Stearling, ornate and heavy, polished to a soft sheen Poison Silk drapes French Doors A real fire place and a glass of wonderful port Hot and strong tea brewed in a thick brown pot, with milk and sugar Scones Oriental carpets Tapestry in faded colors Crown molding Detailed woodwork Carera marble A real christmas tree with white lights Mohair and cashmir (not my spelling) Burgundy wine Leather furniture without budda bellies Libraries Parlors Fabulous entry halls Antique quilts, both silk and flower sack warm colors Silk dresses Rubies on a red head :) Im feeling a bit homesick since I'm in hospital and we have an imminent death in the family so forgive me if I get a bit maudlin here... A new baby's smile A fluffy down comforter Comfortable pillows (ok I'm tired of sleeping in a chair) Cabernet, Burgundy and any other wine LOL A family, all together A meal cooked with love That fire place I mentioned earlier, with the family, baby and meal...and the burgundy :)

Fashion is a fickle mistress. Whether it's home decor or clothing. Yes, yes, and yes!! Ditto the issue with finding inexpensive basics. The cats like to nibble on lampshades, so they usually have a short lifespan here. No way am I spending more than $30 for a lampshade, and I've been lucky enough to find some plain basic shades at Ross, Tuesday Morning, Walmart, etc. I also buy every one I see at the thrifts. I've become a white/cream lampshade hoarder! I like to be able to see the exact color and quality of most things in person, so I totally understand not wanting to have to order every single thing online. I spent the weekend looking for trim for a window treatment. Looking for a medium sage green or even an olive color. A gold or dark taupe would have worked, or even a burgundy, because I'm just that flexible. There were 10 shades of teal and aqua, lots of grays, lime green, all sorts of trendy things, but no simple average green. Clothing...O.M.G. I occasionally need to dress up for work. I want to look like a woman, but without wearing anything too revealing or that looks like clubwear. I need comfortable business-wear flats...no sequins, no bows, no peep toe. I could go on and on, but you all know what I mean.

Wow. I didn't expect such an huge helpful response to my post; this is the very first time I exceeded the bandwidth on my email account! I have now moved the pics to photobucket and they are shown below. lyfia -- Thanks for sharing those ideas and pics, especially GarageGable.jpg. We will be adding a small opening in the attic for ventilation and are planning to do something similar. But yours is a much nicer version and it's great pic to show our GC. Do you mind if we use it? igloochic -- yours is a lovely purple! aprophinia -- Very good point about orange limiting my landscaping options. I too love gardening and I didn't realize orange would be a hard color to work with. Maybe it's because I want to plant fuschia bougainvillea against the front porch, and I had been visualizing it against an orange backdrop. As I read the responses and explored the options that have been suggested, I really like several of them, even though they were never on my radar before (eg. deep purple, barn red). I came to realize what I really want is a colorful, cheerful house. That doesn't have to be in-your-face or be in my fav color. I dislike pink in general but as I dropped off my kids this morning, I saw a deep pink house and I was surprised by how much I liked it. We'll continue to mull over it. The wall board idea is great -- we are going to try that out (thanks amysrq) Btw, I also showed the pics to some local folks. Nobody liked Idea #2 because they thought it was boring. I was pleasantly surprised by that. Maybe it's the SF bay area, people are more ok with colors here, even if they don't use it on their own homes. Current look Idea #1 Idea#2

The building industry for some time now in basements has been engaged in a haphazard "cross your fingers" approach to trying to insulate without creating mold/moisture/etc problems by using vapor barriers, liquid membranes, sealants, etc. It turns out it was mostly for naught. The research shows the best insulation configuration is to just simply let the dang vapor go where it wants. No plastic, no vapor barrier, nothing is best when it comes to the insulation, even in cold climates. Rock wool is actually a good product for basements, I'd leave it, but I'd peel that vapor barrier off. Then I'd get some mildew resistant sheet rock(the green stuff) and drywall over it. The green sheet rock is not in any way moisture or mold invincible, but it is slightly better than normal sheet rock. Make sure to keep the sheet rock up off your slab and 1/2" or so away from that corner you talked about. Also, in the corner, if that is an untreated stud, I'd pull it and put a new ground contact rated treated stud. They "technically" are not approved for inside use but you don't want untreated wood up against your foundation. You can seal between the new stud and the foundation with caned foam and put a piece of synthetic trim like PVC or whatever you want in to cover the gap between the drywall and stone.