I've seen the angel chimes, both brass and wood, at gift shops--even Marshall's--at Christmas. Just start looking at Thanksgiving, or even before, sad to say. If you want a truly wonderful, memorable Scandanavian Christmas experience, then put the Lucia celebration in early December in Boston on your calendar. Santa Lucia is a major Christmas festival in Sweden and I have celebrated it for many years, tho without a drop of Swedish blood. The good ladies of SWEA Boston have the most fantastic festival every year--lots of delicious Swedish food to eat there or bring home, lots and lots of Swedish Christmas decorations, and of couse the traditional Lucia procession. That is barely scratching the surface. One year, Will Ferrell was the host. His wife is Swedish. And sorry to say, I had never heard of him--"Who is this guy making jokes?" My kids were shocked, horrified that I was so dumb. I have been enlightened. BTW, SWEA means Swedish Women's Educational Association and it promotes Swedish culture worldwide. What fun, even if you're Irish :) Here is a link that might be useful: Lucia Day in Boston

I worked as an Interior Designer in a past life - BC, 'before children' :)... So I know where you are coming from. In your initial post you posed your question in a very general and broad way which: 1. makes it difficult to answer and 2. indicated to some that you might be ill prepared to take on this challenge. Perhaps you were just trying to find out the different ways owner/builders were working on their projects? If you are seriously considering being your own GC then there are resources available to you on the internet and at the library. As dixiedoodle mentioned, The Owner Builder Book is one, it is great. There is a website as well. www.ownerbuilderbook.com I took a class at a community college and the website for the teacher is www.ownerbuilder.com. Tons of good information -that is how I found this site. :) We have decided to hire a builder but I think all of my research will still be an asset in our build. To answer your question about whether you can choose some of your own subs - it will depend on the Builder and your contract. If that is important to you then you should stipulate that and find someone willing to work with you on that basis. An option that might work for you is to find a GC/Builder that will get you through drywall and then you can GC the finish work yourself since you have contacts in the industry. Hope that helps.

I understand the sense of caution. Callbacks are not good and can eat away at your profits. To answer your question: I have used products supplied by flooring distributors, and have included products from Ardex, Mapei and Fritztile. They were all used with an appropriate primer to facilitate bonding to what they were placed over. Additives were included to make the product less-likely to break apart and powder. I especially like Ardex SDP (Self Drying Patch)...because the PSI (pounds per square inch) rating is lower than some other products. Self leveling formulations can achieve a very high PSI and can be very difficult to nail into, even with pneumatically assisted fastening tools. When I used a product with a high PSI, I sometimes would have to drill pilot holes and manually drive in hardened spiral flooring nails. I never had a floor patch crumble. I figured...if I used a good patch, and if the substrate was well-fastened and didn't move much, I believed the installation would be OK. I believe that you have to have significant movement to get a decent patch to fall apart under a finish product. I came to wood flooring out of a family business that specialized in resilient flooring materials, so I learned a lot about what you can and cannot do regarding floor patches and their application. I will say in closing here (for general consumption) , especially for the DIYer,... if you try to use calcium carbonate patches (usually white in color...and I won't mention brands) ...you will experience quick breakdown of the product, because they are fragile and will crumble easily. If it looks like plaster of paris, it is not a suitable floor filler or patch...my opinion.

Yes. I love them. Actually, I've gotten them off ebay and had custom things printed. I also have some butterflies in my bathroom. I'll try to post a picture late. My favorite is over my front door. It says "Home is where your story begins."