Spectre, Well... gee... you're okay too. I feel kind of honored....how does one curtsey in text? Despite the love for my own rather quirky cottage garden, I have to agree with your lament about cottage gardens being over commercialized with little or no regard to clime, architecture, etc. I'm guessing part of that may be wanting to go back to a simpler time and associating cottage gardens with grandma's garden, or maybe they just photograph well for all the glossy magazines. Who knows? Variety may be 'the spice of life' but the American palate can be awfully bland when it comes to its gardens. I like everything really 'spicy' so I have a small xeriscape/desert garden as well as the tropical and cottage gardens. I would have more if I only had the room - that must be every gardener's lament. I had nothing but tropicals on the Big Island years before I ever even dreamed of my Hollywood garden, so have a great love for and much more experience with tropicals than I do the 'typical' cottage fare. As far as your disapointment in Honolulu's Barnes and Noble - you are not alone. We had to go to specialty stores that promoted Hawaiiana to get the books on tropicals that we wanted. Did you get the chance to go to the Lyon Arboretum? It's not well known to visitors but if you want to see tropicals in all their natural splendor, that's the place to go. It covers over a hundred acres and is managed by UH Manoa. The variety of plant material and the beauty of this garden would make your hair stand on end. We spent an entire day and it was almost dark by the time we left. They literally had to chase us out. We were tempted to go back for more but had too many prior engagements to indulge the urge. Their bookstore is good despite its small size and has a much better selection on tropicals than B & N. Lyon's is the only botanical garden I've been to where they hand out free mosquito repellant (you'll need it!) and lend umbrellas - it's in a rain forest and absolutely glorious. Barbara

Seaglass7, Thanks so much for answering all my questions so quickly - I really appreaciate it! We just decided on a company for the floors and are planning to use the Bona products, so I'm very happy to hear you guys had good results and were pleased with it. The only difference is that we're thinking of using the Bona Traffic, but the company said that in their experience, the Bona Mega and Bona Traffic seemed about the same (also same price with them). They actually do 4 coats of the poly, so hopefully that should be more than enough! Our only issue right now is whether we're going to have them stain the floors prior to completely finishing construction. I'm practically certain that no matter how careful we are, the floors will be damaged if we don't wait until the very end - we've seen so far how careless most contractors are about the condition of the house! So I think we're going to have the company install all the new floors, then wait until cabinets, appliances, etc are in to sand, stain and refinish the rest of the hardwoods thoughout the house at the same time. I may very quickly regret the decision to go with dark floors :) Right now we have a medium finish on white oak hardwood and I've always wanted dark floors. I'm sure they will be harder to maintain and keep clean, not to mention we have a dog, but I'm going to try it anyway. I've planned everything around having dark floors at this point, so feel as if I can't back out now! Anyway, thanks again so much - your answers to my questions are very helpful!

We've been splitting our time 50/50 between Los Angeles and our house in Cathedral City (Palm Springs are), and we have nice, large outdoor spaces at both houses. I would like to have people over, but I don't mind staying in our houses for this period. I miss going to fabric stores. We have so much to do at both houses - much of it maintenance - that we do not run out of things to do. I think I prefer the house in CC because it has a pool, but it is a bit expensive to heat the pool in the dead of winter. It's no more expensive than cooling that house in the summer, however. We have bikes at both houses and go for bike rides whenever we want, although I will not ride my bike in CC in the summer - I just spend more time in the pool. My original plan was to rent the house in CC for additional income, and so our budget is stretched pretty thin now. Cathedral City put a moratorium on short term vacation rentals one week after we closed on that house, and so we haven't been able to rent it anyway. We're very glad to have it as a safe get-away, since not only are we prevented from air travel - we cannot afford it at this time. There are lots of places for us to go for hikes or mountain biking in southern California, and so there's always that. I stopped going to the beach on a regular basis when we moved from Venice to Westchester in 2009, and I do miss that a bit, but it's still there. However, I will not be going back to the Venice boardwalk until the pandemic is over. To answer the question: No, I do not find that the more I stay at home the more I want to. I definitely want to get out, but I'm not climbing the walls and am reasonably content.

Hi Everyone, I have been meaning to follow up on this thead. As I mentioned above I ended up replacing the valve on the "worst" burner. It was clear the valve removed was of lesser quality. The one I replaced actually leaked when the burner was off due to the valve not working properly. The new replacement was brass and the faulty one coming out was of another metal that looked like aluminum. Has Wolf ever taken responsibility for what I see as a cost cutting move that bit them in the butt? My Oven was purchaed in 2017. I just gave up and have been living with the burner knobs that move themselves until they warm up. Except of course for the replacement valve I did myself. I am planning on replacing the rest soon. I was just wondering if anyone knows of a clear admission by Wolf and possible recall at no cost.