Hi Mike, Dont buy the oxypetalum. I am sending you a few pieces of this one. It is true that they grow like crazy. I left this one at my parents house when I moved out because it does take a tremendous amount of space. I got a call from my mom and she told me that she was waiting for the day that that was going to strangle her..LOL. Once you have an established cutting, you can expect some new growths to be a couple feet long. No joke, mine had some growths that were 4 ft long in one summer!! The blooms are great! Just make sure your going to be home to enjoy them! Mine only lasted one night and that was it. As soon as the sun went down, the bud would begin to open. By the time the sun came up, it was closing. Logees describes it as having flowers the size of dinner plates. I had some that were even larger than that!!! Mine is pitifull now compared to when it was in its glory. I wished I would have found a way to care for it here. At one point, that plant was around 10ft long but I have had it for over 10 years. You can control the growth with pruning. Just make sure you do it at the right time or you will end up with no blooms. I will have to read up on my notes on this before I can tell you when to prune it. I can send you 3-4 nice cuttings next week with the others if you want okay? I also have a nice big pink epi. I don't know the name of the variety but it is really pretty. Trust me, neither of them will take a lifetime to get blooms from. My oxy bloomed in 1.5-2 years after I got it. I started a couple for friends and the one I gave to my landlords mom bloomed the same year I rooted it! The pink variety I bought locally and they had rooted cuttings with buds on them. I will say that it may take a couple years for those blooms to reach there potential. Andrew

Your house was built before 1870, but after 1820. It could be called 'Italianate' from its paired windows on the second floor. It could also be called "Folk Victorian" . The length of the windows, the window casings with their small hoods are all early Victorian. The window panes (2/2) are probably renovations from the early 1900's. Its eaves, which extend straight out with no returns back to the main house, are Italianate, or 'Romantic' - a reaction to so many years of 'Colonial' architecture in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. You can see that the builder is still thinking in terms of 'Colonial' symmetry but beginning to use the frills ( bay windows, paired windows, fancier door and window casings) that became so popular in the later Victorian years. The bay windows and the porch make it more likely to have been built closer to the 1850's. Also the newel post in the second slide is made from one log, turned on a lathe - very popular from the late 1830's to the 1860's. However your other stair railing, balusters and the fireplace mantles are the style of the 1830's. I know a similar hand rail (how lovely it is to look at and to feel in the hand!) built by a factory owner in 1838. The iron fence is probably later, early 1870's, as are the spindles (the little turned pieces up next to the roof) on the back porch. See if you can find a copy of Asher Benjamin's pattern book published in 1830 or 1827. He was a very popular architect whose books were copied by local carpenters all over the US. The 1827 and 1830 editions have illustrations very similar to your pictures. Also you might enjoy 'A Field Guide to American Houses' by the McAlesters.

I love it when you guys start to talk "big picture" like this! Lavender_lass - the current layout (with the dining room and the additional table in the family room is simply a function of the fact that I have all this extra furniture. I definitely want to consolidate eating spaces as part of this. I have thought about swapping the kitchen and dining room and giving a straight shot to the back of the house, but a few things are giving me pause. First off, if I leave the current DR/LR archway intact (that would now become the KIT/LR archway), you see all my kitchen nonsense from the front door, which I don't want. Secondly, if I close off that archway and instead put a hallway across from the front door into the back room, well, I lose the archway (not even sure if it is original, but it is kind of cool looking) and I start to wonder if I'm changing the "style" of the house too much. It's probably a silly thing to worry about, but I like to think my house has a little bit of charm in a cookie cutter sort of way. When people first come in to my house, they are always shocked at how large it feels and I worry that erecting a wall between the DR and LR will kind of kill that. BUT, at this point, i'm not discounting ANY idea, so I'm filing yours away for future pondering =D Jillius, thank you again! I'm definitely considering something like this... I especially like the alotment for cookbook storage -- something I haven't really accounted for in the current design! Benjesbride, we have 2 bathrooms, one on the main floor and one in the basement. BUT, I have grand dreams (lol!) of adding an ensuite. At one point, I was thinking of shrinking the MBR to roughly 10x12 -- yikes!) and cramming in a 3/4 bath (4.5' x 7') and pitifully small WIC, but my current thinking is to relocate the stairs to the side wall of the formal Living Room (it works nicely with the basement below -- dumping out right into the main TV watching area) and reclaim the old stair space as a roomier bathroom/closet for the MBR. Granted, I have NO IDEA what is involved with moving stairs like that, so for now, it's just a dream, lol. You make an excellent point, though, about planning ahead on bringing the utilities over to that area with a future bathroom in mind. Duly noted! Very insightful, Texasgal! I've often thought that the living room is a big blob of unused space, but it does make a nice entrance statement for visitors. Currently it houses some antiques (courtesy of my parents' downsizing). I'm not ready to abandon the "formal living room" concept, but I am thinking of shrinking it, and possibly relocating the stairs to the side wall (see my comments up above) to shrink the space and give it a bit more function. PLUS, the idea of having some sort of open stair railing in this area makes me swoon (can we say HOLIDAY GARLAND?) lol! I do like the idea of the breakfast bar, pantry, etc for the dining room, but the caveat is that it has to be pleasing to look at, as that area has prime visibility to the front door (at one point, I thought of stashing the fridge over there, but I just couldn't get past seeing it when you first enter the house. But then, where to put the dining table? A few times a year, we host family, so while the dining space doesn't have to be FORMAL, it still has to have a presence. I'd like 1 perpetual dining space for 6 post-remodel, with the ability to overtake other areas with tables and whatnot as circumstances dictate. I think i'm going to play around to see if I can visualize some of these awesome ideas you all are putting forth. To summarize what I'll be working with: Keep some sort of formal living room to greet guests (affectionately call it a Parlor or something, lol), but explore shrinking it a wee bit, play around with expanding the kitchen into the current dining space somehow and see if I can get over my reluctance to kill the LR/DR archway, and figure out where we want to spend our time chowing down. As always, you guys rock, thanks SO MUCH!

Thank you ever so much to everyone for your help. This is my first post and I shall definitely be using this site more. I currently live in Mozambique so things like fertiliser and tomato cages are simply not available. I will give them some cow manure though and try to fashion some kind of supports from tree branches. The fact I cannot find anything to buy sure does keep the cost of inputs down though!