I recieved this message a few days ago. Dear gpborger, My name is Richard Norris. I am a hybridizer of daylilies. You can check out my credentials through Google. The person from whom you purchased Ginny Mitchell listed an offering using an image stolen from my website. It was of a plant that had never left my property. I complained to eBay and his listings were removed. I checked out his other daylily listings and many are of fictional plants with stolen images. It is quite certain that the plant you received is a cheap substitute. It will most certainly not be the plant from the image you saw in the listing. Please check out the discussion of this problem on the garden forum at TinkerÂs Garden. The link is http://forums.tinkersgardens.com/active_topics.asp or at GardenWeb http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/daylily/ We would like to see to it that he does not continue to cheat people in his offerings. - norashwd14m1 Here is my response: Dear norashwd14m1, You say stolen from your website but you didn't say what your website was. I did however go to the gardenweb forum. The taking of others pictures concerns me for a few reasons. 1) I do not know if what I paid for is what I'm getting. 2) I ask permission from the people I buy from to use those pictures on my website that shows what daylilies I currently have. (I do not sell, only show)I did not even ask about yours yet because it hasn't been planted yet. Obviously I don't need to ask him though if they are not his pictures. Thank you for letting me know this though. 3)I know that many honest, serious daylily growers sell on ebay, Blueridge Daylilies, Northern Lights Daylilies, Marietta gardens to name a few, I know because I have bought from almost all of them. I would hate for many growers and sellers get a bad name because of one incident or one grower. I also wanted to let you know that I just checked and ebay has NOT removed this persons listings. Thanks gpborger

Sheila, it's just paint! It's easy to change. If you get new sofas you can change the paint. As you've already figured out, you can go in several directions with this. My advice: Invest in a quart (or sample pot if they have them) of each of the paints that really appeal to you. Paint a 3'x3' square of each of them with at least 6" in between. Paint it in the family room, breakfast area and next to the kitchen cabinets. Live with it awhile. Yes, spend at least a week with splotches on your walls. Look at them in the morning. Look at them at noon. Look at them while the sun is going down. And with the lights on at night. And without. See if you can catch them when it's cloudy and when it's bright, and in as many different lights as you can. You'll see which color you like best. I thought I was going to paint my living and dining rooms (which are open to each other) this amazing butterscotchy heritage color that was warm, sophisticated, gracious, happy, etc. Until I saw it on the walls on an overcast day. It made me want to cry it was so dreary!!! I ended up with BM Morning Mist (I think that's what it's called). It's a kind of greeny-grayish-bluish color. Very hard to pin down. Looks good in all lights and weathers. People still admire it. Also, if your big problem is uniting the two rooms, maybe you should consider alternatives. You can, for instance, choosing the most divergent ones for illustration, paint the kitchen/eating Van C, and the family room Bradstreet, and have about 6' where they meet make an ombre pattern (using layering, sponging, etc.) so that there isn't a hard line, but it just kind of drifts from one to the other. Or you can do Brookline in the family room, the chair rail and top of pony wall Van C, and a stripe of the Van C. the width of the pony wall going up the ceiling, and Wedgewood in the kitchen proper. I'm not suggesting these particular tones. Less stark contrast would probably work better, but there are all kinds of things you could do. If you want to get really fancy, and this might actually look amazing, you could do Van C on all of the walls, with really large panels of your beige. Do the Van C below the chair rail and narrow beige rectangles between cupboards and slider, slider and window, above it as a frame for your pictures. Then in the family room, do a 9' wide box with a foot margin at top and bottom, of the beige on the short end(s) and two of them on the long side(s). Adjust the actual dimensions for centering of your wall unit, etc. That would give you your beige backdrops, with the punch of rich color that the Van C provides. What it will also do is tie in the beige blocks of kitchen cabinets with the beige blocks in the family room. Be brave!! If you really hate whatever you choose, you can always paint over it.

I'm curious. What happened between the current and the original design? The original house was on a smaller lot and because of lot restrictions we wound up with a house we weren't happy with, so we bought an additional 1/2 a lot. That gave us an additional 3000 square feet which allowed us to fix our master suite area, enlarge DH's study, add a second garage bay and make our guest bedroom right sized. It also allowed us to put a real lanai on, and add a needed 2' to the kitchen. But most importantly it allowed us to turn the house so now our rear faced south instead of west. I consider that a major positive. If you notice the west side of the house has almost no windows and in our hot climate, that's a good thing. It's also set five feet from the lot line, so will have a fence and really not be viewed, so I'm not too concerned about it lacking windows. It looks like two different homes going on; one story on the left and two story on the right. The original elevation seems more balanced. Thank you for your thoughts. The dreaded garage. We could have had a detached garage but then we would have almost no driveway space,and instead too much land would be in front where we wouldn't use it. Also be aware you're looking at a flat elevation. In 3D it will look different. The garage will be set back and was made purposely lower so the house itself became the focal point. It was done deliberately. And of course once it's landscaped it will be even less noticeable. IMO, the foyer should be welcoming, a first impression, give a glimpse and be a beautiful avenue to the rest of the home. The latest foyer layout I see looks as if you just run right into walls and doors? like walking right into a closet or mudroom/service entrance with no impressive view of the courtyard/pool. All houses have compromises. Because we are on a smaller lot (9000 square feet) we had to make some compromises. Because we absolutely wanted the house backyard to "envelope" us with a courtyard feel, we had to make choices as to which rooms would open to the courtyard. To us it was most important that our kitchen/dining/living room and master suite open to the courtyard. And my DH was insistent that his study look out on the courtyard too. It wasn't important to us that our foyer, which we'd spend almost no time in, have a view out to the courtyard. So we made sure all those rooms mentioned had windows on at least two sides to bring in views and light. To help our foyer, we will make the wall that you first see interesting with lighting and a beautiful painting or large mirror. Our stairway will be open with a craftsman style staircase. The opening to the great room will be cased in a way that creates interest and the desire to explore further and because the great room has windows on both the north and south walls, the light in the great room should lead you to want to move from the entry foyer to the great room. Adding to that is the foyer ceiling will be 9' high while the great room will have 10' ceilings so it will "open" up. Would you want a closet in the study so that it could resell as an additional bedroom? Yes and we added a closet for DH to have a place for his things. This is our retirement home and we're not building the house for resale. We're building it for us and our needs now and hopefully into the future. Maybe I'm missing a bigger picture or didn't read all of the threads in entirety. I think you may have missed a few. Here are the most updated plans and elevations.

You won't regret this purchase. It just makes everything you planned for your beautiful home design work! And maybe your builder is right. He will most likely be able to sell the other half lot with the one next door. But, if not, all the more better deal for you!