soil is mother earth ... media is what is used in pots ... media is create to manage water .. in a pot .. soil ... dirt ... is near impossible .. in my experience.. to MANAGE... in pots ... eventually it compresses.. and the water sheds to the edges.. and down the side.. and the middle goes bone dry .... and your goal.. is to have exactly all the same media.. in every pot.. so as to know.. that when one pot is dry.. they PROBABLY are all dry ... you dont mention if you made a big batch of your mix... you water.. when your pot needs water ... not on some schedule ... watering every 4 days.. may or may not be proper ... experiment.. to find out.. i would to not water.. until the plant slightly wilts.. and then you will have some idea.. how often to water ... and you can also FEEL the weight difference in the pot ... but .... your problem might be.. with the limited 'flow thru' of dirt in a pot... you may never be able to rewet the pot completely ... and unfortunately ... you will never really know what is going on in the pot ... until you break one open ... the best investment ... really the only investment [other than the seed itself] .... is a high quality media ... i know nothing about worm castings... but as far as i am concerned [probably heresy to the wormers.. lol] .. its just another form of dirt ... you have no structure in your media... things that create large gaps.. so water can run thru the whole ... i am sure you can track down one of the thousands of posts on als gritty mix .... and if you read thru a few.. you should be able to grasp some of the concepts i mention .... especially if you find Als primer on such .... see link good luck ken Here is a link that might be useful: link

I thought I would share & show what I decided to do with upstairs landing...my husband said he didn’t want table in front of return vent so I went with smaller table I’m pleased with how it turned out love my new Home Sweet Home pic, put my Mother’s old chair with her throw ( l lost my Mother in Dec. 2016 to cancer the chair is very special to me) loving the new look on my landing. One picture is looking upstairs from my front door. Thank you all for your wonderful ideas & helping me to decide what I wanted to do.

I just wanted to update with a few pictures of my dining room. I did go with Woodlawn Blue, and I love it! In low light situations (most of the day), it is a quiet gray blue that still livens up the room: In evening and early morning it goes much greener: It is NEVER baby blue, thank goodness. The chair rail and white portion of the wall are Chantilly Lace, which I chose because it kept its crisp whiteness even in the shadowiest times of day. (And... I liked the name.) BUT it doesn't match the trim at all. I will repaint it to match but couldn't quite face the task of doing it once I was done with this project! (You can see here how the original trim color looks dingy next to the Chantilly Lace.) I can see now a dark blue gray would have been a big mistake! Also, when I looked at pictures online of Woodlawn Blue I really disliked it, but it seems completely different in my space. Thanks again for all your help!

Thank you JudyG and Kirsten! So that's two votes for the white with nickel. I'm starting to feel a little better for sure. Yes, we're definitely wanting a large rug under the table. Any suggestions for color? Darks, neutrals, bold? We'll probably do a china cabinet as well, but not a piece that matches too closely with the table.