I have laminate thru out my home. I worked p/t at an interiors store so carefully thought it thru before we built. We sold alot of laminate there. Mine is Uniclick, color is Select Cherry & it is almost the exact color of the most popular shade of hardwood.....which I can't remember without enough coffee yet this morning. It is very easy to keep clean. I use the Swiffer Wet jet thing on high traffic areas & the kitchen. I sometimes miss the real hardwood but nobody but me knows it is laminate. They always are giving me compliments on my hardwood floors but they aren't hardwood.....just laminate. If I ever changed to different flooring (been here 5 yrs.) I would include carpet I think in the great room as the ceiling is 22 ft in there & we need noise reduction. I would lay my oriental rug on top. I have double sided rug pads. Laminate is nosier than hardwood probably also so you might want to consider that too. Shaw does makes a better padding now that is suppose to help with the noise factor. Check around & ask for info with a flooring company & that should help make your decision easier. Good luck! Bonnie I included the link to my album if you wanna peek at the laminate floor. Here is a link that might be useful: Bonnie's

I don't do a lot of hand quilting but I have done a wall hanging and a few minis. Obviously NOT a hand quilting expert, but I think you can use any thread you want as long as you like the way it looks. Finer thread will almost disappear into the fabric but if your batting has some loft the quilting pattern will show. Heavier thread will show up and the stitches become part of the pattern. Try it on a sample and see if you like it. If the quilt police show up at your house, tell them to go away and come back when they have a warrant! Kate

Shades, they make a special kind of cord for times when the plug is behind a piece of furniture. It is a flat "pigtail" that you plug in and it is a heavy duty extension of almost 12 inches that has a three-hole female plug for your fixture/lamp/wifi/whatever to plug into that. Hopefully that would allow you to keep the furniture against the wall. I got mine online from Amazon. I'm sure you can ask Google to give you sources or product options. Believe me, I think there are more types of wiring options than there are different kinds of light bulbs! Dimmable bulbs are taking light bulb buying to a whole new level. You read the fine print is how you know they are NOT dimmable. (The online spell checker does not think "dimmable" is a word and keeps changing it to "dimple." Crazy machine thinks I don't know what I want to say.) Because it is my observation that if they are dimmable it should be printed on the box somewhere as a selling feature. My electrician patiently explained to me several things about dimmers. You cannot DIM lights on a 3-way switch.....supposedly, or presently anyway--I'm sure tomorrow someone will remedy that oversight! You cannot dim plugs, but I'm thinking that my dimmable LED rope lights will be no problem. I will verify that, but at any rate, I can add to the plugin another plug that has a remote switch that connects to the rope lights and it dim dims the lights! Sometimes I get confused and forget a step required to accomplish wondrous things, but I seem to recall that was the way I dimmed the rope lights I installed around the sun porch up in Massachusetts. Now I've told you everything I know about dimming lights.....and dimmable ones, which may be a newly coined word for the English language. It was a quiet day in the house, at least after the road crew jack hammered the pavement in front of our driveway where the gas company had tied in our new 2 pound gas line. It is about 4 feet away from the spot where the city sewer connects to our house, and where we will be doing some sewer digging (and tearing out cement driveway) within a month, probably taking out the repairs made in the same location/house number. I guess we will have our very own speed bump before it is all over. Note also I baked stuffed bell peppers in the oven of my Bertazzoni range. I used spaghetti sauce so I guess that is appropriate as the first real meal cooked in my new kitchen. I could get used to having a real stove to cook on. It's been a LONG time without one--I threw out the old electric range in 2008 after we bought the house we'd rented for two years. Since then it's been the microwave/convection oven and a two-burner Waring hot plate. I got the Breville Smart Convection toaster oven when I knew I would get a M/W drawer. So having a range in my kitchen is an awesome thing. Can you guys see me doing the happy dance here? :-)

Well, no. Different materials are appropriate for different projects. The major difference is that a wood floor requires a certain degree of maintenance BUT can be repeatedly refinished and correctly cared for will last for 100 years or more. A laminate floor will require very little maintenance, but when it starts to wear too much, must be replaced. Sometimes, the laminate just works better in your space. Installing over floor heat requires laminate - or engineered wood, which falls somewhere in between (having a thin piece of hardwood on top, it can usually be refinished twice). None are good choices in places that are VERY wet. (bathrooms, entryways in climates with lots of snow/rain) OP, given the "saw marks" and other elements in that floor, try searching for things that have "rustic" or "barn" in the name. You may also find some similar laminates that come in longer planks, which can look better in a larger space. Look for a retailer that has sample boards made up that you can take home. Color and texture can vary massively, and you may hate in your own home what you love in a photo.