Oh, another thing I remembered as I went back to look at the pics. again--I used the 'sharpen' tool, (the one that looks like a large triangle) to move along the edges of certain parts of the pics, especially the eyes once they were tweaked. I find that a very useful tool, as well. I used it to play up the texture of the coats and the fur especially in the bathtub! Also, you can even control the amount of change these tools will make, up in the tool bar. There is a slide that tells you, when you move it left and right how much change it will make. As in the case of the air brush tool, you can choose what it will do, by the drop-down arrow to the right of the brush size menu. I use 'overlay' some, now that I realize what it can do and you can vary the amount of overlay spray it makes with that slide I talked about! It is very useful in making something look like a water-color effect! I had a time, recently, adding the head of a person into a group shot we had, where the guys' original head was badly blurred. We needed it for a brochure at church. I had to take a separate photo of him, in what I thought was similar conditions and then cut and pasted it in the original group shot. It was not much like the original lighting conditions, I soon found out, and it was a lot of work to make it look right. Finally, I was able to make it 'right' if you didn't know it wasn't in the original shot--otherwise, to me, I could still see the difference in clarity etc. Very challenging but I do LOVE a challenge! Everyone seemed happy with the results, but me. The perfectionist part in me I guess!! Again, have fun!

I guess I was a quiet little girl, I played cards...had a set of Authors and Old Maid cards...and my great grandmother taught me to play casino. My grandfather made me a spool knitter and I made miles of that stuff and then coiled it for mats. I had a bead loom. And for several yearsI had a washing machine box which got folded up and stored in the garage when it wasn't a house. It had a door with a knob on it and windows with shutters and even a chair inside. The grand kids loved it! And there was always a sandbox....I remember once when my husband was planning on doing some brick work in the backyard and he had about 2 tons of builders sand dumped on the drive way. Like magic that pile gathered kids with little cars and dolls and it was perfectly silent as each one made roads and ran their little cars around!

You will find many old homes around here with one room where the floor slants terribly. It usually ends up being a kitchen or a bath added when running water became available and the facilities were moved inside and the outhouse torn down. The reason it slants is often that the room has been at one time an exterior porch and then enclosed for more room. The porch floor had been sloped intentionally to allow for rain run-off to preserve the floor boards. There are various ways to fix a sloping floor, and jacking up beams may or may not accomplish it, depending on where the sagging area is located and how bad it is. We installed additional new beams in one area of our house, because the old ones were simply logs, with the bark still attached and started to fail after two hundred years. It didn't do much to lift the floor up to the level of the other floors, so we put in more joists, a new subfloor, and a new floor over it. In other rooms, a floor jack worked, and in still other rooms, we took the floor completely out, including the old beam joists and started from scratch with new beams. There is no pat answer.

We have been in our home 11 years this Friday. We made the mistake of hiring a friend as our contractor. He was first a plumber, then expanded, got his contractor's license, etc. Did a good job, quality work. But, I should have listened to my dad when he warned us about hiring a friend. We had to fire him about 75% of the way through. He was way over budget and it didn't seem to bother him - after all, it wasn't his money. We were pretty lucky with the sub contractors other than going through two brick masons, then having to hire a third one to come back and do little items like steps, etc. Also a vinyl guy who did he screened porch area. We worked with our builder on the subcontractors. Some where people he had worked with, others we chose. Once we fired our friend (of course that friendship has ended!), we of course had to deal with the subcontractors completely on our own. I did much of that as my husband couldn't devote as much time. It actually wasn't bad and if we ever (although I don't see it happening!) build again, I think we would strongly consider contracting the work out ourselves. At least now I have a pretty good list of who to use! We had little things here and there. Nothing major and I can't think of anything that wasn't taken care of pretty quickly. I cannot imagine dealing with major problems for two years (as someone mentioned)!! That is just completely unacceptable. I must say as tired and worn down as you get through the process, not to mention stressed, those feelings really didn't carry over once we moved into the house. Although a friendship ended, and that was sad, we knew it was for the best and didn't dwell on that. We just recently learned that an acquaintance who was friendly with our builder experienced some of the same problems when he built his house with our former friend. Pretty much cemented the fact that we knew we were not at fault. We are very happy in our home and love where we are. I hope you will soon feel that way about your new home. tina