le jardin - yep, the Prince is my man. He's the only rose in my garden that I really go crazy over. I just wish he was a better plant. Quiteness comes close but that one is lacking fragrance and of course light pink just can't compete with that gorgeous purpley color. Here's one of my favorite pics of the Prince from a few years ago. CemeteryRose - I'm using the Canon digital rebel xt with the starter lens. I always shoot in manual mode and usually take photos later in the evening. I may go out in the garden and take 100 photos per day, adjusting shutter speed and ISO up or down as needed. Obviously only the best photos ever get shared. I don't usually want to take the time to adjust photos in Photoshop so I really strive for capturing the correct color to start with. I think the most important thing is learning how to shoot in manual mode. Here's another picture of the Cardinal. The evening sun gave the bloom a warm tone which is hiding the true grape juice purple that he really is...

Hi Sadie! >>> At least you did SOME TSP washing!! This needs to be rinsed WELL. >>> If you only SPOT-prime, these areas will look BETTER than the rest of the wall!! >>> For your BEST look throughout, PRIME EVERYTHING...EVEN THE CEILING, AFTER you've done the proper prep: 1) Wash ALL walls/trim, rinse well, let dry. 2) Fill the dings. SAND repairs with 220 paper/sponges. 3) Sand ALL trim lightly with 220 sponges. 4) Get out the shop-vac and vacuum all dust off. 5) Take some Advil... 6) Spot-prime any wall/ceiling fixes, Then... 7) PRIME EVERYTHING. Repaired spots now have 1 THIN-coat of primer + a FULL coat. Use Top-quality primers/brushes/rollers. If you paid $30 per 5-gal for a primer, all you've done is put thin chalk & water on the walls. Good primers are $50+ per 5gal. Good Enamel-Undercoaters run towards $90 per 5gal. * If you don't prime, the sheens of your topcoats will be very uneven, due to uneven absorption into the walls. It makes a BIG difference. 8) Sorry...priming trim (even with sanding!) gives the BEST look & performance. 9) Lastly TWO topcoats of all paint, 3 hrs. apart. More for darker colors, which will need Gray/tinted primers. >>> Bottom line....DON'T be in too big a hurry to paint! Lot's of necessary prep needs to be done first. You'll be glad you did!! Faron

All of our "change orders" were via email "credit" for work not to be done, while I (as an attorney no less) believe in documenting as much as possible, my takeaway from this fiasco is that in the end the more important thing is to get the most competent contractor who is also very honest and a good supervisor and responsive and trustworthy and a good partner and then document as well as possible. On the documentation scale my contractor was a 6 or so- not seat of the pants, not all buttoned up. So I have paperwork catching him in what I consider to be semi-fraud (taking a deposit for one thing and 2 weeks later trying to turn it into something else) which was the real reason I had to let him go (the floor stain problem was one of the problems but the bigger one was poor supervision, poor communication, poor work quality by the workers not caught by the owner etc.). Enough was enough. I've since fixed the floor stain via floor specialist, gotten my own electrician to get power to outlets that didn't have it (kind of important for the dishwasher outlet to, uh, have power before dishwasher is installed, etc. etc.), gotten a plumber to move the sink pipe 3" to the left and to move the range pipe up or down to the right place and put the shutoff valve near the wall not near the range (it was reversed... reversed!), etc. So many examples of this. My new kitchen contractor is a trusted time/materials guy who's a carpenter who does all but plumbing/electric so I'm basically the GC now. I'm finishing the job (kitchen should be done in a half week, countertops and all) and will fight with the guy I left behind when I have more time after we're all moved in. I ran into a neighbor - turns out the contractor's partner destroyed a grout job in her bathroom so she has to re-do the whole thing 3 years later, he scratched up her tiles. She is the only person I met who even used these guys, so that was further confirmation that I'm not crazy and these guys either can be hacks or can hire inadequate workers and not supervise them properly which is at least PARTLY what I think happened with me. No matter how careful you are a lot of it comes down to hiring properly. I usually hire well, this was a HUGE exception.

So I did a rough aerial sketch, it is not perfectly to scale, but the main points are there so you all get a better idea. dianalo, I didnt even think about using upper cabinets to finish my peninsula to make it more shallow. That would have been perfect. My cabinets have already been built and are being delivered on tuesday. There still is plenty of room with it this large, but a little smaller would have been ideal. The breakfast area is very large. About 100 sq ft. The table in the breakfast area is the black one in the pictures and then there are four chairs to go with it. It does not use up much of the breakfast nook space. We have a larger dining table in our dining room. As you can see in the pictures, there was tile throughout the entire kitchen, except under the cabinets, and now where we expanded the walls into the garage. I colored blue where I would like to keep the tile. I colored the current brazilian hardwood brown, and I colored the carpet in the dining room green (because it is green with a peach border.. blah!!). I love the idea of keeping the tile in the breakfast nook, but where do I transition from tile to hardwood? I was thinking before the pantry, but the pantry is tile and I was not going to change to hardwood, so maybe I should do it somewhere else? Thank you all for the help. I added a lot more pictures so you get a better idea. I wanted to add this picture of what is going on with all of these crazy floors. This wall is coming down half way. Under it is subfloor. This might look crazy if we can afford to expand hardwood into the diningroom yet. Another question about expanding the hardwood. Do I continue the way the hardwood is already laid and run parallel to my kitchen windows and my dining room windows? Or do I switch and run perpendicular? Thank you!!!!