Congrats on growing beautiful children! Don't feel guilty about allocating some $$ of the budget to keep your home happy and functioning. When I had my son the Csection went badly and I couldn't function in the yard for almost a year. The only plus side was that house was on a in-town lot and a half with sand-based soil. It wasn't so horrible to get going again as the soil was so loose and the property was small. But, it did break my heart to look out and see weeds, weeds, weeds. When we moved to our current property it was is sorry shape. Nothing had been done with the 2-acre property other than cut the open lawn areas for at least a 4 year period! (When I say "cut the open areas" I mean the cutting a riding mower can do around trees, ditches, etc). The original owner had circled the house with plantings of green hosta, forsythia, and purple iris, with double white peonies alongside the steps. The forsythia had overgrown the windows of the house, the gutter had come off the high end of the house and allowed erosion along the steps (there were no peonies to see at the time...only a waist-deep gully), and knee high grass was present from the landscape timber edger across the 3' "bed" to the house. An orchard of over 20 fruit trees that had not been pruned, maintained (or even mowed) for 4 years. No sidewalks. Just a vast green weed expanse of 2 acres with an orchard of fruit "bushes" inside a meadow and a house with basically no windows as the forsythia covered them. I hired a guy to pull out all of the forsythia, repair the deck, put in a gravel sidewalk, spray-kill the grass in my intended new flower bed, and bring in two tandem truck loads of mulch. I put my efforts into terrace gardening along the steps to get rid of the gully and reclaiming the hostas, irises, and fruit trees. Imagine my surprise when beautiful, fragrant peonies came up in my new terraced rock garden. Apparently peony roots will withstand a lot of abuse as there didn't seem to be anything but brick-solid eroded gully there before! The point of this long story: if its a big project you have to budget between your time, your priorities, and your $$$. We are ALL doing that on a regular basis. Who are we trying to impress??? OURSELVES!!! Feel good at the end of the day! Have time for your babies! Create a beautiful and peaceful haven for your family. Some people can put more of their own time and muscle behind it; others will need to put more of their $$ into a project because its beyond their physical abilities. Its all good if you can enjoy the results at the end of the day...and don't forget to sit down in that nice yard with your loved ones and ENJOY IT (there's where I miss a priority from time to time). A "before" shot, sort of, I had trimmed the forsythia off the windows, put the gutter up, and shoveled the gully wash out dirt off the driveway. An "after" shot:

Glad someone else got a kick out of it! I guess I should have put funny in the subject line. :P

Slush - I think you're in the perfect phase. I've now got a photo to be able to show, but the contest won't close until after I've needed to order pulls (which I had to do a couple days ago). I think the timing on something like this is problematic. It may best work for someone who wants a little renovating-touchup rather than who has a new kitchen going in with none in the background! No one wants to wait for some random judges' decision (sorry sabjimata) - and then what if you don't even win and you'd been delaying your own purchase? Just silly. So I think you're in the right place for such a contest, and I think the ones they should be searching for are people who don't like their *current* hardware. Making this work with a new build or to-the-studs-renovation is just too hard. (just sayin - not trying to be insulting of the contest, but supportive of your seemingly too-raw state. I think it's, surprisingly, the ideal time if you can envision already what sort of hardware you'd even be wanting).

Our board meets on 9/30 and 10/14 but is "booked" for those dates. We also need time to notify the neighbors. I might be able to get pushed into the 10/14 date, but that will be special treatment and is not a sure thing. I made friends with the very arbitrary commissioner, so have a long list of high up town employees who may pull strings on my behalf, but have to count on the 10/28 date for now. Since we had the variance approved last time, there have been many code changes or even just that they enforce what used to slide. Our plans are for less than last time, so it should be a no brainer, other than the fact that the game has changed in the interim. Our GC won't really order materials until it is clear we can proceed. Luckily (or not), we have most of our materials picked out and approx 75% on premises already. Any delay on materials will not come from us, lol.... Today it was over 80 degrees, so Nov could be 50 or could be -50, lol. We usually do not see snow until late Dec, so we are hoping that hold true this year. The ground is not fully frozen until late, but I am more concerned about living here in the cold with functioning heat. We have suffered through 4 summers with almost no a/c (only the one in our sons' room is any good and our bedroom has the only other one, and that one is ancient). I figure since we got through that, we could always layer clothes in cool weather, and maybe be ok. It seems like we have no choice, so it will be what it will be. Thanks for all the encouragement and support. I feel like I have called "wolf" before, but this time he might actually be getting close, lol.