Yes I do think some of them were hardier than others. It's a shame about the orange one...'Conleb' I think, because it would have been pretty cool looking even if it had only bloomed in spring. Off the top of my head I'm not aware of many evergreen azaleas that are a warm reddish-orange like that. Way more common is that kinda plasticky scarlet of 'Hershey's Red'. Some pictures show a slight purplish cast but I definitely didn't see that - digital cameras just screw some colors up. I have one from Marshy Point that is kinda similar but the flowers are smaller. 'Conleb' looked like a greenhouse azalea, and, alas, performs like one north of zn 8!

Autumn, originally the draftsman had the door on that side. i moved it so it was closer to the bathroom. The way you have it now means a longer walk to the bathroom and a wrong turn means falling down the stairs. :) Oaktown, I'm not following. Are you agreeing with me that the door should be where I have it or are you saying it should be facing the closet? Aec, the upstairs will be Hardie siding or Hardie shake and downstairs will be stucco. The way I have it, it will be fine moving the furniture in.

Electric my entire life. New build and went with gas. I wanted to run both gas and electric for the 'someday when induction prices come down' but dh would not have it. Gas it is! I agree with fishcow. My electric low would never be low enough and things left to just stay warm would always cook to the bottom of the pot, grrr. I was concerned with my kiddos just starting to cook and changing from electric to real live fire but they have done really well (10 and 13). I do have to remind them not to preheat the burner (after my own OOPS holy cow this thing is hot NOW) - be ready to cook when you turn that baby on. With electric it took forever so it was common to turn it on with the pan on the burner while preparing the food we were going to cook. And I did have to adjust to not seeing the idiot light that the burner was on. I did leave the burner on a couple of times when we first moved in. One other thing I didn't realize sort of is burner configuration. I did research and new each hob put out different btu's but until I used it I didn't really 'get it' as to how much different that really is. The high output boil this water burner is so much hotter that if I cook on it like browning meat it's just a little out of control it's so hot. That burner however is also my simmer burner (it has two fire rings) and it works awesome for that too. I initially tried to just stick with that one burner (as I pretty much did with my electric as the jack of all trades) but it just is that much different it's better suited for certain things. I use more burners now than I did before. We have adjusted relatively unscathed.

Because of where I live and am retired, I am indoors mostly in the winter when it's dark and gloomy and later at night in the summer, I would choose the best for at night. If I was a working person and home mostly evenings (and weekends, but would be out doing errands and yard work in the daytime on weekends) I would choose the best for nighttime. If I stayed home during the day, lived where it was bright and sunny, and had many daylight hours to enjoy it, and/or was an early to bed person, I might choose the other.