How in the world did I miss this thread on the first go round??? home nw- your house is absolutely incredible! There have been many beautiful homes posted on gardenweb, but yours is the most amazing one I've seen. It perfectly complements and is complemented perfectly by the surroundings! I hope you are enjoying living in it!!

We kind of flip flopped with the sleeping situation. DD dated someone for 2.5 years post college but they lived in separate cities 2 hours from each other (we live 6 hours from her). He came here twice and we put them in separate bedrooms (all of our spare rooms have twins, with one room having a trundle). That was our first experience with a BF/GF staying over so I think we just weren't ready for it yet or maybe because it was DD, not DS...I'm not quite sure. Later, youngest DS moved to Chicago after college and dated somone for a year, then they moved in together. When they came to visit, it seemed kind of dumb to have them in separate rooms since they were already living together. I set up the trundle but they ended up squishing into a twin....ah young love! I like your criteria MTN of working adults.

@CharlesRossHomes & @Virgil, Unfortunately there is little to hold people in residential construction accountable. There are a plethora of stories of architects designing structures well beyond client's stated or even stretched budgets. This happens when the plans are being developed independently for competitive bidding and when a specified builder is involved. Our first attempt came out 60% over our stated budget that the architect & builder had agreed to and our builder's detailed estimate was then 17% over the stretch number that they'd both asked us if we could do only 6 weeks prior. "I absolutely guarantee you that the contingency number is enough to cover all unexpected costs so you can absolutely rely on this estimate." This was obviously excepting changes that we made. Over and over we were assured that the estimate numbers and contingency were conservative enough that we could count on our builder's estimate. We are not even to to insulation yet and are already 5x that contingency. And that doesn't include $70k in concrete work for a terrace wall that kind of suddenly appeared without notification or discussion to us (and that will require another chunk of $'s for stone). The quality of work has so far been good though we have concerns with what we've seen so far from the insulation contractor. We are trying to be patient. We still believe that the end result will have been worth it. That said, we've no more money left so any cost overruns will mean having to reduce costs elsewhere. When the builder said that they'd now need to do Tyvek + Rainscreen we had to eliminate a couple of light fixtures that my wife really wanted and replace them with less expensive and less appealing fixtures. Hopefully once we move in those lessor-than-we'd-chosen fixtures will disappear in to the background and we'll be happy. But what else is coming? What other lighting fixtures will have to be downgraded because our builder's estimate was so inaccurate? How many bits of furniture will we have to notify our designer that we can no longer afford because of costs our builder didn't anticipate? How much of the landscaping plan will have to be reduced? Will we even be able to use our chosen landscaper or will we have to go with a lessor landscaper and lessor plan? ---------- The residential construction industry in the U.S. is getting an increasingly bad reputation. It's an industry that requires a great bit of trust and that trust seems to increasingly be violated.

DH and I bought our house about 18 months ago. At the time, everyone told us we were crazy to buy such a large home for essentially just the two of us. But now (and at Thanksgiving,) I am especially glad we did. DH has his office in the great room, which was a former home business office for the previous owners. It is on one end of the house, has pocket doors to close it off, and is almost soundproof. Perfect for his many conference calls each day. Our basement is finished, but mostly empty. It is the perfect place to tinker with the dollhouse. I also have a desk down there where I take my now online botany class. Here is an interesting note about that. Before everything closed, I was taking the class in person, at Longwood. There was a lot of normal classroom chatter between the professor and the students, in a structured, but loose way, if that makes sense. It was fun, filled with comraderie, and the material, while dense, was doable. Now that we're online (Zoom), the class feels more difficult--there is no banter, no visualization of hands collectively raised, suggesting others might be struggling with a point as well. Now I simply take notes and feel overwhelmed. Yes, our professor does ask if we have questions, but it's different, and more distracting to ask. Not sure this is making sense, but I imagine our college-age kids might be going through something similar. My ds is home from college and learning online. He prefers to work from the desk in his room. I do notice more stress in him after classes and he is a good student.