This is lovely. Keep rambling! I love to hear about other's garden adventures. I also do not know any other gardeners locally, although I do get to talk to my sister on the phone about our respective gardens. Your path is really beautiful and co-ordinates well with the fencing. Plus, all the plants look so healthy. The neighbors maple is a nice addition too. The only thing I can think of is trying for a kid's garden in the center plot. A bean teepee and some towering sunflowers or maybe a 3 sisters corn/bean/squash mound just to model interesting plant interactions. Although it looks as though you may have already filled it up with some goodies since there are plants in the pic.

Thanks everyone! The color in the Living Room is Majestic Pine by MAB paints. You don't hear much about MAB on the forum- I guess that they are a family paint business mostly on the East coast. Illinois is far as they go west. But I love their paints. Both of these really dark colors really went on in just 1 coat. They are the best! The Dining Room doesn't really have a name. I started with trying to match the Pueblo from Ellen Kennon, but it was too orange, so I asked the paint guys to make it more red. It turned out somewhere close to Ellen Kennon's Grand Teton Clay, but a little darker. It really is a neat color-sometimes it looks red, sometimes plum, and sometimes chocolately.

Maanda - that looks beautiful. You know I have read that multiple times where ppl who are using Caraway use it in various houses. Your room is beautiful. Yes the color goes really well with your sofa but also your dining set looks pretty against the green. It really is an amazing green a perfect mixture of a little bit of everything, not too yellow, not too grey..etc etc...nicely balanced color. I usually stick with BM colors for my entire house and I just could not get a BM green that was what I was looking for so I am glad I ventured into the Behr colors and found this one.

birdly... makes total sense that you had to redo stuff if it were that one employee - you should have heard the subcontractors complain about that employees work :) The nice thing is Mark had them redo stuff without argument - a friends contractor fought him and tried to charge him on every little thing that he asked to be redone (and we are talking some obvious things) If you want I can let him know that my glowing review of his work was slightly tainted by a deck that took too long - he won't like that! Its sad that he was late for yours becuase both the person at international kitchens and the person I got the sink from commented on how hes on time. For me he was about 1 month late but given the circumstances that was not bad. Its surprising about the communication - he was great for me. It does sound like he was putting all his effort into my project - did you let him know that you were doing a kitchen and becuase he didn't handle the small project well he misses out on the bigger one? (FYI the contractor that was awful for my friend was Chermak construction - it was a 100k+ project and they tried to charge him when the electrician put in a 3 bank switch that only needed 2 switches so the electrician left a switch that did nothing - they told my friend that a "do nothing" switch was an "acceptable solution" - that was the worst example but there were tons of things like that). I am 95% sure Mark got the doors through PCS Millwork. They were WAY cheaper (talking less than 1/2) the cost of the equivalent doors through the lumber yard he normally uses. gwent, nightowl was asking about the dining lights - if you search (ctrl+f) the thread for "nightowl" and read those posts you should get all the details on the lights. For the pulls, believe it or not we got them at Loews. I went to all the fancy shops for a couple weeks stressing about hardware and finally stumbled on them at Loews of all places.