I agree- I did the walk through with electrician and GC. I told them I wanted the lighting over the vanities. Of course never did I think that I would then have to indicate that the lights I would probably choose would then have a 10 inch drop. They are not uncommon- your typical bar with 2 or 3 shades extending down. The only way this set up works is bar with the bulbs/shades extending straight out. You are exactly right though..... most subs want in and out. Unfortunately our electrician has some other things to repair also- we have several lights not working/dead switches and some we can't turn off (!). Fortunately our GC is a perfectionist/stickler and a great advocater for the home owner. He's on vacation until Friday. And as much as I would like to take my fair share of the blame I keep coming back to the issue of professionalism. If the electrician brought me a dog to spay he shouldn't have to specify what type or suture I should use, as the expert, I know what is the best choice. He has wired a lot more homes than I have. He should know what a standard distance from the floor these boxes should be. We didn't pick anything different .... be interested to see what he says. In the meantime I have come up with several ideas.... one would be to go ahead and do recessed medicine cabinets. The hole would be incorporated in the new larger hole. Just have to do the boxes above. The other option is good sized mirrors. Then we just cover the lower hole with the mirror. Still have to add the new holes but don't have to go crazy patching the old ones. It will all work out... off to measure away....

I love you guys!! Thank you so much for the sage advice and the virtual shoulders to lean on. Today I called my son and told him I was coming over to help him deep clean his house. I guess I left my cell phone at home, cuz DH had to text DS to get in touch with me. How liberating that was!! I worked really hard at DS's house, but he worked along side me and was wonderful company, so even tho I'm sore and tired, it was a good day. DS was VERY appreciative of me being there to help him and I liked doing it for him. I'm going to try to talk to DH tonight. He has a tendency to avoid conflict, and while I don't want conflict, I DO need him to hear me. DH has been self employed for years, just recently his business (more like a hobby income the last year or so) has just about come to a standstill. The things he makes are not a necessity item, so he's not bringing in the $$ like before. We can basically only count on my income...which is plenty for us to live comfortably on, but not where we can still live like we do and support another person. DH's income was for the fun stuff and extras for the most part. Rose...your DH sounds so much like mine. When my SS lived with us, it was horrible, too. He was much like yours and when he finally left our house for good, it was like a weight off my shoulders. But he almost tore us apart. My DH has always had a tendency to put his family ahead of me. For the most part, I dealt with it, but they've intruded into our life for the past couple years to the point where I can't take it any more. We've got an empty nest, and I want to enjoy it. We were both parents when we met, so we never had time alone together until the kids were grown. We were starting to have fun together when MIL became a pretty much every day fixture in our lives. She started backing off after I complained to DH, and it was ok, but now BIL is here. I'm just not sure of his situation. MIL said that his wife told her she does not want to reconcile. She wants to be friends with him, she loves him but is not in love...blahblah. He's holding on to the idea that they're going to reconcile. He goes over to her place at least once a week and stays there, but apparently stays on the sofa, and the other day he said he had to sleep on the floor because grandkids or something were there. Yesterday he told me he has an interview at a gym, I asked him about it and it's a fly-by-night outfit (he's a certified personal trainer) and he's been talking alot about how unhappy he is at his job (he works in retail and has a decent job w/bennies). This is his history, he's never worked at a job longer than 2 years, and he's just about past that time now, so he's ready to move on. DH said BIL is broke all the time, likely because he's giving his wife the $$, and that is again typical of him. So I'm not sure how the money thing will work. But frankly, it's not my problem!! The holiday thing...when my Dad was alive, he and my DH did not get along. My DH made every excuse in the book not to spend holidays at my parents, so to avoid the fight with him, and the tension if they were all together, I'd take the kids to my folks and he'd stay with his kid. It made me angry, but I chose the lesser of 2 evils. Later, we noticed a trend, DH would get pouty and start picking fights shortly before holidays. I finally figured it out, that he didn't want to spend time with my family and holidays always included them. His family was not nearby and when they were, they wouldn't come...they didn't want to celebrate. So once I figured out his M.O., I realized it wasn't ME, it was him...and I wouldn't let him get his way. He would pitch a fit and try to get out of events, but I'd make him participate. And what do you know, he always enjoyed himself! But I also learned that he;d bug out early, so I got used to it. He's very shy and not comfortable around people he's not really used to. I'm the opposite, I am gregarious and love to socialize. Well, this year, our DD who was married last year said she would like to host Thanksgiving at her house and have her in-laws and her family together. I am thrilled and am excited to do this with her, but as soon as DH found out (he read the email from DD) he said he was spending T'giving with his Mom. He is extremely uncomfortable about DD's in-laws, he only met them the first time at the rehearsal dinner, and barely spoke with them during the wedding weekend. So he's going to try everything he can to try to get out of going. I'm not going to say a word to him about it...I thought about trying to cajole him, but I'm going to let it be up to my kids to make him understand how disappointed they'll be if he doesn't spend time with them because he's shy and being a baby. But now, with BIL here, or at least in the proximity, he'll find every excuse, and likely his mother will want her boys over to her house. Anyway, it's just drama that I do not want to contend with, and honestly, I thought it was all over with...that DH had moved on, because every year I host a big Christmas party with lots of people and he enjoys it. It's almost like he's taken 3 giant steps back now that his brother is here every day. So the more I think about it, the more I think I need to get DH alone...sit him down and lay it out. I've already made up my mind that I WILL leave him if his mother ever has to come live with us!

Thank you for the condolences. I am having a hard time with grief moreso than when I lost both my parents. I know it has been only a few days but I am really going to miss Lizzie's late night calls from work. I was with her when she died at 3:55 am. I had sat in the recliner just after joking with her about the show we had watched 3 times that day and said I would change the channel at 4 am. I sat down just before 3:50 am and must have nodded right off. I woke at 3:55 and I knew she was gone, the noise of her not breathing was what woke me up. Either that or she tapped me on the shoulder as she was leaving. I am glad she wasn't alone when she died. Lizzie worked as a nurse until the end of March but kind of figured her cancer had spread because of the weight loss since Christmas and she hadn't been able to eat anything. Lizzie had stopped taking her chemo drug "femara" because of the aches and pains and being a nurse she knew the fluid buildup in her abdomen was not a good sign. She had double breast cancer while working in Saudi Arabia the same year my Mom was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer. She just turned 65 in March. Started chemo again in April, was finally admitted to the hospital to be hooked up to an intravenous bag of food which she tried to avoid having and then she got a blood infection and was too weak for chemo and finally on Wednesday she decided no more treatments or invasive procedures. She ate ice chips and took anti nausea medication and the odd pain med as needed. She had humour right up to the last day. When one of her nursing co-workers came to visit her on Thursday I told her it was Nurses Week and she said she knew that. Her friend said "Lizzie and I were going to go out" and Lizzie said "rats" LOL Patti, my oldest sister Marjorie is the one I usually talk about. She had inflammatory breast cancer over 22 years ago and then had another type of breast cancer last summer and had a mastectomy. She also has other health problems but you wouldn't know it to see her. She is 72 years old, travels back and forth to St. Louis just about every month and I keep telling her she is going to out live us all. Bahaaha, she gets on my last nerve sometimes but I sure would miss her. LOL She drives me nuts. LOL Lizzie and I shared a bedroom until I was in my 20's and she was only 10 years older than me so we were closer. Marjorie isn't like the rest of us. LOL While reading the rough draft of Lizzie's obit I kept saying something was wrong, I kept reading the names of my siblings - Marjorie, David, Donald, Raymond, Anne Louise and Paul. I read that over and over and to myself I said there aren't enough names and couldn't figure out who was missing. Then it dawned on me Lizzie's name was missing in the birth order, her name should have been after David's. That is when it really hit me, that she was gone. I have been crying off and on most of the day today. Okay, I feel better about my decision on the stove. I have always had an electric stove and the almond coloured one I do have still works but the door doesn't shut/lock properly so I can't use the self cleaning feature and I am sure heat is lost when I bake but I knew how to compensate for the temps. This stove is white so it will match my refrigerator. I was going to get the convection oven because I do a lot of baking but I couldn't rationalize spending $200 more for that feature. I would love a gas stove but I am used to cooking with electricity and I would have to run a gas line into the kitchen and I wouldn't have been able to vent out the exhaust because my stove is on an inside wall. My niece is getting my sisters expensive pots and pans and she is going to give me hers - I think they are Lagostino. I am still using some of my Mom's 70 year old Wearever pots. I was given a set of non stick frying pans for Christmas and the bottom of them are not smooth and are actually quite sharp if you run your hands across the bottom so they would definitely scratch the surface and Billy my friend the salesman said that type of aluminum used in those pans is soft and can melt if used on high heat which would really damage. I will continue to use my Le Cruset dutch oven though even though it is grooved on the bottom. Billy said heavy flat bottomed pots and pans are more suitable for this type of cooktop, and preferably stainless steel. He even said copper bottomed pots and pans were also not advisable. He also told me to get a thermometer to measure the oven because sometimes it could be off a bit with this type of stove. Some of the ceramic topped ovens he showed me were over $2000. I really like the one that came with a griddle feature but way out of my price league. LOL I still wanted to be able to buy my ereader. LOL Time will tell. My old stove goes out to the curb tomorrow. In with the new out with the old. I guess I won't be making omelets ala Julia Child anymore. I will have to get used to lifting my pan off the burner to shake the eggs to keep them loose. Anne

Beth, I have been so delighted and educated with all these posts. I love the evolution of your wonderfully charming home! You are an amazing woman! I share several of the decorating dilemmas you've mentioned. My "living room" is about 2' more narrow and 2' shorter than your area. I'm learning a lot from your post. The repurposed gun cabinet idea is absolute genius. Please share a photo when you've installed the shelves and contents. Regarding the non-glare glass for your larger artwork. The price of non-glare glass has become simply ridiculous. I have an entire hallway lined with (Gasp!) a family gallery wall. It includes photos from more than 100 years ago to this year's school pics of the great-nephew. Color, colorized, sepia toned, black and white, all mixed together and mostly in their original mismatched frames. That just about breaks all the rules, but I love my wall. Several of the older photos - Mom's 1954 graduation photo; MIL's 1952 wedding photo, etc. - had plain glass. I can't tolerate the glare either. I made a note in my iPod of all the frame sizes that needed replacement non-glare glass. Every time I'm at a thrift shop or yard sale I check out the "frames" area. You can often find large pictures that may be in horrid frames, but they will have non-glare glass! I buy the frame, take out the glass, and toss the rest. I found one very large print of ballet slippers framed with non-glare that was big enough to cut down into several pieces. It made one 8x10 and three 5x7 pieces of non-glare glass for my wall, all for $1. With their permission, I took the glass out at the shop, tossed the faded print, and re-donated the empty frame back to them.