get planted a little later than they should just out of time restrictions. This is fun to do as I have so many dahlias, I invited a few friends over promising them a wonderful Italian dinner, even made cannolis, and put them to work. We had a great time and finished the whole process off with a few botttles of Vino!!! Of course this is just my 2 cents worth! Happy storing, Willow

I have had hardwood in my last two kitchens and plan on extending the hardwood you see in the picture into our new addition (kitchen). I may be biased as I sold and designed hardwood floors for several years. Ours is a natural grade (one up from rustic, no knots and full warranty) 3 1/4" Birch with a satin finish. A satin finish is JUST as durable as a higher gloss but it is more forgiving. Your natural colored (unstained)woods will show any potential damage less as will woods with more color variation and grain. We're raising two kids and Gideon Greyhound on this floor. Does it have marks and dings? Absolutely. The difference between damaged vinyl, tile or laminate is that they don't get charactor when they are damaged. 99% of people who see our floors don't see the 'living' marks on them, they just see a beautiful floor. Those other 1%? Well they probably aren't people I'd like to associate with anyway! We're putting in mostly ginger-toned cabinets to pick up the darkest colors in the floor.

I had a similar situation, and eventually just hired an electrician to do the job. I was switching from 100A to 200A service (my old service was to a fuse box with 100 A cartridge fuses and 8 screw fuses, mostly 15A but one was higher (30A, I think) for the electric dryer. I installed the 200A breaker box next to the old one and transferred all the wires to the new one. I then ran a 4 GA line from the old fuse box to the new one. I then had the electrician replace the meter pan and remover the wiring to the old box and run a line to the new one. I had contacted a local inspector who said "yes, you can do it yourself. You would call the POCO to disconnect your old service. You could then replace the meter pan. Then you would call me to inspect your work. I would probably come in a couple of weeks. Then call the POCO to reconnect the new meter/pan. That would probably take another couple of weeks." Hiring a licensed electrician cost only $800, so that's what I did. Interestingly, he did not think the line from the pole to the house had to be replaced!

I used thermafoil cabinets in the laundry room and powder room in my last house. Before putting the house on the market, we went around and glued down all the edges that were loose. They had started coming up after only 4 years -- and this on cupboards that weren't opened daily as those in a kitchen would be! My daughter and son-in-law are about to put their house on the market and have been doing all those "touch up" things. Their house is probably 10 years old, and the thermofoil kitchen cabinets were all peeling. They ended up peeling all doors and painting the whole kitchen -- looked 100% better! Most of the thermofoil peeled off in complete sheets! At least it was easy to get off! I wouldn't use the material again.