Thanks very much! In response to your points: - One reason we concluded the threshold was the problem, is that I took a Pyrex glass measuring cup of water, and carefully poured water just onto the threshold to see what would happen. The water came in through the top frame of the ground-floor entry door directly below as if being poured through a sieve. - Just some background: I have lived in this house for several years, and this has not happened before. It is a new problem. So if the sliding glass door is being overwhelmed by my conditions, wouldn't it have shown before now? I had been assuming it's just wear and tear of the threshold - you can see how the threshold looks in the pic. But I am wondering if I will need to replace the whole unit or not. P.S. I am outside of Chicago, so conditions are not the easiest. But this door is rarely used - a Juliet balcony is always kinda useless, but it came with the house.

sarah, color can change depending on what's surrounding it, what the light in your part of the country is like, etc. For example, 6 years ago when I was redoing my condo, I figured I'd use the same tan color I had used in NY for my condo in FL. I got a small can, painted it on the wall and was horrified because what had been a tan color with a hint of green in NY looked like a warm beige with a red cast in FL. Just to be sure I compared it to the color chip and it was the same color but the light in FL is so much warmer it changed the color. Also as mentioned, color doesn't work in a vacuum. It feeds off of the colors surrounding it. Here's an example. Each of the center green squares are exactly the same color. The only difference is the color surrounding the green squares. So to answer your question, no I wouldn't rely on an online color consultant.

I'm not very good at landscaping, but I just wanted to warn you not to plant Queen or Washingtonia palms. Landscapers will try to sell you queen palms, but JUST SAY NO! First off, they are messy, dropping dead limbs and seeds everywhere, which come up all over the place and secondly, they grow so tall that you have to hire someone with a boom to trim them, and then they usually do it wrong. Washingtonias don't drop their leaves, and they just hang there like a dead brown skirt. Ugly. Coconut palms are pretty, but they're not very cold hardy, which is why you don't see many north of 10b. Plus, they drop coconuts everywhere and if you have anything growing under them, it gets crushed. Unfortunately, there isn't much in FL that doesn't take maintenance and isn't going to make some kind of mess. get too big or spread into areas where you don't want it. Choose carefully, and research before you put anything in. Make sure to make note of the mature size of the plant to make sure it won't outgrow the space. You said you like the Pampas grass, so I guess you know that once it gets large, you have to cut it back every year with a chainsaw. There are large native grasses that are much easier to care for, like Fakkahatchee grass. Just be sure to cut off the seed heads before it spreads all over your yard. I will suggest a Jatropha tree or bush (two different species). They are not messy and bloom all year. Their only problem is that they can die back in a freeze, but they come right back up from the roots and grow like mad.

If you have a kitchen open to other living areas, I suggest matching the trim in your kitchen to the trim in the other living areas. If you use semi-gloss white on the kitchen trim, carry that same color throughout. (If you get high gloss cabs, you’ll probably want high gloss trim in the kitchen. I’m not sure about carrying high gloss throughout. I suggest talking to a pro about how to deal with that). Is your budget without limit? I found that most cabinet makers I considered had a standard and upgraded (whiter) white. If you don’t pick one of the cabinet makers’ white colors, you’ll have a big upcharge to get a custom white paint color. So, I suggest seeing if you will be happy with one of the cabinet makers’ whites. Then you can ask your painter to use the same paint for the rest of the trim in the house. If you can’t get the name/mix of paint from the cabinet maker, you can take a sample of your cabinet trim to the paint store and ask them to match it. (BTW, we like the SW paints too.) Your walls can be the same color or a different color. Even if you use the same color, the walls will look a little different than the trim color because you’ll probably want to use a washable satin or flat finish on the walls. That paint will reflect light differently than the semigloss. Also— paint color will look different depending on the light bulbs you use (lots of articles on the internet about this), whether you have daylight coming into the room, whether your windows are glazed, and how light is reflected off other colors in the room. (Your light bulb Kelvin temp will impact your floor color too— my electrician offered to bring a bunch of different temp bulbs for me to test before ordering bulbs for the whole house. I may want warmer temps in the bathrooms to make my skin tone look healthier and a bit cooler temp bulbs in the rest of the house so that my white cabinets don’t look like they are cream. I plan to have some light blue upholstery and warm bulbs— in the 3000 -3500 range — will distort the blue and will make the floors take on an unwanted orange or pink tone)). My color pallet is similar to yours. I ordered white cabinets and I’m finding that most of the “marbled” countertop choices in Dekton have a gray or beige tint for the background color. (Neolith may be a bit whiter but my builder’s fabricator doesn’t provide that). You don‘t notice this too much until you put the countertop sample next to the cabinet sample. Then, you’ll notice there is a big difference. I decided against using quartz because a number of articles say it can turn yellow from UV rays and we have a lot of windows. We may use a plain white Dekton or Corian. Still not sure. If you have the luxury of time, try to pin down all your selections before you order anything. Good luck.