Congrats, Midnight. Growing a clivia to blooming size from seed is a great accomplishment. I hope you'll start a separate thread with pics once the blooms are open. Great plants! Socks, Disneyland and I have a lot in common, heh heh, and no, not because I'm "goofy"! I like a lot of the plants they use, and how they create such cheerful/jarring combinations. I just planted a bare root 'Disneyland' rose, which, while not jarring, is certainly perky like the many they have planted there. I've been gardening since I was five years old and have reached the point where I just plant what I enjoy and what makes me smile, so "tastemakers" be damned, lol. The brighter, taller, and stinkier, the more I like my orange marigolds. I actually struggle to find non-dumpy dwarf types. Usually I get them from Select Seeds or Seeds of Change...what about you? Take care, Grant

Here is my post earlier this week on MoccasinLanding's Hardwood Floors thread, with edits: Remember DH's declaration that we won't do any more major projects for the next three years following last year's 5 month and $30,000 foundation disaster? Well, we barely made it a year. The roof is really really really bad, the guys who cleaned my gutters said. We are looking at tearing off the 34 yo shingles, replacing some decking, doubling the amount of soffit vents and adding roof vents. We also may be removing all the decking from the area above the family room in order to insulate above the raised ceiling (it is sooo hot in there in the summer!). Fun fun fun. Last year's foundation disaster almost resulted in us pouring a "porch" foundation the same height as the foyer/laundry room for another 15 ft out from the front door so that when we re-roofed, we could extend the roof out over the porch to the end of the front room, which is DH's library and music room. Doing that, we could add a peak above the foyer and laundry room to change the path of the roof drainage. Then we just need to have Jim move the front wall out and drywall the new side walls and we would get a front closet and a laundry room big enough to work in. Didn't do it. (When I say "almost resulted in," it means that Jim (my contractor) and I were contemplating. DH was never on board.) Kick kick kick. Instead, we will continue to have a flat area on the roof above the foyer and laundry room and just hope that improved ventilation stops the snow from melting or sliding down the roof and icing up my porch and ramp. Stupid house designer must have been from the South. Who makes a roof designed to dump rain and snow in three different directions onto the FRONT PORCH in a cold climate! If we had extended out the front slab, we would now be adding a roof peak where the flat area is and the roof would drain to the sides. And I would have a laundry room big enough to fold in, and a front closet. We do have a coat closet in the middle of the house. It could be a utility closet now instead, if we had poured that slab out further last year......... My shins hurt. Friday, December 14 Yesterday I signed a contract to redo the roof. Today I stopped by their office to drop off a check for the first half of the payment. I talked with the manager and we discussed the venting further and the possibility of putting insulation above the cathedral ceiling in the family room. There was no way to get up there to insulate when we had the attic insulated because there was not enough room between the ceiling and the roof. So he will pull up some roof decking to check out the condition of the insulation there before re-roofing. He says that if we do need to insulate the room from above, he will do his best to make it fold into the cost of the roof job as much as possible, maybe just paying for the extra materials and a bit more. So that is the not-so-exciting news, we are getting a new roof. The picture you see below is from 2007, before we put in our front door, raised porch deck and ramp. We no longer have any shutters and the front windows have been replaced by Eagle windows with bronze aluminum cladding. The picture in the link has the new garden bed, door, and porch in it, but not the new windows. Here is a link that might be useful: A view of the front of the house with flat roof area

It's understandable that a homeowner might not be familiar with the design of bath cabinets, counters and lavs but a homeonwer should want to learn how to avoid the kind of faucet problem described in this thread. So, those of you who want to learn, read on. I am an experienced architect and thought I understood how to design undermount lavs until I undersized a vanity cabinet for one in the 80's. I now have CAD templates for all the lavs I am likely to use along with their spec sheets and templates. The clear bowl dimensions front to back of oval or elliptical undermount lavs commonly vary from 12" to 15" with oval 14" x 17" popular for modern style bathrooms and elliptical 12" x 21" popular for for vintage style bathrooms. My favorites are the 12 x 15 Kohler Caxton K-2209 and the 12" x 21" Kohler Vintage K-2240 but when there is more depth than width available I will use the 14x17 Caxton K-2210. These are clear bowl sizes; subtract 1/2" or more each direction for the overhang of the counter to get the counter opening. For the smallest cabinet size front to back add 2 1/2" at the front and 4 1/2" at the back to the clear bowl size: 22" cab. for 15" lav. (23" for backsplash, 24" OK if space available) 21" cab. for 14" lav. (22" for backsplash, 23" OK if space available) 20" cab. for 13" lav. (21" for backsplash, 22" OK if space available) 19" cab. for 12" lav. (20" for backsplash, 21" OK if space available) To match a faucet to a lav read the specs of each and align the spout opening with the drain opening. To make a long spout align with a lav designed for a short spout (drain off-center to the back), rather than making the cabinet larger and pushing the faucet back, use an elliptical bowl like the 12" Kohler Vintage which would allow the faucet to be farther back from the bowl without making the user reach farther back to operate the handles which are already back more than required for any other kind of lav. It is also possible to place the spout of a wide-spread faucet farther from the curve of the bowl than the valve handles. These custom design ideas would require printing the installation template, marking up the new faucet hole locations and issuing it to the GC who would otherwise have no way of knowing the design intent. That design should be confirmed with counter shop drawings from the fabricator. A counter should not be fabricated without he signature of the designer/owner and the GC. I would not allow field cutting of openings but that has never even been suggested. The counter shop drawing below is for 14x17 lavs on a 22" cabinet with a 3/4" backsplash. If the bathroom had been tight I could have used 12" lavs.

Not only can the HOA fine an owner if short term rentals are prohibited, but the city may as well. In our resort area, a short term rental permit is required and the city tightly controls short term rentals. Code enforcement is good. In addition, if the covenants of subdivision disallow short term rentals, the city will not issue a permit. Our current small subdivision does not allow short term rentals and, in 11 years, I only know of one homeowner (a builder) that violated the covenants when he couldn't sell the newly built house during the bust. We turned a blind eye and didn't complain given the circumstances. It turned out not to be a problem. The nightly rental was very high, which kept the usage down, and the house sold at the end of the season. However, although our little subdivision does not allow short terms, they are allowed in neighboring areas, so we do get some short term rentals nearby and have had a few noise issues. The subdivision where we have bought a lot to build does not allow short term rentals and is, for the most part, geographically protected from surrounding neighborhoods that do by green space. The few lots that do back up to another neighborhood were priced lower and still slower to sell. At the annual meeting of the HOA last year, a realtor proxy moved to amend the covenants to remove the short term rental restrictions. The motion was withdrawn when it became abundantly clear that all owners present bought, at least in part, because of the restriction. In resort areas, most folks (or their realtors) already know that you really need to read your subdivision documents closely for this issue. In fact whether short term rentals are allowed is often disclosed in the listing. Some second homeowners may want to rent out their home to defray the cost of ownership, while others want to be away from the bother. With this new phenomenon in other good-time cities, I would expect that a wise buyer there would also check the subdivision documents carefully and also check in with the city.