lori-woo hoo yes, your chanting must be paying off. ;) Chant away girl! Happy bday to your dd! We are carpeting stairs, first off less expensive and hopefully will help with sound reduction and third only the kids are upstairs so they will be using them most and hopefully they will be less apt to slip and fall. I know I do like the stonecraft one also and believe it or not that wasn't actually our first choice! We have struggled with it between coloring and budget. We originally liked the split stone but what we had seen was way over budget. So then we picked the stonecraft but thought it was too dark so a different blend, then back to the blend I posted here, then I found split stone that we could swing ($7.50/sq instead of $18 - stonecraft stuff is $5 something). Anyhow it also saves us some installation time and since most of the DIY stuff is hitting all at once it does make the split stone more appealing. I honestly like them both. Dh is still saying he likes the split stone so that's the currents status. :) I kind of feel like the stonecraft is a bit country and the split face is a bit contemporary and I feel like we are transitional. ? ontariomom-the laundry cabs are from HomeCrest and the color is sand dollar. I liked it the minute I saw it. The darker cabinet is for the master bath. The laundry has 2 uppers above the washer and dryer and then a small sink base and that's it. It won't be a lot of color in there but enough. askshars-so would you believe today I get a call from the tile store that my Jeffrey Court samples came in...??? They ordered them from the distributor that told me they pulled them. So I picked them up and they are very nice but I think I'd need a different color. Anyhow I don't know what to think. I mentioned it to the retailer and he said he hadn't heard a word of that and would double check to be sure he could still get them. We are reviewing budget tomorrow to see just where we are sitting for counter tops. I'd love to get that narrowed down too! mlweaving - we also have a ton of leaves trapped in our garage stairwell that leads to the basement. I will need to get those out when they pull the temporary treads. I can't get to them for now. I am wondering how many hours in clean up there will be after drywall. What a mess that will be! Hubby loves landscaping, loves it. He'll be the one planning all that out. I don't know too much about it but I love to look at our lawn after he's finished mowing and it has a checkerboard pattern 'burned in'. :)

Mine is getting filled as we speak and the area will continue to be a work in progress with an Ivory travertine patio floor down the road. This is a modest existing pool remodel. We took out the silly spa with its four puny jets, odd size, and no light and made it into a conversation niche. In the before design you couldn’t heat up the spa without heating up the entire pool. Surface- Wet Edge New Zealand Tropical- peal matrix but with the deeper blue/green dye used in the Chilean Tahoe. The last picture with spa and orange coping is the Before .

Pool looks great, what part of NC are you from, and what builder did you use. And if you don't mind me asking what kind of budget did you have. I am getting quotes on a 18" x 35' pool and the prices are coming alot higher than I thought

Floating vinyl (click together) needs the same amount of subfloor prep as a glue down. Vinyl (the thin stuff) is flexible (like chewing gum). It will mold into every hump, bump and jump left in the subfloor. The glue from the bamboo has to come off (regardless). I vapour barrier can be put down over the glue residue but an attempt really should be made to get rid of as much of the glue as possible. Once the concrete subfloor is al nice and smooth and level, you can put any floor you want over it. Personally I prefer a HIGH END laminate ($4.50/sf out of Switzerland or Germany). The product out of Europe is extremely good. You can put down a small amount of tile in the kitchen and bathrooms and you are all done. If you currently have carpet on the stairs, you might want to update the carpet. Changing the surface on the stairs is expensive. As soon as a new product is added to the treads you MUST update the stairs to current code. And that can be MORE expensive than the flooring job. I kid you not. The benefit of LAMINATE: you can add as much underpad as it can handle (6mm cork is lovely). Drawback of laminate = it cannot be used in a kitchen (which is where the tile comes in). Benefit of vinyl: it is water proof.(which is only needed in 10% of the house) Drawback: it HATES underpad (just assume it must go down over the concrete...no extra padding allowed), it HATES direct sunlight (can warp/fade) it HATES heat (warps).