RFla, what a sweet, sweet post!! I remember all those feelings when my baby -- the only boy after two girls -- left for college. I though I'd never recover! He's now 37, with a sweet wife, a 6-year old and 2-year old twins of his own, so he's experiencing the overwhelming love I felt for him. It sounds as if you're doing it exactly right -- you've raised him to have both roots and wings, and that's not an easy balance to achieve. You're making it "easy" for him to leave home -- which is healthy and appropriate -- yet making it clear that he's still a huge part of your heart and your home. You're helping and supporting, and I'm sure you'll find it possible to gradually back away as he achieves more and more independence. My daughters both moved away from us after marriage . . . and now, after 15 and 19 years, we'll all be building homes next door to one another on a Tennessee ridge. Having established their independence by living away from us, they're now able to reconnect without feeling stifled. We're enormously excited about having them and half of our grandchildren next door!! Treasure the past, enjoy the bittersweet moment, and look forward to an exciting future.

Thanks, ya'll. Learningguru, the cabinets were built on site at the house out of 100% Cypress. I went on line and found pics of the doors I wanted for the top cabinets, the draw faces, the furniture style bottom, toe kick drawers (the carpenter wasn't too happy about those LOL), etc. I gave him "a book" as he called it, and he built everything exactly like the pics. He is an awesome craftsman but not reliable. I would recommend him to anyone with the warning that he will not show up every day and it will take him months to finish. If I had to use him again, I would think hard about it because it was difficult to get him to the house. He is very much in demand so he doesn't care if he keeps you waiting. I have to say that I have never seen any workmanship like his. Every cut fit precisely. He was very fast once he came back to the house to work.

Hello iris21, Thank you for your compliment! If I can paint on glass or anything else for that matter, YOU can! My husband and I bought an old schoolhouse and turned it into our home. We had coatrooms in each classroom and in one room we set our counter, stove and fridge back into the coatroom, and above that work area we were installing a wall up to the 11' high ceiling. He set the window into the wall above my work area. (I found this window in someones garbage it is 6' wide and about 24" in height, I placed a florescent light behind it and we use it for a night light in the kitchen at night or just turn it on when company comes for a wonderful effect. (I have other pics of our home if you wish to see them) We all love renovations! The Sea Trout pic is coming up in a local auction in my town on Sept 4 & 5. I taught myself how to do the gallery glass painting and love a good challange. Nothing less! You should invest in a few bottles of the paint and give it a try! This is only one of the many, many crafts and ideas that I have, and love to share! Thanks for asking! Deborah

I enjoyed looking at your plan and seeing the concrete results of your family's needs worked in so well. Now, I'll segue into my wood-stove fire-safety spiel: No matter how "high-tech" or "easily regulated" a woodstove is, it still will have some surfaces that are fiercely, even dangerously hot. You didn't describe the wood stove as a masonry heater, so I'll assume that it is some variety of cast iron/sheet metal even if it has some soapstone facing. What I write below applies to all of the above, except a true masonry heater. We heat our upstate NY farmhouse entirely with wood so I have more than 40 years experience with them. I also have dozens of small burn scars on my hands and wrists from accidental contact with the stove while loading it. Woodstoves when properly running are so hot almost any contact will instantly burn some skin right off. You mentioned that some members of your household are challeneged. Are you absolutely sure they will be able to appreciate the potential danger and protect themselves? I have had members of my household where that was not true, though I had thought so initially. In addition to potential human contact, I have a cat at present that will jump up on to a burning woodstove (650F)- resulting in terrible burns on her pads. I have had dozens of cats living here (I do rescue fostering) and this is the only one who has done it (and more than once). Now we have to have the stoves "walled" off with exercise pen caging to keep her safe. Finally, all woodstoves have minumum safe clearance distances to combustible materials (walls, wooden furniture, soft upholstery and books and papers) these must be observed or you risk starting a house fire. The manufacturer of your stove will have this info in the specs. While it is fine to draw up a chair closer to the stove while you are sitting there, and awake, you need to build in safe guards so that when the stove is burning any combustible material cannot be inadvertently left closer than the specs allow. It is easy to forget the requirements when busy with your day. Woodstoves do NOT turn on and off quickly, they often require hours to wind back down so whatever is used near them has to default to safe distances without needing too much second thought. If you are thinking of having a hearth, but perhaps want to avoid some of the extreme temperature risks of a wood-burning appliance, then you might consider a stove or insert that burns wood pellets. The surface temps are generally much lower (all our cats fight to sleep on top of the pellet stove while it is burning) so it safer to be around. The wood pellets are easy and clean to move around (come in 40 lb bags), which is an improvement on the messiness of wood fuel. The chimney cleaning issues with pellet burners are less intense, etc. The only downside is that I believe all pellet burners require electrical power to run their fuel feed and combustion blowers, so they don't work in power outages. Many have very nice fire-viewing glass fronts. Another option (though a good bit more expensive) is a masonry heater. These rely on massive amounts of stone warmed by short hot fires, perhaps only two per day. As a rule masonry heaters are completely safe to touch, sit on, etc. I'll add this as a teaser for your DH: some masonry heaters also come with wood-fired ovens for pizza, bread- making, etc. They do not require power to run, so during power outages can be counted on to function as your oven as well as heating the room. For some reason, wood-fire ovens are perennial man-pleasers; there's some atavistic draw to them, I think. HTH, L