Nice! I grow many things, and have a few plants that have been with me for 13 years, or basically since I moved out on my own at 18. Anyways, even with all that, there is NOTHING more exciting or rewarding than growing vegetables or fruit, where you get something to eat from your plant. My 6 year old daughter brought home some zinnia seeds from school this spring, which we planted, and they are flowing now. She's pretty siked about it, even a few months later. I wish it worked that way for the goldfish that her & her sister HAD to have....... Joe

Absolutely inspiring!!!! I can't believe how much larger it looks with all the plantings, paths and "bones". It makes me feel like "I can do it" when I get inspired to take on a job that just seems too big. I just love everything about it. You should pat yourselves on the back for a job well done. Carol

Melsouth, the floor wasn't difficult, it was just tedious, and the smell was pretty bad. If you notice in the pic, DH had a fan ventilating to the outside. It took a few days to cure. It chipped in a few spots when heavy objects were dropped, but DH says he can patch it up easily. We opted not to tile or put any sort of flooring down for two reasons. One was to save money as we have several other huge projects (new main bath) we would rather spend money on. Second is we live in a flood prone town. We have been here 7 years and did not flood with storms Irene or Sandy, however we didn't want to take a chance. Once our drain the the sewer backed up and we were able to easily clean up. The floor is pitched towards the furnace area where are sump pump is. We opted for a black ceiling after I started taking note of how many people simply paint their ceilings black. DH found the black ceiling tiles at HD and thought that would be easier. Since he was installing it, I wanted to do what was easiest for him. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. He also put a full bath in down there. Our main 2nd floor bathroom had a major leak and needs to be completely redone. Since we are mostly DIYers, it will likely take time and now we have a 2nd full bath in the house. It's not quite complete yet.

So just like that, it seemed things were flying and we had to make decisions FAST. Like, lighting. We had been thinking about pendants over the peninsula, but thanks to the wonder of Google SketchUp, we realized this was too much vertical clutter with the dining room RIGHT THERE, presumably with some dangly light fixture . So frantically, I (we) picked out the most awesome dining room light and we decided to go with recessed lights over the peninsula instead. And then there was the issue of under/inside cabinet lights and electrical outlet placement. Oh my! We had some task lighting angled power strips that our contractor gave us, but we decided not to use them and go with regular outlets. I went low & horizontal, but kind of wish I hadn't. Whatevs. For under cabinet lights, we did more searching and ended up with Armacost LED puck lights both in and under the cabinets. The light over sink went to a light switch/outlet to left, the peninsula lights, main recessed lighting, under/in cabinet lights and dining room light all went to one bank of switches all on dimmers. That was just a lot of things to decide. Here you can see the wiring for the lighting and all the plumbing done, plus the insulation. And then, wow drywall! Dry wall and the framing for the pantry entry way Texturing was next - we have the old world or skip trowel type of texturing? Not sure what you call it. And then windows were in and the paint went up. After many, many test paints. Who knew it's so hard to pick out a gray? Ok, everyone. In the end, we went with everyone else and got Revere Pewter. The windows here came in wrong, the bottom of the single hung were not supposed to have grids. So those got reordered, no biggie. Here's the breaking through from the outside to make the windows! Finally the wall is open and the plastic is down! And you can see the tons of paint colors we tried. Living room windows are also in and more paint samples ... You can see where the GIANT built ins were by the paint. We could not have been more sick of tan at this point. Tan walls and tan ceilings were just a bit overkill. And so ends another installment of Kitchen Remodel Saga.