1.)Claire sez: A room of their own! Ha! When my houseplants finish their inward trek, they'll be lucky if they get a seat near a window - winter is sort of like rush hour on the subway in my house. Plants standing shoulder to shoulder leaning towards the light. It's a beautiful room - a very peaceful place to sit in. Claire Well, Claire, you have a few more years of gardening up north to account for the Grand Central situation. My depth in northern (read: winterizing) gardening is less than two winters. But I am quite fond of enjoying my plants all year. The first time I lost my lovely May Night salvias due to the dry heat. And when it got really cold, we went south and nobody was here to look after them. This year, we are fortunate to have friends staying who usually live aboard their sailboat. That is something you cannot do up here during the winter, unless you want to be a popsicle. Down south I don't have to winterize MUCH, but we are planning to take an old cement block garage/workshop which lost its entire roof several hurricanes ago, put a polycarbonate roof on it, install an Endless Pool in one end and house my tropical-like plants in the other, along with a tiny dining table for all-weather enjoyment. HE thinks there will be a workshop in this space, but that will NOT happen. He already has a storage shed for his ugly piles of stuff. With the economic crunch, this plan will not happen immediately, needless to say. But I am already using the space in a crude fashion. I'm thinking of buying a roll-around basketball goal, use it as a center pole and putting a large nylon parachute over that, then tying sandbags around the parachute perimeter and throwing them across the top of the walls. This will not be perfect, but perhaps it will keep all my ferns and tender plants alive through the winter months down south. I won' have to bank bales of hay around them like hubby did several seasons back to keep 2 hens and a rooster alive up here. 2) cynthial_2006 sez: I recently brought in my plants and now have an infestation of white flys (I had bought "Good Soil" from a local nursery to pot my elephant ear in and the soil was contaiminated with them). I have put up the yellow sticky traps and have been spraying my plants with neem oil. Any sugestions that might help? Cynthia, Mr. Jones at Jones Farm here in Chelmsford told me to take all my plants which had spent the summer outdoors and spray (actually he said SOAK) them with this oil and let it dry before I brought the plants indoors. I did that pretty much as he described, and so far have found only one cutworm on my beloved geranium babies. I have no idea how to deal with white flies. I used traps in the kitchen to deal with the flour moths--disgusting the way they can grow inside sealed packages of grain products. One thing I use, which is safe around my parrots, and dogs, is a product called CAMICIDE. It is a pyrethrin insecticide. When you have parrots, you don't want ants, seed moths, roaches, etc. And you don't want residual poisoning. I'm not sure if Camicide is safe on plants or soil, I know it is not poisonous to animals after it dries. However, I don't put it where they can eat it. For a real gardening product to do the job, I'd ask this question as a topic all on its own. It will be a quick way to get your perfect answer.

Thank you laxsupermom for following up on patma's comments here and elsewhere. I'm certain this has been mentioned for years but it would be most useful for those searching the threads if people raving or complaining about their flooring would include the brand, name and model of the flooring they are talking about. There are SOOO MANY brands around and even those can have manufacturing changes over the years. Not all cork will fail with UV exposure just like not all cork will fail when exposed to water. There are many companies which promote their protective coatings with UV inhibitors. Unless someone spells it out here, one needs to do their homework to figure out which brand will work best in their particular setting. Most major manufacturer's put out good / better / best product offerings to meet market price points and distribution goals. Just saying cork or 'product X' is good/bad really doesn't help anyone. There is a reason cork has been used as flooring for centuries. The point of these forums seems to be figuring out which ones work best in different situations. laxsupermom is the only person responding to this thread (including me) who comes close to giving a useful answer. Basically, glue downs for wet areas - no floating floors. UV protective coating will help but not eliminate the sun damage problem. If it was me, I'd look into getting the floor you want but also investigate UV window films to protect the interior. There have been amazing advances in recent years - the weird tints are gone and you can get very good protection from light colored ceramic films that don't even look like they are on the window.

honestly think that you are overthinking this whole project. You will achieve 90% of what you want with 10% of the effort that people on this thread are suggesting. 1) get yourself some new Marvin Integrity windows. Aluminum clad white on the outside, real divided lite. Go for 9 over 1 for a really great glassic look. 6 over 1 can look fakey. 2) have your contractor extend the soffits as was suggested. Have him put 5" fascia boards up on the ends to add more beef. 3) colonial front door. 4) 4.5" trim around all windows and doors 5) center that front-facing garage window when you do it over with a Marvin. 6) have your carpenter dress up the existing columns with some crown tops and bottoms to make them appear more stately. On your budget, your house will never look 100% perfect like a movie house. But it will look 90% of what you want, with what I just suggested. This project can be done by a carpenter and a trip to Home Depot or Lowes for under $10,000. Architect? Contractor? You're pampering yourself with those expenditures. Have a little guts and do what I said.

Grover! Thanks again so much for your imagines! They help a bunch!!! Also, thank you for your patience posting them... Houzz sure doesn’t make it easy! Now I don’t think i care for the almond. In the sample book they gave us.... none seem to be what I’m looking for I guess. I could stick with white but this post’s replies have me nervous that’s the wrong choice. I do agree a door that blends with the house looks nice/bigger (per the taupe imagine above). Our garage doors are quite old and the right one has a dent in 2 places where it has been hit before. I did ask the installer if we could just change out the bottom dented one & top rows as we would like windows along the top. He said we couldn’t. Also, not important in this post but we need new openers...I swear these ones are from 1973!!! Haha.