As far as our building permit goes it is "unfinished storage" and it is directly off the master bathroom on the second floor - not in the attic. so underneath it will be insulated (the roof of the garage is insulated)... but the sides will be just plywood. THere will be a steel door separating this "bonus" room from the master bathroom. Basically our plan calls for it to be a sitting room or walk in closet but to cut costs we are finishing it ourselves instead of putting it in our bid. The contractor is going to have the electrician run conduit up there for us and he's also going to allow us to purchase drywall and leave it up there on the floor. We'll do the insulation, drywall, finish work and flooring ourselves - but an electrician will do the outlets, heat and lights. Does that make sense?

This home will be used by 2 people fulltime both in their 60âÂÂs. The house is 1200 sq. ft. on the interior. The living room/ kitchen side are 27 ft. deep and 21 ft. wide. The Bed room is 17 ft. wide and the same 27 ft. deep including the bathroom. The bonus room is 480 sq. ft. interior. The games are more like board games, like cards and backgammon. Not large games like ping pong or airhocky. We donâÂÂt entertain very often and when we do it is mostly outside barb-que. We have a lot of acreage so there will still be room for that. The water heater is located on the wall that the master-bath rm. is on and the washer /dryer are located next to the bath room in the bonus room. I put the bath room there in case we ever subdivide and add two bedrooms in the back next to that bath room. Also in that bathroom I put the sink outside the shower/ wc area because I will use it as a laundry sink also. Yes there will there be window seats in the bump outs big enough for a twin size bed. Yes it is a gas fireplace in the living room and the TV is above it. There will also be a TV in the bonus room as well. I will try your idea of flipping the bonus room and see how it works out. Thanks for your help and more thought are welcome.

Ppbenn, the wallpaper is "peonies" from tempaper. It is not standard wallpaper. Its a self-adhesive wallpaper, aka a giant sticker. I don't know how it would take water color bc of the finish. But, Tempaper sells a product that is plain that you can decorate. So maybe? Tempaper has a website with faqs, and they would likely answer questions too. It's a sm company/neat story. Good luck! I am sure my kids will paint ours soon. I've already wiped up pen and pencil. Marker and paint are likely not far behind. Fwiw: hanging this is just slightly different than regular paper. The back is very sticky. That is great if your flat walls meet crisp edges of the even/level ceiling. With my old wavy plaster walls and old wavy plaster ceiling, covered in tons of paint, a standard wallpaper likely would have been easier to hang because it would have been more forgiving to stretch, move and slide. But, this paper was worth the effort. And removal will be so much easier, though I have no plans to do it anytime soon. Fori! I remember you asked questions about the smeg. I hoped you would pull the trigger before me! I will try to remember to post a more thorough review after we use the speed oven more. I want to try to bake, heat a frozen pizza, and grill fish or meat. Then I'll post again. In the meantime, as I mentioned above, we have abused the oven feature on the smeg everyday for more than a month: reheat french toast, warm left overs, cook chicken fingers, spring rolls, eggplant parm, roast veggies and chicken, make nacho chips and cheese. It just gets hot so much faster than my 30" Berta gas range, which isn't particularly slow to get hot. And I think/hope it has to be more efficient to use the small electric oven than the larger gas oven. (?) And the mw is in use everyday, reheating my coffee, cooking frozen broccoli etc. The mw performs well, as I would expect. We have not baked, used the grill function, or done any speed/combo cooking. But to be honest, the combo features were secondary. I am not very good at following directions and I usually never use the pre-set options on anything! If and when I bake, it's usually in batches; I imagine I would usually use the range to bake and the smeg to cook dinner. I will use the grill function; hope it works well. We decided to take the leap, or be the guinea pigs, bc we only had so many spots to put a mw. The best spot was prime real estate, below the counter. To give up cabinet drawers, I wanted an appliance that would do more than mw. I cook, a lot, everyday and on holidays. A second oven was really attractive. Obviously I didn't have space for a wall oven. I don't even have space for a countertop convection or toaster oven. So we looked at combos. Since I only have 24" my choices were limited. The reviews on the Miele were really good. But it didn't sound like $$$$ better for how I would use the appliance. And I didn't have that extra $$$$ to just get the Miele bc it's the Miele. Really, my biggest concern: yes, my kids play with the knobs. But i can't blame them. It is cute.

Timely discussion for me... I am in a major dispute with Raymour & Flanigan - big furniture and mattress chain in the northeast. I am 60, the hips are getting sore, my old mattress was old so I decided to buy new. Went to all the "mattress" chains, hoping not to spend more than $600ish. Went to Raymour and I walked out with a $1300 mattress. Almost immediately the mattress started to shift each night so that when I woke in the AM I had to be carefull not to fall of the edge on my bum (which I had done a few times). I thought maybe it was the risers, so I took those out. Thought maybe the sheets were too large. I Bought about 5 different styles of sheets - no change. So they send a service guy and he tells me I need to buy something to put between the boxspring and mattress. Told him I needed to talk with someone higher up, quickly. Regional office calls, they said all twins will shift. Said maybe I was to "big" for a twin, even after I explained I had been sleeping on a twin for over 20 years. If fact I gave my old mattress to my adult boy and he has been sleeping on it just fine. My main argument of course, was that if "all twins will shift" as she stated, I should have been told this at point of sale. So now I am talking to people on the corporate level. Waiting to see what they say. Will keep you informed. What I will say is that you really should listen to your friends as to what they do or don't like about their beds. Do research online, and when you do go to choose don't just lay on the bed for 5 min and say "okay, this is great" - and look at this like buying a car. Awful but necessary. BTW they were also trying to sell me on the gel bed. Too new on the market for me.