Fun new pics and posts all, keep them coming. March is a great time of year in the garden here isn't it? Love it! "Stuffed" is the right word to describe my patio, dusti, LOL! Guilty as charged. :) Good luck with the clivia and Schlumergera outside. Mine always got very cranky by late summer so I kept them inside for summer now. Keep us posted and post lots of pics! I've tried Aeonium nobilis a few times before, Cesar, and mine always failed (died) in late summer due to the heat. I have great success with Aeonium arboreum (the common, popular types and hybrids) but my nobilis always died on me. I keep all of my aeonium plants very dry in summer when they're in a heat induced semi dormancy (and they look awful, hah!), but the arboreum types revive in autumn and then I give them more water. Good luck with yours--do keep us posted! Great looking tomato plants, timber. Nice and vigorous! Just for fun here are some aloe blooms open right now. I purchased the plant without a label quite a few years ago. It's one of my favorite aloes so I have planted a dozen or two of its offspring (from pups/offsets) all over the garden. Great peachy/apricot color and branched bloom stalk: And here's something NOT looking great, lol, tatty pomegranate foliage which has been visited by leaf cutter bees, LOL. They do this every spring and I don't really mind as the plant eventually outgrows it. Happy gardening all! Grant

You can definitely do better on that Kitchen quote with Ikea cabinets and butcher block countertops. Ikea has two real wood doors that would look nice in an old house: Torhamn and Lerhyttan. They also have a veneer door, Ekestad, that looks MCM-ish. You'd probably be looking at $4000 for Torhamn /Lerhyttan cabinets and $1000 for the butcher block. You might also want to look at Barker Cabinets, a line of custom made, ready to assemble wood cabinets for reasonable prices ( that's what I'm planning on using for my own kitchen). You can look up "Half Classic Six" blog for an example of a nice kitchen done with Barker. Barker would probably be $6000-$8000 depending on which door style and how many drawers vs. doors. Ikea Torhamn

Browns occur in a wide range of shades from warm to cool and they need to complement each other or you might end up with a result that makes you vaguely dissatisfied with the overall effect. @raee_gw zone 5b-6a Ohio "Vaguely Dissatisfied" is spot on. I must have tried a forest's worth of flooring samples against my "golden" walnut cabinets and nothing looks right. Re your red oak, I wonder if there is a significant hue difference (or some other color difference) between red oak harvested 80 years ago versus modern day red oak. Because all the newish red oak floors I see seem to lean pink or red when unstained. @Patricia Colwell, I also LOVE natural walnut floors. I keep pondering that species as a way to distract from our "golden" walnut cabs, but DH prefers lighter over darker flooring. (Plus, the $$.) @lucky998877, thanks. Your floors sound lovely--and made to last! Good luck with your choice! Chandler, sorry for the hijack. Hope everything worked out great! :)

This is a great post and info, I am glad I came across it! I have Timborana hardwood floors that I've hated for years now. I love the wood grain, but I can't stand the color anymore... yes it's red, and it shows absolutely everything (foot prints, paw prints, hair, etc). I came across this post as I have been looking for a green undertone stain color. I am trying to figure out what to do. Those pieces are the back side of this flooring so it shows the natural color. On the right is the sample done by the flooring guy. This is the color that I really like, not too dark, not too light. This is a sample piece that my flooring guy sanded down and tried 4 different alternatives. I was shocked on how light it turned out. Not sure what the top color is, but I don't like it (too yellow). The second one I think is just the natural finishing coat. The third one has more white mixed with the finishing coat and the bottom one just a little white. I am really debating if I should go with one of those 3 options, there is such a difference in color between boards, I am not sure what it will look like. I am wondering if I should ask him for something a little darker, not sure if something like the picture above could be achieve in any way. Of course Timborana has a lot more wood grain. Any suggestions? and then I have to choose tiles to go beside the wood floor 🙄