I would love it if I was charged that for my two very very tiny foyer areas as I was charged over $1200 for just labor as I bought my own tiles and supplies. I am in Northern NJ where everything is so expensive. Thanks for sharing this thread. Also beware of tile installers who do not know what they are doing as the first one was so bad, I had to pay someone to remove his tiles before I was able to find someone to do the tile job right. I had to buy many more tiles. Then I had to live with the floor looking terrible until I could find someone to do the job. Prices from Tile people that knew what they were doing ranged from $1200 to $1800 just for the labor.

Sounds like you are dealing with my builder! They say the offer zero allowances - so if you pick outside of their picks you pay full price and then some with no reduction in price. P*$$es me off. But, I've managed to get much of what I want - I can be persistent when necessary. As for the granite - I picked it out here where I live (in CA) and then asked to have it shipped to AZ (where new build is). Then I did the "What? I can't believe you won't let me ship the granite I picked out to AZ. After all, I selected it from the local yard of the chain you use in AZ. And, (luckily for me) they don't have any in AZ, so whatever was I to do?" I paid (only) about $4,000 for 2 slabs of Alaska White, including shipping, so they did end up giving me some allowance but I don't know how much. Just something else to keep in mind when dealing with a PITA builder... everything that can be easily changed out I will be changing out. Standard lights going in, standard faucets, no BS (you don't need one for CoO), standard paint, standard door hardware, you get the picture. I have all my lights sitting here in this house and will hire someone to switch them out after close. This is because they were going to charge me twice retail for the things I wanted. Nah. I'm not that dumb. Thanks guys. Cheaper to buy it and hire someone if necessary, although most I can do myself. But countertops I didn't want to mess with having to have them pulled out. I agree with you on that one. I won't even go into the appliance or paint color issues! :) I will say I did learn you have to have a range/oven for a CoO. But all the appliances will be pulled after close. And the already out-dated stainless ;o) will be going in. And I have a construction loan like Bee mentioned. Maybe that is helping me some? Not sure. Think it's more that the sales guy is trying to the best of his ability to help me achieve the look I want for the house. It's the builder who lacks some flexibility. Good luck. As others have said - go look at your slabs. I got AW, which looks a lot like BA, because the BA out here was slightly pink. Delacatus looks similar too if the BA is pink where you are.

I think it sounds like a nice idea... as long as no one thinks that you are trying to tell them what they can give to who. Gift giving is about the thought but it generally needs to be the thought of the giver not someone else :-) If my family decided not to give any gifts, I would prefer to collect gifts (or make them) for a family in need or for a shelter. And, honestly, I would want to be able to give my nieces and nephews gifts. I'm not talented at making items, except maybe food and most food items I give out cost more than other gifts I give out. Even if someone told me not to buy store gifts for Christmas for my nieces and nephews (unless it was their parents), I would still do it. After I put a lot and lot of "thought" into it, I would know they would just not enjoy a homemade gift from me :-) I think whatever you want to give and do for your family is fine --that thought comes from you. But some people may already have their shopping done, may not have supplies like you do, and/or may even find it cheaper to buy gifts on sale than to make them. I think if you need to limit gift giving.. pulling names or cutting adults out may be a better option. Little kids are just not going to get it. You don't need to spoil them with a new XBOX, but an Elmo doll or $5 game from Big Lots will probably be enough to keep them happy. Right or wrong, I just don't suspect little kids are going to be happy with a bunch of homemade items on Christmas.

Jen, I bet is has been a crazy week with extra furbabies underfoot. I hope it was a fun one. Nancy, Thanks for the photo of the rain. I've just about forgotten what rain looks like. We're hoping to get some on Sunday or Monday although the amount the 7-day QPF is forecasting for us keeps dropping, choking out hope of getting good rain with each update. Last night's/this morning's rain went both north and south of us (naturally) but we got a few drops.....8' rain....one raindrop every 8 feet. This so-called rain fell for a couple of hours (in theory, because we did have wind, thunder and lightning for the entire time) but the ground still looked dry when it was done, and the rain gauge had less than 1/100th of an inch in it...so we called it a "trace" of rain. It is probable rain fell from the clouds higher above but evaporated as it came through the drier air layer down near the ground because it looked like it was raining, but we literally were not feeling it or seeing it at the ground level. Virga. That's the story of our lives lately. That is so terrible about the ping pong ball sized hail. Hail that size can do a lot of damage. The worst hail I've been in personally myself was baseball to softball sized, and experiencing that once in a lifetime was one time too many. Larry, I'm sorry for all your troubles with the incompetent medical folks who have wasted three months of your time. I know that sort of thing is very frustrating. Jennifer, I am doing my best to hang in there, thinking that if only rain...real rain, not evaporating rain, not rain that falls 3 miles north or 1/2 mile south, but actual real rain that falls on our land and wets everything down....if only.....if only it will fall in the next few days, than maybe I can keep watering and keep the blooms going for the birds, bees, butterflies, etc. We're still hitting 100 every day (105 Thursday at our house, 103 yesterday, 101 today) and not getting the rain, so the garden just roasts and roasts in this heat and dryness. We were out at a fire again yesterday...a really bad one....a 6,000 s.f. barn with animals temporarily trapped by the flames. That big metal barn was like an oven and the firefighters suffered tremendously while fighting that fire. They are tough and never quit, but a person can only take so much heat. For the second day in a row, they already had a firefighter in the ambulance by the time we arrived on the scene with water, Gatorade and more....and we were not that slow to arrive either. The heat is just that bad. I had cooked fire food (still had some in the oven when the pagers went off) all morning long, and spent the whole afternoon at the fire, so never stepped foot in my garden yesterday. I finally went in there around 7:30 or 8:00 pm tonight just to water tomatoes in containers. That is all I could manage to do today. I couldn't go to today's fire (because, of course, there was one....but Tim went) because we have the 3 year old granddaughter this weekend. Instead of playing in the dirt, I've been playing with Play Dough and Softee Dough. I know you all are jealous. Megan, If every weather guy in the state stood on their head and swore that August would be more mild....I still wouldn't believe it. Not for us. Being this far south, we rarely get the cool-downs that hit points further north, so I don't expect much relief. We usually go anywhere from 2 to 5 degrees higher than forecast anyway, so even if they forecast cooler weather, we do not necessarily see it happen. Tomorrow is supposed to be our last 100+ degree day for a week or so, and I hope they are right. Even the low 90s would feel good compared to what we've been having. They just don't seem to do a very good job forecast our high temperatures down here. We also get a lot of compressional heating as fronts pass or are approaching or whatever, and inevitably the compressional heating pushes us to higher temperatures than what was forecast. I didn't even known what compressional heating was when we moved here, but I sure do know what it is now. Y'all know how much trouble I have with venomous snakes slithering out of the woods and into the garden to eat frogs and toads and whatever.....well, yesterday, at the fire, towards the end when the firefighters were doing overhaul, they brought out a charred crispy snake, burned and blackened so badly that you couldn't tell what sort of snake it had been, but it had the pointed head......so, I felt right at home with...the snake of the day. See there, I don't even have to step foot into the garden to see snakes. We ate lunch early today at Caddo Street BBQ in Ardmore, which is a really new place. I think it opened for business on July 4th. It was amazing---the food all tasted home-made, and I do mean home-made, not like the restaurant version of home-made but like true grandma-cooked-it-in-the-kitchen home-made. They're only open from 10:30 a.m. until approximately 2:30 p.m. (closing earlier if the meat sells out early, but staying open later if they still have meat available) and we were there early to guarantee we would get fed before the place turned into a standing-room-only situation. So, if you're in line ordering your food at 10:30 a.m., I guess it is brunch more than breakfast or lunch. I would gladly eat our first meal of the day there each Saturday for the rest of our lives. It all was so good, and Saturday seems to be the one day that Tim, Chris, Jana and I all can get together. We met the owner who seems like a fine person (and he sure knows how to smoke meat) and Chris won a free t-shirt for being the first customer in line this morning (which surprised and thrilled him---he will wear that shirt with pride). So, my weekend hasn't been about gardening at all, really, and I don't care. I need a break. Whether I want a break or not is a moot point---the daily fires (which I knew were coming at some point due to the drought) will ensure I pretty much stay out of the garden for a while, I guess. I do hope I can get back into some sort of gardening schedule on Monday and at least manage to harvest daily. I think that all that is really waiting to be harvested now is a few watermelons and some okra. Thankfully, I'm growing Stewart's Zeebest---and you can let it can really long and it doesn't get woody right away like some other okra varieties do. I'll try to start the weekly thread on time in the morning because the three year old usually sleeps in late and that should give me some computer time. I hope you all get whatever wonderful weather is in your forecast....rain, cooler temperatures....all of the above. Dawn