Oh my gosh, you ladies don't have good yard sales? I'd die if they stopped around here. I've gotten so many "brand new" items that I can't even count them anymore. If a relative or friend mentions they need something, by gosh, I'll usually find it within 2 weeks of them asking. We also have a lot of salesmen around here as there are always a lot of salesman sample sales in our area. The things are great, brand new & not a thing wrong with them and really cheap prices. I will post pics when I start going again this year. In the spring, the big expensive subdivisions have whole subdivision sales, usually anywhere from 25 to 50 houses in the same subdivision. We tiled our whole bathroom with tiles I got "brand new" at a sale for about $10, these are the big ceramic tiles, also redid our bathroom floor in marble from a sale, the man was a tile setter & had tiles leftover from jobs, he charged us $15 for all of them and that included three boxes of smaller tiles, some I ended up using in my kitchen when we remodeled. You never know what you'll find & where you can use it. We had those tiles for two years in our basement & then realized the smaller ones were great for the kitchen. Also, I found carpet squares, brand new for my son & dil's basement, did the whole basement for $20, that was about 7 years ago & the carpet tiles are still in great shape. I am not a morning person at all, that is why you see me posting on here at nite, but when sales start, it is totally mind over matter for me as I know if I sleep in, I'm missing out on some great finds! I have a friend that used to go with me, then she started working & lost interest, so most times I go alone, but can set my own pace that way too. She used to get all upset if she didn't find anything good that day & then it would ruin my mood too! This way, if I do good, I'm happy and don't have to live with any guilt that she didn't have a good time!

I refer to our two hundred year old home as a white elephant. I am in the greenhouse business and my husband is a rabid gardener, so the grounds are planted with rare trees and flower gardens and go on for acres. Over the years we have added a large gazebo and a spring fed pond. yadayadayada. Only a person who knows old homes first hand, and has the time or money to hire a professional full-time gardener, should ever buy it. There'll be lots of people to come look when it goes up for sale, but it would not be for the weak of heart. Heating bills. Put that at the top of your list. Even if you let the house fall down around you, they'll just keep coming. We've installed new double-paned energy efficient windows. Caulked. Weather stripped. Built a solarium across 2/3 of the northern exposure of the home for solar gain, replaced the roof, put in a new boiler, converted from electric to gas heat (yes we had to pay to have lines ran), and placed gas grates in strategic spots to take off chill or use when it wasn't too cold. Use reversing ceiling fans to distribute the heat. We've cut our heating bill IN HALF as far as energy consumption. But, rates rise and will keep rising. We still have six hundred dollar a month heating bills in winter. And this is an old farmhouse. It does not have fourteen foot ceilings. It also is nowhere near 6,000k square feet. And, until we put a small fortune in the energy efficiency items, a draft from a window on one side of the room could blow out a candle on the other. It's comfy now, and even cool in summer so we don't need air conditioning, but for the first fifteen years of my marriage you needed a wet suit to take a bath. Think also about the bones of the house. Redecorating is great, but get somebody in there who knows construction really well to look at the skeleton of the house before you even consider buying it. The last two winters, we replaced the beams and joists under our kitchen and dining room. They were logs with the bark still on them, or logs cut on site and hand hewn to nearly square. They were ENORMOUS,and likely dragged into place by teams of horses. We needed to chain saw them to even think about getting them out. We had to gut these rooms clean down to the dirt underneath and after we got new joists up then replaced floors. Moolah. BTW, we never thought about replacing joists and floor beams in this house. After all, they'd withstood two centuries before us. Then termites happened. LOL. The roofer left about a hundred bats homeless when we replaced the slate for modern shingles. We've put in a new entrance box and had to rewire the whole house and it has solid brick interior walls. The logistics of running electricals, and the plumbing for the boiler system were staggering. If you see fuse boxes that should send up a red flag to check out the electricals for modern wiring. Moolah. We had to restucco over the seventy five year old stucco over the bricks. (major, major moolah) We've had to repair or renovate chimneys and it's hard to find brickmasons here who are familiar with the old craftsmanship. That's another thing about very old houses. Nearly everything in seriously old house is done by methods not common to craftsmen anymore and that includes materials. If you have to replace parts of woodwork it's going to be something like oak or mahogany and large. Not box store kickplates. My walls are so old, it's not even plaster on most of them, it's a sandy almost concrete covering. If we put together all the money we have spent in the last two and a half decades breathing life back into our wonderful old home, we could be living in a really fancy new one. We don't want to. We love our old home and pretty much know it inside and out by now. But, it's like a marriage and yes.............we are the volunteer caretakers to an historic old building we couldn't see being left to ruin. But, it's going to take a very special person to want the job after us. Now, ask me about the plastering schedule where the doors and windows are. LOL. Old houses just keep settling. Not a door in this house even resembles a rectangle. They all have been trimmed or had wood added to them to fit the openings. Every window was custom made and no two are the same size. The house is nearly regained its integrity now, and I can see the end in sight of the major issues. But, if we had been forced to sell this at any point along our long path of renovation, and somebody else had to pick up where we'd left off, if they knew up from down, you can take it to the bank our money and sweat wouldn't have left much room for profit. There'd have been no quick sells. The end results perfect for us. It's rustic yet and even has a pitcher pump in the kitchen to pull up the spring water for the house. But you always live with a foot in the past where people lived simpler and made do in some respects. Some people can do that. Some people can't. It fits our lifestyle well.........simple and hard working. But, it was purchased because my husband wanted an old large home in a rural setting. If he'd just wanted "room" it wouldn't have even been in the game. Good luck whatever you decide.

I like to shop at local thrift stores. Many years ago, I had to move out of a 4th floor walk up. I had an old 27" TV that needed to go. I didn't want to pay to have it taken away so I went to the thrift store. I saw a nice young man looking at the TV's. I asked if he would be interested in one for nothing. He asked what the catch was. I said all he had to do was come over and carry that heavy monster down the stairs and it was his! Problem solved! He brought his girlfriend and I gave her a few sundry items I knew I wouldn't need as well. They really appreciated it as they were expecting a child. I've used Freecycle, yard sales, Craigslist and my own lawn to get rid of stuff. Always makes me feel good when it goes to someone who I can tell really needs it.

Creative Tile Eastern CT said: "Tough one to explain. Based on 1/4" per/ft. slope or 2%. Shower 10'x3' for example. If the drain is 5' away from the far wall your floor will slope 1-1/4"" from wall to drain. If that same shower is 36" wide with drain in the center it will slope 1-1/4" in 18" as the height around the perimeter remains the same as the furthest distance." I reread this and looked at a pic of a walk in shower. I think I might get it. I keep focusing on the long part of the current tub/shower that will be a minor slope according to this explanation, but the issue would be that the other three sides would be a more steep slope so it wouldn't look uniform. that' more of the issue, right? It would potentially look like a tub inside of 4 walls (3 walls and a curb). The only thing is that I'm wondering how often tile guys use those exact dimensions because I've seen drains on one end and even fabricated showers with the drain on one side and I don't believe they end up looking like a tub. Maybe they don't drain well? I just visited a friend's really pretty shower with 18" tile and in some spots her shower was level and other parts it was 1/2 a bubble. We looked at the water sit on top of the tile and never go down the drain. It's AZ but she is starting to see minor calcium deposits so will now have to squeegy the floor, too, which wouldn't be good.