LL gone down hill? Hmmmm. That would imply they were on the "up and up" at one point. Go ahead and google Lumber Liquidators and lawsuits. You should get thousands of hits....because that's roughly how many lawsuits they are going through. Many of them are class action level - because there are SO MANY of the same issues. Remember: in the court system the concept of "reasonable person" is an odd one. And there have been several judges who have pointed to the NAME of the company and said, "THERE (Liquidators) is your 'Caveat emptor' warning." and then reduced the amount of money given to the homeowner. Implying that a reasonable person should be able to imply, by the NAME of the company that the products are "less than perfect". Good luck.

I love wood floors and I also love my dogs. I have two 70 lb. boxers at the moment but have had many boxers and I can say that I have not had issues with urine. Any accidents which are extremely rare are cleaned up immediately so Perhaps this is why we have never had staines of any sort. The wood is a mix of red and white oak stained dark, dark mahogany, English Chestnut and Ebony. Not wide plank pine. Pine is soft and can show dents easily. I have my floors refinished every year. Not a full blown out sand, stain and seal but a simple cleaning and sealant. Which keeps them looking their best. Really no different than having your carpets cleaned. I have one dog who detests having nails trimmed but we have a fun trick. One of us holds a peanut butter lolipop. This can be done with a scoop of peanut butter on a spoon. While the dog is busy licking the peanut butter I trim nails. By the time the dog is done with the PB, the nails are perfect. I think I could even paint them a fire engine red and she would not notice. ~boxer A recent pic

I have a question about posts. It seems like there neeeds to be a lot of protection for the wood and preperation for the wood using pressure treated pine lumber. So my question to you guys is would there be a market for an alternative to pressure treated pine posts using posts made out of tropical hardwood? There are many species of wood that are extremely long lasting with ground contact and really do not have much of a market as lumber, so they are cheap. We have the worst possible climate for wood in the world, high humidity, constant hot temperatures, all kinds of fungus, and a wide variety of termites. Ipe is an example of this kind of wood, but there are species are more resistant, especially in ground contact situations. One of these, angelim vermelho (Dinizia excelsa)I have personally used in ground contact and I think that if I live another 50 years it will still be in great shape. They use this wood in Holland extensively to line the dikes with. It does have one drawback though, when green it has a smell very simlar to dirty socks. This would probably make it difficult to sell in the US market. I made a fence recently using this as the posts, 4 x 4s, and it is a question of a few months until there is no smell at all. But, there are many others without this problem. It would seem that wood with no chemicals at all may have some market, although limited. I realize that most homeowners do not probably care what the wood is under their decks, but I am always curious to see if there may be markets for wood that more fully utilizes the native forest species we have here. Maybe in large urban areas with high environmental standards, like Southern California it would be possible to create a market. It would not be something people could just pop over to Home Depot and buy though. dk

Is there a June feed yet? I couldn't find it! We broke ground in the month of May and we are currently in the framing stage. It's going up quickly which is slightly stressing me out because my next two major decisions need to happen now. I've been stressing over making the pantry larger because as framed it feels too small for what we want but that means eliminating the full pocket office and either creating a command center/drop zone/charging station/printing storage somewhere in the mudroom and locker zone or more like a closet but the problem is that the door coming into the house from the garage is kind of in the way. AHHH - and then kitchen cabinets. Why are they SO expensive?! I was hoping to get away from "builder grade" but I don't think we have the budget for 100% wood, to get cabinets to the 10' ceiling and the pantry areas... Husband wants to order cabs through a vendor at costco called allwood but they sell under other brands and don't have awesome reviews and there is noone local to blame when something goes wrong! Ugh