I'll agree Realpalmtrees.com is a great seller and has unmatched selection. They are quite spendy though. If you can afford it, they are top-notch. My favorite indoor palm is Xmas Palm. I do have one from realpalmtrees.com and a few others. I highly recommend the Xmas palm for indoor use, they look great (like a smaller royal palm) and don't get too tall indoors (6-8 feet is my experience). Search Christmas Palm on Ebay right now. There is a seller with nice double trunk specimens for an extremely reasonable price, and the shipping is even reasonable. Tempting, I almost ordered more myself...

John - are you passing on the $200 labor savings to the customer? I doubt it as you'd still be working for wages and it'd be unusual for someone with that mentality to garner the knowledge you have. Most setters are going to charge a set "fee" for a shower pan or per sq. foot of tile. If they do it faster they pocket more, if slower they make less. Just the business. Not a lot of TQM studies in the trades. So for the consumer, it's just not a selling point. Cheaper material cost is something they get behind frequently. Another problem I have , more of a reservation with these products is they are not "time tested" like 20 years real world tested like a mud job over tar paper. Don't get me wrong , I like these things, spec and use them all ( except the Laticrete) , just have that little feeling in the back of the mind like: Am I going to be the guy that touted polybutylene or GP siding. Those were "the latest and greatest" until they weren't 20 years later. Another thing consumers need to be aware of with the liquid applied membranes is that strict thickness guidelines need to be followed for them to work and I rarely see enough of the stuff applied in the field by mechanics. Another issue of concern is with hybrid methods. I'm sure you guys are all upstanding and care about you rep, but you are providing the warranty in these systems as the manuf. will only step up if you use the complete system. That's fine as long as the end user is aware of this.

Autodesk has a free tool called 'Homestyler' which does most of this. You can save the rooms and even e-mail links to other people. I started using it after someone on this forum recommended it to me :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Autodesk Homestyler

1) are you a quilter? do you know anything about quilting? I'm a new quilter; just finished my first quilt top last month. It's my newest obsession and I love it. Programming is my other obsession, so it would be fun to meld the two :) 2) what's in this for you? are you going to make a commission on any sale? will you be charging members to list their items for sale? I'd probably have to charge a nominal fee to cover my web-hosting costs. Part of why I'm asking questions is that I'd want to know what people thought was fair -- an upfront fee? A small percentage of the final sale price? I wouldn't do both, just one or the other, so my question would be, what would you, as a seller, consider the most fair way to do it, and how much would you think is acceptable? 3) will there be a set time limit of how long an item can be listed? will there be a charge for relisting an item? Nope for the first one. And the second one is moot, since listings wouldn't expire, so no need to relist. My only concern about letting listings not expire is that people may sell things through other venues, and then forget to remove it from my site -- so I'd probably have something in place where if the item has not sold after say, 3 months? 6 months? then the seller has to take some sort of action to make it stay active (like, click a button to renew the listing for another 3 months). If they don't, it becomes "archived" (no longer searchable), but the seller can come back and unarchive it at any time. 4) how many images per item will be allowed? I imagine I'd make it unlimited. 5) will you offer different methods of payment? I'd probably have to leave payment up to the seller; I would have ways for them to indicate which payment methods they'll accept, but I don't want to personally be dealing with payment between buyer/seller. The site's intended to be more like a...quilting classifieds that brings together sellers and buyers, rather than a "click here and buy it now" kind of thing. Doing the latter would require more legal involvement than I'm interested in dealing with -- I'm one person, not a company. 6) will there be separate areas for new quilts and antique quilts? Yes. 7) how would you handle listings for cheap, foreign-made quilts? Having never bought or sold a quilt myself, I wasn't aware of this being a problem. Do you have any suggestions yourself on how to handle this? My preference would be to keep such listings out altogether -- mass-produced quilts isn't really what the site is intended for. I could probably limit the IP addresses of people selling to only those within the US & Canada, although I'm sure the foreign sellers would find ways around that... Excellent questions, Teresa. If you have anymore or have comments on what I've said above, please throw them at me.