Jane, It started spiking in October, and I kept watering it. No loss of leaves yet. I got it last summer, had it in the lathe house till it got down in the 40s, then put it in the cooler growing space, as close to the E/SE window as it would go. Octopus lights w/ 26W CFLs supplementing. 57F minimum winter temp; 75 or so during the day, but only when the sun's out. Otherwise, the high temps are in the mid-60s. Humidity in the teens-30s%. It's in sphag and a plastic pot, and it gets watered when the top of the sphag is crunchy, fertilized every 3rd time. There are notes on my spread sheet, but I didn't record the source - grrr. "I personally manage all of these like standard nobiles, however, the big advantage for them is that if they have a drop in temperature in the fall that they then can be placed in a warm, int, or cool room and they will flower. Moreover, they can be watered during this period. They will still lose their leaves like any nobile, either before, during, or shortly after flowering." More uncredited notes: "One parent of this grex was Cassiope, made with Oberon, in 1995, which was made using moniliforme, back in 1890, so this alters the cultural requirements considerably, making it a nobile type, but not demanding the intense cold and drying in the fall and winter of the standard nobile. This is in keeping with (Jiro) Yamamoto's efforts in recent years to develop nobile types which are smaller and more adaptable to growing conditions." So far, it's been super easy. Supposedly, it gets 8" - 10" tall. So, you gonna get one? WC8

The more I think about it, I'm wondering is it odd to walk from the entry through the breakfast/kitchen to get to the living space? What about switching the living to where the dining is and putting the dining/kitchen in the back. It was suggested above but I dismissed it originally b/c of the bar. But I don't know now. Thoughts? My thought process in this has evolved: 1) Make kitchen/dining one to have it be an eat-in area and make kitchen area bigger. 2) Then I went to flip dining to between the living/kitchen and move kitchen by stairs. Then I thought it might be strange to have people walk through that first?? 3) Flip EVERYTHING and put living by stairs and kitchen/dining where kitchen/living are now. But this blows my original image of having a view of the backyard while sitting in the living room, etc. which leads me to... 4) Our architect can kill me (just kidding...we are still in the first phase) and I can tell him to scrap this and go back to putting the breakfast nook where Mike's Den is and the kitchen next to it and leaving the living room where it is b/c it just WORKS there. There HAS to be a way to keep the MBR where it is and fitting the pantry between it and possibly the laundry or the pocket office between the closet and the hallway. Or even reshaping the MBR closet/bath area to do this? Then the bar and half-bath could go UP by the family room with Mike's Den to the right of them against the stairs? Could that work at all? I'm just so much more comfortable with the whole back being open like that. Plus, it's easier to come in and out with groceries, etc. I still don't know what to do about a drop zone though with kids stuff. That's really my only other issue. I can have him do a coat closet up front. Any feedback would be welcome (again! Ha!) Thanks guys!

So this thread's a few years old -- it's super timely for me. I decided from the start to keep the avocado tub in our Ugly Duckling lake house. We wanted to pay homage to the house and, besides, we knew we couldn't afford to replace it with something of similar quality. The plan was to wait on the bathroom rehab until we had enough money for a solid surface tub surround but ... have YOU tried showering in a 32"x32" plastic box? (The only other bathing option in teh Ugly Duckling.) It's not only uncomfortable but it makes leg shaving impossible! I couldn't take it. Our contractor suggested putting in one of those acrylic surrounds for now. It would be inexpensive, he promised, and easy to take out when more funds were available. We let him pick one out -- mostly because I was certain that inexpensive would = simple. Sigh. That is not the case. It is the one thing in this 'It'll Do' bathroom that I do not truly love. In addition to the green tub we chose to keep the cultured stone countertop. They were able to router out the old, cracked shell shaped sink and drop a new porcelain one in its place. We saved the vanity too and gave it a coat of fresh white paint and new hardware. Alas, the green toilet with its black cushioned vinyl seat, the faux marble green and gold plastic wall paneling, the gold veined mirror tiles, the shag carpet (yes, carpet in the bathroom, ewww) and the disco-riffic swag lamps -- they all had to go. There ain't no house that deserves that much homage, lol! I'm hoping the contractor gets the trim finished today. Then there are towel bars, toilet paper holder, robe hooks and the goofy fishing lure shower curtain to hang. And finally the big decision -- what color towels? I've always been partial to big, white and fluffy but I'm battling a lot of orange staining iron in the water right now and I'm still not sure I'm the one who's going to win. Anyway, I hope to be back in a day or two to post some photos. Maybe they will inspire a few people to leave the 'pitch and replace' camp and join me over in 'save and rethink' land. That is if it doesn't make you do this: (WARNING - The attached video is offensive on many levels, but funny -- really, really funny.) Here is a link that might be useful: Avocado Bath

As a person with PTSD, I definitely appreciate the accuracy of this post's comparison. I'm one of those weirdos who actually likes decorating styles that came from the eighties or earlier. Those cringey little details that people hate? I love them. My fondest dream is to someday own an ugly house that was built between the 60s and 70s and looks like it, burnt orange, harvest gold, and all. I often visualize the confused looks on my neighbors' faces when they see a house that looks like the 70s threw up all over it, hear a random mix of big band, classic rock, and nu metal coming through the windows, and realize their neighbors are - GASP! - Millenials! These daydreams are how I cope with living in an apartment full of beige, beige, and more frickin' beige. That said, even I've got my limits: Carpet in the kitchen. My grandmother (God rest her soul) had her kitchen floor covered in some sort of flat indoor-outdoor carpet in geometric patterns of green, gold, and black...or, at least, I remember the shapes being green, gold and black. It was very old carpet, very rarely vacuumed, and always dirty. Sure, that's bad enough, but you know where the trauma came from? Well, Gran grew up in the South during the Great Depression and came from a dirt-poor family. You never got caught wasting anything around her; she even washed and saved disposable straws for future uses. During one visit with her, I was helping her prepare a modest lunch. (Green beans with butter and garlic, a small burger patty on white bread, and white rice with butter and salt. Yes, heart attacks run in the family.) I turned away for a moment, can't recall why, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw the butter fall off the knife halfway to the green beans. It landed right on that nasty, ancient, smelly carpet...but you don't waste food. Gran picked it up with her bare hands, looked it over, and brushed something off. Maybe it was gravel, maybe it was a hair, or even a toenail clipping - all were entirely possible in that house. And - AND! - she tossed it right on the green beans and stirred it in like it was completely normal. I suddenly "got a stomach ache" and went home hungry; after my mother heard the story, she started sending money for us to get takeout so Gran didn't poison me. To this day, the idea of carpet in the kitchen makes me want to sit in a corner, rock, and whimper. Spherical knobs on cabinets. Like stick a marble on a bolt and it's a knob shape. This one's simpler. When I was in fifth grade, my parents bought a fixer-upper dating back to the twenties. It's a beautiful house but as the kid (read "unpaid manual labor assistant") I got a good close look at all the horrors from the renovation. Over twenty years later, I can still recall the obnoxious shiny round 'clown nose red' knobs on the kitchen cabinets...which, by the way, matched the 60s era strawberries-on-butter-yellow wallpaper...so Bozo nose knobs and butter color on the walls, double-whammy. The horror! Wallpaper in general. Sure, I don't mind having paper on the walls, but if there's any possible way, I'm leaving that wallpaper up until I die. I can't stand the wallpaper? I'd almost rather not consider the house. This, too, dates back to that 20s era house. Previous owners, instead of removing the paper and starting over, put layer upon layer of wallpaper and paint on the walls...and it took my parents three rooms of countless layers of painted paper to decide to leave it in place and paint over it. In the half-bath alone, we found about a dozen layers of wallpaper and painted wallpaper dating back to the 20s...and one of those papers had simplistic designs of women in bathtubs, all with beady eyes fixed on the room. I still feel watched anytime I use that bathroom. Lastly, this one is actually literally a PTSD thing. Buildings without a safe room, basement, windowless interior room, external shelter, or other ideal place to take shelter during a tornado. To simplify a too-complicated explanation, in 2011 the apartment building I lived in was in the direct path of an EF-5 tornado and I was home when it hit. The building had the latest in hyper-paranoid fire safety but it had no posted plan for a tornado in the vicinity. My neighbors and I wound up sheltering in the corner of the hallway just yards from several big glass windows and four all-glass doors. Needless to say it wasn't pretty, and most of the buildings in that neighborhood were either flattened or nearly so. I won't go into detail beyond this: our building was brick, and there was non-brick construction obliterated for about half a mile in each direction of us. None of my neighbors were injured or killed. We were so far beyond lucky it's dumbfounding. Ever since then, my first response on entering a new place or checking out a house is "where will we go when s**t hits the fan?" Not if...when. The tornado in 2011 was only the second or third in my city's history; we've had two more smaller tornadic events since 'the big one' and I've lost count of how many "once in a decade/lifetime/generation/millennium" storms have happened since. Missouri isn't known for calm weather, after all. There was such rampant PTSD around here from the tornado (and so many people who ignored the sirens) the city upgraded to new models that test silently. People are finally building safe rooms into most new structures, but it shouldn't have taken that level of destruction. Put your mark on your place - include all the little details you love and ban those you hate - but for the love of Mike, when you're building, buying, or remodeling, seriously ask yourself where you'll go and what you'll do if your region's form of natural disaster happens, and consider whether or not your plans will keep you and your loved ones safe. That got heavy. Here are my cats modeling the latest styles in boxes and bags to lighten the mood. Goldie's sitting in three nested boxes. Those proud cheeks! Skidd just wanted to remind me that he's the present.