I think deadlines (at least deadlines we BELIEVE in) help us to focus on completing a task. With no deadlines, it is easy to postpone work on that task and spend our time on other things that seem more urgent or more immediately interesting. As a deadline approaches however, most of us experience an adrenalin rush that not only makes us more alert and able to focus on the job at hand but gives us the energy to keep working at it even if we have to forego sleep... just to meet the deadline. The biggest problem in your situation is that the deadlines you're talking about are YOUR deadlines but apparently not your builder's! And, since you're not in control of meeting the deadlines, all they are doing is increasing your level of stress with no payoff. All you get is a sense of disappointment when your builder fails to meet the deadlines. I think you need to find a way of making your builder internalize a deadline to finish your house so that HE feels the adrenalin. I did a search on your name to find your previous posts and get a sense of why it might be taking so long for your home to be finished. The first post I found from you was in September 2010 where you mentioned that the foundation had been poured in December 2009! Wow! I thought, that is TWO FULL YEARS. At that point, I was tempted to chime in to agree wholeheartedly with Worthy and even to suggest that it was long post time for you to get a new builder. But then, looking at some more of your posts, I realized that you are building at a fairly high elevation where winter sets in early and lingers late and you probably have a rather limited number of daylight hours in the winter plus days when roads are closed due to ice and snow. ( You mentioned in your Sept 2010 post that you'd already had a couple of snowfalls in August of that year. BRRRR! But your views are delicious!) Obviously, cold snowy or cold rainy weather is going to slow things down until a house is fully dried in. And, if roads are impassible to large trucks for much of the year, that could slow your build considerably even after you're dried in and most of the remaining work is "inside". I'm a southerner so see very little snow but I can imagine that small vehicles might be able to get up mountain roads that have only had narrow lanes plowed while larger trucks can't get up. So, if the truck delivering your cabinets can't get up the mountain, then your cabinets can't be installed. Since you mentioned "Christmas eve in the new house" tho, I'm assuming you're not building at such a high elevation that they close the roads for months at a time. But, just looking at your portapotty picture tells me that there are no doubt days when roads are totally impassible. When workmen can't make the trip nothing gets done even if all materials are on site. So, it seems like weather in your area may account for SOME of the slow-going that you've experienced so I won't go so far as to say that your builder is totally taking advantage of your relationship and is "blowing you off." And, he does seem to be doing some beautiful work. But, I do think you need to somehow get HIM to internalize some deadlines with regard to finishing your home. Now that it looks like the only things left to be done on your home are all "interior work," work ought to be going forward EVERY single day until the job is completely done unless the road are closed to all traffic so that workmen can't get there. If roads regularly become impassible to large trucks in the winter, that just means that your builder should plan ahead and get all materials on-site when the weather is good and roads are clear even if that means having them delivered to a storage facility at a lower altitude and them putting everything on a truck and moving it all up the mountain the next very time that roads are clear for a large truck. It looks like your garage is "finished" and there is no reason why various materials can't be stored in the garage until he's ready to install them. Not sure what all still needs to be done on the interior of your home but even buckets of paint can be kept on-site as long as you have heat so that it doesn't freeze. Wood flooring should also be stored in the house with the HVAC on so that it can acclimatize before installation. But, pretty much everything else (tile, cabinets, trim, electrical and plumbing fixtures won't be harmed at all by spending time in an unheated garage even in below freezing weather. I will tell you that I fired my GC when our home was at the dried-in stage. I took over as GC and it took me 11 months to finish it so we could move in. The house is 3200 sq ft heated/cooled plus a 900 sq ft semi-attached garage. It is a neo-Victorian with 3 full baths and two half baths, hardwood and tile floors throughout and lots of wood trim. About 3 months of the 11 was spent fighting with my banker to get him to agree to let us take down the rest of our approved loan without having to hire another builder so that we could get started so you can't really count that. So, 7 months to go from dried-in to move-in which is no land speed record but, having never built a home, I had to figure out what needed to be done and in what order various jobs should be done, then find and vet subcontractors to do each task and learn enough about each job to make sure it was done right before I paid for it. Plus, in order to save money, DH and I did many of the smaller tasks ourselves (i.e., painting walls, staining woodwork, hanging interior doors, installing mirrors and towel racks and cabinets knobs, plus all the CLEANING).... all the while continuing to work full-time at our real jobs. Based on the photos you posted in October, I would have estimated that you were less than month out from being finished, so Christmas should certainly have been especially if you had a builder that was really trying to meet that deadlines and making your home a priority. That you're STILL not ready to move in tells me that your builder isn't making finishing your home a top priority. So, while I can understand that you don't want to ruin the good relationship you have with your builder, it might be time for you to throw just a little bit of a hissy-fit. Just enough to let your builder know that underneath that nice, laid-back exterior you've shown thus far, there lurks a monster that he would really rather NOT have to deal with. Then, calm down and talk about setting some REAL DEADLINES. But keep your voice just strained enough that he realizes you've been pushed as far as you will go and that you're holding yourself back from ripping into him. And, once he gives you a new deadline, insist that he break it down into smaller steps for you with individual deadlines to prove that the overall deadline is realistic. And, once you have those, insist that he call or email you every single evening (Mon-Fri) with a quick update on exactly what got done that day so that you can see he is staying on track. You don't have to be harsh and totally unyielding but it is time to be a little bit less laid back! Or, maybe you and your spouse could pull a variation of the good cop/bad cop routine. Stage a "major fight" between the two of you that you allow your builder to overhear wherein spouse screams hysterically at you that she (he?) is sick and tired of this long drawn-out building crap and that if this house is NOT finished so that you can move in by such-and-such a date, she is "out of here" and you're going to have hell-to-pay getting the loan to close (or whatever) so that builder can be paid IF she walks out and files for divorce. If your builder is a half-way decent guy, he is not going to want to be responsible for causing a divorce. And he is not going to like the idea that your spouse filing for a divorce could cause a delay in him getting his final payments once he does finish the house. Maybe the combination will cause him to give finishing your home a higher priority. Good luck and I definitely don't want to see that decorated porta-potty again NEXT year.

Microfiber that I've ever worked on cleans wonderfully -- all fabrics should clean that easily. Many fabrics are treated at the mill with fabric protectors. If it's offshore -- all bets are off. Some retailers will treat all upholstered goods before delivery. I hot water extract most stains. The technique on microfiber is to agitate with a soft brush. An extremely soft toothbrush would work really well and may be enough that you can just dry-vac up the debris. Every stain has certain cleaners it responds to. I have about 25 different cleaning solutions I use to spot clean. For "Unknown" stains, I just have to start with the most likely and work my way through until one of them works. Usually I can tell by looking, but sometimes I get fooled -- blood can look like chocolate can look like rust. But they take different cleaners. A couple of things that don't do well with microfiber * hot - cigarette embers, incense and candles can all melt the fabric * claws -- puncture wounds, e.g., from cat claws, don't heal up the way they would in woven fabrics. Here is a link that might be useful: sample cleaning

I know you're not trying to capture every possible buyer, but your original question was about pricing the house with or without the system. In your last post you said: "There will still be the people that don't watch movies, my home won't appeal to them. There will still be the people that look at the room and envision a different use for the space and may buy the house but not want the theater equipment." For this reason I'd go with letting the system be an option rather than a part of the sales price. Let's just say Buyer A really likes the layout of your house, the location, everything except the tv system. Buyer A has cash and is ready to go but thinks the price is too high because he'll have to have all of that stuff removed. He doesn't think you'll come down enough, so he moves on to another house which is similar to yours and he likes it too and it doesn't have the tv system so it's an easier move-in for him. He buys the other house. If you price the house without the tv system and put in the MLS notes that the equipment/furniture is negotiable, then the people who don't want it won't have to pay for it and the people who do want it will pay extra for it. Your market may be a strong enough selling area that you'll get several offers, so this may not matter. But if your area is slower in selling then I'd not want to overprice the house based on something people may/may not want included. IMHO, YMMV, etc. :-) (And my DH would love to have that room.)

I agree that the yellow is charming and suits the house (I have seen yellows that are awful, but this is not one) so I would not paint it. But, if you must, then I wanted to say that I painted my house Glidden "High Tea" ( a sort of sage green-grey) with trim in "Bleached Wheat" by Laura Ashley, nearly black green shutters, and a red door (can't remember the color name) -- all mixed in Sherwin Williams paint. Ten years on I still get compliments from neighbors on the color. "Quiet Moments" is also a lovely color that would suit your house. BTW I was able to paint both aluminum and vinyl white trim around windows successfully.