Love all of these Bathroom photos! Thanks for posting! I'm in the middle of planning 4 bathrooms myself. I think Ann Kathryn is correct about why people don't post. After all of your planning and hard work, it's difficult when people are less enthusiastic about your project, even when you know every single flaw yourself! Posters need to be mindful of individual taste and geographical location. Certain remodels may not suit everyone's style, but that's why there's chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. My Mother used to say, "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all!"

"...cindylou, imagine if you can what it would be like after all you and your husband have experienced with your MIL if your own children grew up and estranged you..." If I had a child who estranged me, I would not think it had anything to do or not to do with my MIL. I would not think that they owed me a relationship because I tolerated my MIL (maybe I misunderstood what you meant by connecting my MIL into that idea). If my child estranged me suddenly and with no warning and if I asked and they said, "You know", and I truly didn't, I would make the assumption they didn't quite didn't know themselves. That they have feelings and upsets they don't quite understand themselves and that they needed time away from me to work them out. (This is assuming there's no mental illness or addiction. If there is mental illness or addiction, then I do know and frankly, maybe I'm just getting too old, but I've seen the hopelessness and heartache of addiction and mental illness, and I think I'd just be grateful for being cut out). More likely, I would have been told the answer. And I'd accept it, even if it didn't make sense. "Because you wore blue to my kindergaren graduation." Huh? Ok. I don't think I'd argue. I can't imagine arguing with an adult child. They are an adult. I barely argue with them now. My parents didn't argue with me, I never saw them argue with their parents. My aunts and uncles on both sides didn't argue with either their adult children or their parents. It's just not done. I can't imagine it. There are differences of opinion and hurt feelings and misunderstandings and on rare occasions, conflict between adult members of my extended family. Of course there is. But everyone seems to understand a basic rule. I live my life and you live yours, and I can offer my opinion and it's fair if you don't follow it. The person who's business it is, gets the final say. The person who has the most responsibility gets to decide. The person who takes the biggest risk chooses. We are none of us perfect people; but we don't squabble and manipulate and gang up on each other and form one alliance and then another to force family members to do what we want. And we don't stab each other in the back. That's such a bizarre concept to me. And we are very close--without melodrama. There's not a lot of conflict. So if a child told me, "I don't want contact from you because you wouldn't let me go to Aruba on spring break." I'd respect that. I'd figure sooner or later they'd understand. Or if not, sooner or later it wouldn't matter any more. I would absolutely believe that eventually they'd come back. Not the way they were, it wouldn't be the same relationship, but had we stayed close, it wouldn't be the same relationship at 30 as it was at 20 or 10. Would I miss them and be hurt. You bet. But I'd be comforted that I would see them again and focus on the other blessings of my life while I waited. I truly believe that if you love something you let it go, and if it loves you, it will come back. And if it doesn't come back, you never had it to begin with. If after 10 or 20 years there was still no contact, I'd have to face the fact that it's probably for the best. We didn't have the relationship I thought we had; I didn't know them, and we obviously weren't a match even if they have half my DNA. Do I hope to have close, intimate relationships with the families of my adult children? Of course. But I will be happy with any non exploitive relationship my children feel comfortable with. I may want more contact or less, depending on the personalities, but perfection doesn't happen in relationships; it's like tension between togetherness and individuality that has to be worked out in a marriage. When your children are adults with families, you renegotiate your relationship, and if it REALLY doesn't work for someone, you might have to walk away. Sad, painful, but realistic. I have a coworker who is retiring and moving to be closer to her daughter and grandchildren. They are delighted to have her. On a recent house hunting trip she was dismayed that her daughter seemed to expect/demand a lot of babysitting from her. She's not moving there to take on the responsibility of babysitting her grandchildren, altho she does hope to see a lot of them and participate in their lives. Things were tense as she attempted to come to understanding with her daughter. She came back and asked if things don't work out in the other state, can she have her job back. I sometimes in the past had wondered if she's a meddling MIL so much does she talk about her grandchildren. But I see now she's got a life outside them and is not exploiting her daughter's family to fill the emptiness (if any) in her own life. And she's not going to allow herself to be exploited by her daughter however much she loves her family. She sees her standing up for herself may result in a cut off; and I respect her handling of this delicate situation. I'm sure it will all work out, but I can see myself in her place; in any relationship, there's always the possibility that you or the other person will walk away for whatever reason. You may think, oh yeah, you are so philosophical, just wait until it happens to you. Well, like anything, what choices do you have: you either accept with grace or you don't. How does not accepting with grace help anything? The ends don't justify the means. Bullying, manipulating, harassing, yelling...none of that is going to help. If you accept with grace, while you are waiting for the problem to resolve itself enough so the child talks to you again with a willingness to compromise, at least you can still have meaning and pleasure in your life. It also gives you time to reflect as well. It might not be that you did something WRONG, it's just that you don't mesh well. And you can measure in the absence how you and your adult child's family don't mesh and what you are willing to compromise to make the relationship more pleasant for EVERYONE. "Mom, you can never be unsupervised with my kids." "Why?" "Because you are a taurus". Huh? Well, that makes no sense to me. But why jeopardize my supervised visits with my grandchildren which can be wonderful by arguing if being a taurus prevents one from being a good grandma or not. Why fill that time with strife and anger and posturing and demands and righteousness and counter accusations when I can be on the floor playing Candyland and angling for the chocolate swamp or coloring in Barbie coloring books or stacking Lincoln logs as high as the sky. Who cares if DIL is glaring at me when my darling grandson and I are holding our breathes to see if we can make a Pixie Stix teepee? I believe letting them go gracefully gets them back eventually, and if it doesn't, the relationship would have just caused heartache all around anyway, estranged or not.

I have a thorny problem with an ipe deck that is now about 5 years old, on which I am hoping someone can advise me. When it was new, I applied Penofin's Penetrating Oil, supposedly designed for Ipe and Teak. The deck, always in bright sun, looked great for the first season. By the next season it had begun to go dark, as though smudged by ashes. I power washed it and repeated the process. The deck looked good again, but some of that smudginess remained. It was worse the next year. I thought it might be pigments in the Penofin that caused that darkness, and quit using it, using only Cabot's cleaner and Cabot's brightener, without power washing and without oiling. These products don't touch the smudgy look, and the deck looks awful. Someone told me that the Penofin has parafin wax in it, which is still in there and sealing pores from the top. Moisture rises up through the wood and it is that moisture on the underside of the parafin that is causing mildew below the surface of the wood and the consequent smudginess. He recommended power washing the whole deck again to get rid of the parafins. This is the first theory that has made any sense at all to me, but I am still totally baffled. I am also a little concerned about power washing, because I noticed that no matter how much care I took, to get the original color back it required pretty high pressure, leaving marks on the wood from the wand. Has anyone heard of a problem such as mine? Any recommendations? Thanks, David Alexandria, VA

Saphire- It wasn't the same neighborhood, but it was the same town, within 3 miles distance. Actually, my house was in a better physical location. The house that sold for 725k was the smallest on that other street, which was off an older neighborhood with smaller homes. Mine was one of the larger five homes on my street. Nothing better than mine sold on my street, except for the 2 worst homes on my street, so the comps weren't great for me. The people who purchased the similar to mine, but more expensive home (725k)never looked at my home because they qualified between 700-800k. My house was for sale for 569k. Realtors usually don't bother showing homes for much less if you are qualified for that much. That's what a realtor told me. Ironically, we (in the NE)got caught in a bad market bewteen Sept & Dec 2006. Only the homes under 450k and over 650k to a lesser extent were selling. The in between were not being looked at, or sold. Where I live, we have a few neighborhoods. Most of the newer construction (last 15 years)consists of one or two streets in between older streets. In our town we don't have much land left. Lots are at a premium, that's if you can find one. My point was that "comps" can work for you or against you. It's not good if the first house on your street has to sell quickly & the owners need to bail & give it away. That sets the standard for your neighborhood. I think comps should be done with a fine tooth comb, not just a colonial is a colonial. I can tell you stories from meeting with a few of the realtors, how they would start comparing 2 houses never being inside of them! I don't believe that you should pay 175k more for the same sqft on another street, just because some of the surrounding homes may be valued at 700-800k. I can see the neighborhood carrying a house an extra 25-50k but not almost 200k. I definitely think that the other party got taken. I've been in that other house & it was not worth 725k. The realtors must have worked hard to get price. To the OP- sometimes it works for the seller to list high. After all, realtors will show their house to a party that will be qualified in their price range, however skewed it may be. The savvy buyers won't fall for it. But there is a $.... born every minute & they listen to what the realtors say ;)