IMO, your father is playing both of you like a fiddle. As long as each of you are complaining about the other one, all focus is off of him. Brilliant! Golddust.. I agree. I've started replying 3 times and deleted all of them. I think there's more to the story & doubt it's just the girlfriend. Reading her letter, she probably thinks she's helping her man. Danielle, the best advice I can give you is to try to understand where she is coming from; but don't let her walk all over you. This is a very touchy situation; you know what your dad was like when you were growing up & she came into the picture after he was out of his "unhappy" marriage. While he's probably told her his side; she's never going to know what really happened because she wasn't there and IMO.. she needs to respect your feelings & how hurt you were by him but try to respect her for trying to be there for your dad now. I have issues with my step son. He likes to go back to his father & say that I said this or I said that. When my hubby fell off of his truck I sent him an email because he stopped speaking to my hub & wouldn't you know it, he twisted my email around trying to start a fight between my hub & I. Thankfully my hub knew about the email before I sent it; it was a rude awakening to my hub of just what his son would do to get me out of the picture. This is all in SS's head, not mine because I can be grown up about it & smile like nothing ever happened but he can't. The best advice I can give you is to try to have a relationship with your dad without the GF around every time. You still need father/daughter time. I encourage hub to call his son or go golfing with him because even though we can't see eye to eye, it's still his son. My hub does not talk about me when they are together & if the kid starts, he says it's between you 2 and not me. SS's mother was an alcoholic - probably why he hates me so much because we have the life he never had growing up & his father has been raising my 2 kids for the last 10 years.. so he's bitter; but he's also an adult man in his 30's & a divorced father. I don't feel that the GF was trying to place "blame" on any of the kids for the marriage/drinking problems, I read it as her just stating why he was drinking. My dad stayed in a bad marriage because "It was cheaper to keep her" & we kids suffered with the fighting. Dad was not around most times, he chose to work as much as he could.

"...but the buyer must remember that the realtor is representing himself/herself first." If there is a contract of agency between the buyer and agent, this is against the law and the quickest way to lose a client and your license to practice. berniek, this happens all the time. I'm sure you've seen it if you are an experienced agent. Both the seller and buyer really need to look out for their own interest. An experienced agent won't do anything illegal or much that anyone could claim was not in the client's interest, but all agents work to close the transaction (that is a good thing) . An agent may see some bad "signs" but won't mention to their client, nothing illegal or especially "bad", but why upset the client (unless it is your mother) and risk losing the closing. I'm sure all agents do it or see it, it is naive to say it doesn't occur. The old "buyer beware" is still true in RE.

If you live in the south and want bermuda or St Augustine, we can help you get to a nice lawn in a few months. If you live in the north and want something like rye, fescue, and/or Kentucky bluegrass, I would suggest you hang onto that thought until after summer as suggested by someone in your past. In the mean time practice proper watering, mowing, and fertilizing and you will have the best looking weeds on the block. That's what I'm currently doing at my new home. Because I'm satisfied with the look of green, even though it is green weeds, this is a very low stress approach. Here's a picture of my weeds from last July. Proper watering means deep an infrequent. Deep means 1 inch all at one time; not spread out over several days. Infrequent means to adjust frequency for the temperature. When it's hotter you deep water more often. With temps in the 90s water once per week. With temps in the 80s water once every 2 weeks. With temps in the 70s water once every 3 weeks. With temps below 70 water once a month. This works in Phoenix and in Vermont, so wherever you are it will work. Mulch mow most grasses at the highest notch on the mower. The only grasses that get mowed at the lowest level are bermuda, centipede, and creeping bentgrass. Fertilize once in the late spring and twice in the fall. Late spring is Memorial Day. Early fall is Labor Day and late fall is around Thanksgiving. That's about all there is to it.

We had a whole house fire about 6 years ago and had to redo everything down to the studs. We were like you in that our kitchen wasn't brand new, but too new for us to have considered redoing without the fire. Doing an unexpected reno is super stressful (as you know), but one tradesperson told us, you have the chance to redo things to be exactly what you want, make sure you do. We tried to take that advice. I was pretty happy with my kitchen, but now I adore it. We ended up finding a designer who specialized in space planning and she gave us several options and was also happy to consider the ideas I got from the friends here. She was the one that came in and did the precise measurements to see what would actually fit and what wouldn't. I was going to suggest finding someone other than your contractor to do the design, but it sounds like he is part of a bigger operation and there is someone who will do good drawings/measurements for you? Our designer was very experienced and one thing she was able to do for us was predict our family's future needs. Our daughter's were 11 and 15 at the time and I was thinking of what our needs were before the fire, she nudged us to see that soon they would both have near adult needs and then be gone. She helped us design for that and, so far, we can see that she was bang on. Good luck making your decision. It sounds like either scenario you are considering could work, but I would wait for good plans/drawings before letting them go ahead and do anything.