Suzie, You never know, she might get a thundersnow storm. We've had a lot of them in recent years. I grew up in Texas just about 80 or 85 miles south of where we now live in Oklahoma, but I'd never even heard of thundersnow until we moved here. I won't say we have thundersnow here at our house every year that snow falls, but probably about every other year. We had it last year, and we've already had it this year. Jim Cantore was very entertaining the other night. I'm sure a lot of that is part of the "show" he puts on for the camera, but I also think he was shocked to see thundersnow that far north. The other weather phenomenon we have here that I don't remember having in Texas is derecho winds. The first one we experienced here came during the night with 60 mph winds and hit the house so suddenly and so hard while we were sleeping that we thought a semi-truck or an airplane had hit the house. I also had about 20 flats of plants on the screened-in porch (so it must have been April) and we had to run out and bring them all into the house because the temperature plunged probably 30 degrees in 10 minutes when the derecho wind hit the house. I think we've experienced 3 or 4 severe derecho wind storms at our house since then. The one I remember best, the local met on the TV news at noon told us it was coming and told us if we went outside 5 or 10 minutes before it was due to hit our area, we'd hear it coming like a "mighty rush of wind". Of course, Tim and I went outside 10 minutes before it was s supposed to hit and went down to the road so we'd have a clear view of it coming by looking up the roadway (too many trees around our house). Sure enough, a few minutes later it came roaring towards us like a freight train (we could hear it for a minute or more before we could see the blowing of the vegetation begin) and we went from clear skies to dark grey ones in about a minute as the wind blew through and the temperatures plunged. The other one I remember was a severe derecho squall line with multiple bow echoes accompanied by tons of lightning. This time, the TV met kept cutting into regular programming to warn that anyone working outside needed to get inside by a certain time. Our barn-style detached garage was being built then, and the buys working on it were welding steel beams together. I talked with them about the weather and convinced them to heed the warnings, get down off the structure, put up all their tools and head home. They literally were driving down the driveway when the derecho hit here and the first raindrops started falling, and we sure did have lightning! I was glad they weren't up on that metal framing when it hit. You've got to admit, Oklahoma's weather is never, ever dull. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Facts About Derecho Windstorms

I just wanted to thank you all for taking the time to answer me. Your responses really helped. The wood floors are all original oak, except for in the kitchen, where we think they are pine (and never meant to show, but we stripped them anyway!) I actually have high gloss finish in the kitchen, by accident. See, we did the LR and DR floors in 2001 and used semi-gloss and a medium stain. In 2003, we did the kitchen and stripped the floors and I bought high-gloss poly by mistake, and didn't realize it until it dried! I do like it, very much. But I just wondered, in that big expanse of my LR and DR, would the high gloss finished be too much gloss, know what I mean? My instincts tell me to go for it, but I still have some doubts. We definitely need a new topcoat, though. I don't want to ruin the floors! I did cover up the floors partially in the LR when my daughter started to walk. It's just a carpet remnant, no pad underneath, but I think I should keep it for the kids for now. I wasn't thinking how the hardwood floors would work out with babies! Here are some updated pictures of the house. Since I took those pictures on the pbase site in 2004, we've done a few more updates - new fence, stripped/sanded/painted the front porch gray (and I'm still working on the trim, that's why there are no new pics of the front porch - but it looks so much better!), and totally finished the basement. WHEW! And two babies in that time, too. :) Thank you all for your complements and opinions! I think I might try the high gloss. Here is my site with the older/remodeling pics: http://www.pbase.com/yellowduck and here are the current house pictures, minus the front porch: Here is a link that might be useful: The house

It's amazing that even though I'm a painter, I can't just look at a paint can and know what the paint is. It says flat and it says highly scrubbable. Sometimes a manufacturer will call the paint scrubbable even though it's a true flat, which means it is not a washable or scrubbable paint. Regal Matte is a washable paint and this is why it's called 'matte'. So, it depends....is that paint a flat and the 'scrubble' word is just BS marketing or is it a washable paint of some kind? $24 seems kind of pricey for a flat paint but cheap for a washable paint. If it's really supposed to be washable at that price point, then it's probably not very washable...cheap paints are cheap because they are missing quality ingredients that make the paint good. I would say you should base your decision on how durable you need the walls in your room to be. If you truly want walls you can scrub and wash, then the risk at buying this paint may be too high. Glidden makes great paint though, but usually when these big companies package their products for Walmart, Home Depot, etc, it's not their top line stuff.

After researching thoroughly to buy 3 new kitchen faucets for our renovation, I came to the following conclusions. Best brands are Delta, Moen, Kohler (no order). All brands, even these, have lifetime warrantees on the cartridges; of these 3 brands, Moen's need replacing most often, so parts are cheap and easily available. Kohler breaks the least often, and you will have to call them to ship you out the replacement parts, free. Kohler also has a lifetime warrantee on the whole faucet, including finishes, not just the cartridges. All brands make cheaper versions of their faucets for big box and other discount stores. These versions use mostly plastic parts, and if you're lucky, you might get 3-5 years out of them. We got 3 years from our HD faucets, pretty consistently. We would spend $200-ish on them (in Canada, so you would have cheaper prices in the US). If you go to a plumbing store and spend $400-500 on a faucet from the same companies, you will get a mostly metal faucet that will last you more like 10 years. It is likely manufactured in China. If you go to a plumbing store and spend $600+ on a faucet from one of these companies, you may get a faucet with metal parts that was made in the US or Europe. They are all warrantied the same, so it's really a priority choice for you. When we didn't want to spend any money, we bought the cheap one at HD and got a couple of years out of it. This time we spent the $400 and hope to get significantly longer. We went with Kohler. We use our kitchen A LOT. :)