Me? Cylon? Fracking Zeus, you may be right! That explains a lot: No baby pictures 11 brothers who all look like me That odd factory in my hometown How perfect I am Speaking of small towns. Ever notice how some of these in our neck of the woods are all quaint and charming and others are just sad and creepy? You know, I really enjoy these TV series, type DVDs. ThereÂs something a bit more gratifying when you have to devote many nights of viewing in order to finish something and see how it all turns out. After I did a bunch of these and then took a break and watched a few regular movies, the movies just seemed lacking or rushed or kind of lame at telling the story they wanted to tell. Maybe all movies need to be 6 hours minimum. I have to do more of these series once I start the DVD thing again. Will do the miniseries. I like my kind.

I hope your son's health is OK now. I think any contractor/builder or architect you hire is going to want you to move out. But their motives are going to be selfish. They want you out of their way. They do not want to work around you, or worry about checking with you before shutting things off, or have you looking over their shoulder all day. I would take advice from others who have lived the process. I can't offer advice on having contractors come into your home and do a full remodel. We are doing a complete gutting and total remodel of our house including an addition to include a master bedroom and a new kitchen, but we are doing all the work ourselves so we do have more control over what happens when. We did do some gutting before moving in, but have been living in the house pretty much the entire time (I am still living with a makeshift kitchen working stove, but no counters or cabinets). We are a family of 4 with two small kids who are turning 3 and 4 this month. As the above poster said, we have never been without water or power for any length of time longer than a working day (except when Sandy came through). We shift around our living quarters as we need to work on spaces. It may be easier for us as our kids know no different. I also have many rolls of plastic and will spend lots of time taping off entire areas extremely well before doing work. It saves me many, many, many hours of cleaning drywall dust later from a lived in part of the house.

If you are going to use a standard sink without a disposal for washing dishes, come up with a regular schedule for cleaning out the trap with hot water and bleach. When foot products (grease, bits of food, etc.) are dumped into a standard trap some of it will stick in the trap. Food residue probably won't plug it up, but it provides a wonderful place for fruit flies to multiply, and soon they will be flying around your house. Usually hot water and bleach is enough to flush and sanitize the trap, but do it often if any food products are being washed off in the sink. Bruce

I am just finishing a four month reno that affected nearly my whole first floor (and half the second) and left me with no kitchen or eating area the whole time. I have a fridge in the garage but the fridge portion was no good to me bc it’s winter and everything froze in there. I set up one end of my living room with a long folding table. I had some very lightweight thin sheets of wood cut to fit it at Home Depot and laid that down for heat protection, then put a table cloth over it that hung down to the floor. I put a dorm fridge at one end of the table, and on the table I put a toaster, microwave, and toaster oven. At the other end was the trash and recycling bins. I kept one plate, one cup, one bowl, two knives, two spoons, and two forks in the house, along with salt and pepper, a spatula, some tongs, and several disposable food storage containers that could either store leftovers or act as additional bowls if needed. All of it went in a basket under the folding table, behind the tablecloth, which gave me some sense of neatness and order. Another basket under the table held food basics - bread, pb&j, cereal. Almost every single other thing in my kitchen was packed up and put into storage. I cooked tons of stuff ahead of time and froze them in individual serving sizes and put them in the garage freezer. My best advice is to get the stuff you will not need out of your house. ALL of it - put it in storage. I put a lot in storage, but there were some misc hard to pack things (like bottles of liquor, and a large wall mirror, and a clock) that I decided I could just stick in my living room or office. I also didn’t want to put any sort of pantry food in a storage facility so anything I hadn’t used up before the reno I put in boxes and set it in other rooms. I regretted these decisions big time. I’ve spent four months tripping over that stuff or shuffling it from place to place - I should have just found a way to pack it and store the possessions and given the food to a food bank. It seems like every available surface had stuff piled on it that I should have stored. I hated that way more than not having a kitchen. And remove any excess stuff from the room you’ll be living in - pare it down to only what you need. Otherwise it will just feel cramped and overwhelming. I just found it’s super important to create some order and visual calmness in the spaces you are living in. Other advice - take everything off the walls, even in rooms adjoining the work area, otherwise it may fall during work that vibrates. Buy extra filters for your HVAC and change them frequently during the work. And absolutely do not use your garage as storage for what is normally in your house. The very best advice I saw on Houzz before my remodel was to ruthlessly purge and organize my garage ahead of time. I did it, and thank goodness I did - both the house and garage would have been sheer chaos if I hadn’t, because the garage was used to stage materials and set up saws and other tools. Even though I had completely cleared both bays, this stuff completely filled the garage at times, leaving only a narrow aisle up the middle, so thank god I didn’t try to also use it to store stuff from the house. One of the big surprises to me was the amount of money it costs to deal with the reno but is not being paid to the contractor or designer. Examples include: movers to move things in and out of storage, storage fees, post-reno deep cleaning, post-reno duct cleaning, area rug and carpet cleaning, service charges from my home security company to come and put sensors on my new windows, appliance delivery and installation fees, packing supplies, etc. It adds up. BUT it will all be worth it!! Good luck!