Gosh Senko, they're in such a jumble! When I first looked at this I thought it was an entirely different part of the garden. The rose in the left hand corner is America growing on an arch. This would be the climber from 1914 declared extinct by the ARS. You can just barely see Collette under it. All that tall arching red is Eddies Crimson. This is a gigantic shrub. The white is Pascali. The pink is a very tall Aquarious.

Pseudo-as far as your OP, you said: "How come dad's are blasted when they have more children ... But when mom's have second families they do not get blasted." This has been my experience with DH and BM. I think I've talked about this on here before, but I can't remember. A little background...DH had a son when he met BM. His son was about 6 or 7 when he met BM. She played the loving SM until right after the wedding (pretty evident in pictures I've seen). DH's son was 12 when they got married. BM got pregnant right after they got married. As soon as she got pregnant, she 'turned' on DH's son. She started arguing about his visitations, grilling DH about conversations with the other mom, refusing to spend time with the son when he visited, made plans when DH was supposed to visit his son, and so on. After about a year of the constant harassment by BM, DH quit visitations, after 10+ years. According to DH, BM wanted her and "their" daughter to be his only family. I'm not saying DH is totally blameless here, but I can understand the constant pressure and resistance he was facing (especially with what he's going through now). Fast-forward a few years. When I met DH, he had been divorced for over 2 years, SD was 7, BM had been remarried for 7 months and was pregnant by her husband. No one questioned any part of it. It was all as if BM had the RIGHT to be pregnant because SF didn't have any kids. As a matter of fact, everyone at ball games and SD's school (except DH) was all excited and doting all over her. No one knew the backstory that BM had left DH and taken SD to move in with the "future" SF and then brought the future SF back to try to kick DH out of their house. That was 7+ years ago, when I was 23. I was still planning on having more children at that time. I never imagined it would be 7 more years before I would get re-married. Now, I don't know if we will ever have anymore kids. Here are my reasons: 1) DH's son will be 25 this year 2) DH has two grandkids now; an almost 2 year-old and a 3 month-old 3) SD will be 15 this year 4) DS just turned 11 5) SD has moved away and DH's relationship with her seems to be crumbling away 6) DH is just now getting back on regular-speaking terms with his son Somehow I just don't see how adding a baby to this mix will help anything. As a matter of fact, I feel like BM WANTS us to have a baby because she thinks that if DH and I have a baby together, he will just forget about SD (like she thinks he did with his son) and then she and her husband can have SD all to herself. I told this to DH once and he said to me "for that to be true, she would have to assume you would act just like she did". I said "BINGO! She's a narcissist! She thinks EVERYONE acts/reacts as she would! That's the very definition of the disorder!" I think that, while it was okay for her to do the things she's done, that if we were to do the same, she would further poision SD with stuff like "well, he has another family now" and blah, blah, blah. Right now, she doesn't have an excuse (that we know of) for keeping SD away. She keeps her distracted. But if we were to have a baby, I'm sure she would use that to her advantage.

OK, finally took some pics of the stringer and transition to baseboard in hall at top of stairs - think this will work? Lovely gap - over 1" from wall to edge of stringer Colonial "stop" molding (not thick enough so have to lay flat instead of laying it against wall - my cousin was going to finish off the end with a mitred return, just tape holding it right now) But that still leaves the problem of transitioning to the thinner, lower baseboard, and a gap b/t the stringer and the wall So I'm thinking of running the stop molding vertically as well - he'll just have to figure out the angle to join the 2 pieces of stop (and of course cut the baseboard so it fits snugly against it). Either that, or just do the mitred return and then put a block in between like crazyhouse6 did? Which do you think will look better? I want to run the stop vertically at the bottom of the stringer too, to hide the end grain and cover the awkward chipped corner bead on the drywall where it meets the stringer just to the side of the newels (and not do the molding where DH is holding it here, just run the oak board to "box" in the bottom of the newel higher than the stringer), so would it be best to do the same treatment top and bottom? Sorry, I can get DH to hold the newel and take some better pics of the bottom tonight while I hold the stop over the end grain.

When they drilled the holes for our faucet/soap dispenser/air switch, we didn't seem to have a problem. However, when they ground down part of the back of the granite to reduce the gap b/w the counter and wall, they got granite dust in all the drawer glides of the cabinet they were grinding "over". The dust doesn't appear to have "traveled" up. We just found out that contrary to what we were told, they will be doing the cooktop cutout inside our house...so I'm in the same boat as you. My DH, after our bad experience w/the first installation, has already requested that they remove ALL drawer glides of the cabinets they're working over. They have agreed...but I'll wait and see what really happens! [I mean actually remove them completely from the cabinets...NOTHING left behind!]