My husband thinks if we plug up the hole, the wrens will go to the other bluebird box so we'll just keep taking out the twigs. She builds a perfect circle of twigs morning and night. As I walk back from destroying her work if just look over and say, "Sorry little bird." I know it's for the best. I've figured out a way to stop feeling guilty about it; I just have my husband do it! Plus I keep picturing the destroyed bluebird eggs I've seen from what the Wren's can do. Thank you all for your advice. Now we just need our Blue's to start building!

Ok, so where to begin... I had nothing but problems with Wayne homes. I used their excavator and contracted price for clearing my lot of 52 trees. he left 7 or eight. no credit for that. he took 90% of my wonderful dirt that he REFUSED to let me keep, said I had to pay more to haul out extra. I told him I wanted my dirt, nope he said. then charged me more money to bring in two truck loads of CLAY because SURPRISE i needed it for the final grade because now he doesn't have enough dirt. then had a nerve to try and charge me almost 7k over contract for extra time and work because he was too lazy to read the diagram correctly to where the water company had for the location of the water tap. he dug from the wrong direction and couldn't find it. as a matter of fact, someone from his crew actually pointed at it when I asked what that faucet looking thing was under the ground that they covered up with gravel. did I pay the extra money hell no! i should have sued his ass. he tried to tell the field manager to NOT give me my keys until I paid. he made a fortune off my tree's and dirt, broke the silt fence with his tonka truck and had the city on my back because my neighbor complained about the mud running into their yard. my house was built in mid 2015 and I still have trouble growing sustainable grass on that clay. nothing but grass dying in patches every year. Next, within the first two years I've had the fix it guy come out and adjust doors, change the parts in the toilet which went bad in their cheap Gerber toilets. two more have since went bad and they only like Gerber parts! universal parts allow water to leak. Next, I was told a cleaning crew would come in and clean out the vents of the drywall dust and stuff before final walk through. That never happened. framing crew threw plastic and tie wraps in the hole under my front porch like they didn't care about the environment. another crew was in the garage smoking and throwing butts inside the garage in the gravel. I DON'T SMOKE thank you! I know everyone take lunch when the time come, but don't leave your spilled cups with sold on the floor. I don't care for ants! next on the list that I'm mad I didn't see before, was my front doors placement. A two year old must have measured the placement because it's not centered! someone even went as far as cut a chunk out of the corner of the molding to make it fit! hurry up and get done in 4 moths right? shh... don't tell the field manner or homeowner and lets hope they won't notice it, because we will have to fix it and I want to get paid now!. 250k house? not worth it with the cheap materials used. the only wood in the house is probably the kitchen cabinets. lastly, my basement wall. as of the middle of august 2019, I've contacted Wayne homes about my basement wall being wet. before you saying anything about the two year fit and finish, I pointed at my wet wall before the second year was up. I was told someone would contact me about it. did they NO! did I call? Yes i did and multiple times at that. left messages, phone always busy, never got threw to anyone. I figured I'd let the ground settle more, heck I'm new to this stuff and thought that was the problem. almost five years later and the wall is so bad with salt crystals coming through the blocks. i called again frustrated, put a message through a website that deals with the waterproofing and finally had someone come out. the solution you ask? probably have to go to court. everyone's pointing fingers, Wayne is trying to say i'm past the 2 years but I told them about the problem before their guy retired (within the two years) now their saying there was nothing in my file about it? Of course it isn't . they have all the files, a recycle bin and shredder. Waterproofing said it was a footer tile after he did a water test. footer tiles were checked and yes it is a footer tile sitting at the wrong angle water has to climb up to get to the water pump but will only get there once the pipe is filled with water and allowing water into my concrete blocks. my old small house is built better than this. heat vents that go from the furnace to the rooms? not anymore. now there's this new thing called cardboard sheets that run along the studs to act like the metal box tubes we all new and loved. Remember that wood trim that goes on the sides and top of the window? they must be invisible. I didn't know that was the new thing now. for 250k, should that come with the over-inflated price? hollow doors, i can hear my kids piss and take showers in a ranch that is 2200 sf and we don't have bedrooms or bathrooms close to each other. I could probably say more but i'm going to stop here. Stay away from Wayne home's PERIOD! can you believe a contractor from Wayne home told me they laugh about how cheaply made the houses are? said all they need is a hammer to go through the outside wall. there wasn't much said in complaints when I was looking for a builder. I guess the type of house I chose is why I picked them. models you go look at have 50k more put into them to make them really stand out but I guess they know that because no one would choose any of the houses in their basic packages.

Hi EQ, Speaking of "as long as I can remember".. Maybe I just read your post twice and that's why I thought you had made two tables or possibly equated your apple pie recipe with making furniture, who knows. I can almost remember the days when I could remember. Senility is the "E-Ticket" of life. The un-induced double vision is like the metro bus that that awaits you on every corner. o_O I've never missed a bus in my life but sure do miss being able to see straight. At least with senility you keep forgetting you have it. You can't remember that you can't remember. I used to be able to spot things a mile away and now all I see are spots. I was reading another post where someone was talking (if I can remember correctly) about miscommunication with contractors and architects and was going to be relaxing with an "adult beverage" and the fist thing that came to mind was "yuk-!", prune juice is not what you want to be drinking if you want to relax. Then it dawned on me... Tequila. I should remember to ask my doctor about that. Not for me but for my friends so they'll talk louder so I could possibly hear them. I don't think I've ever bought a new piece of furniture that made it through the doors of my house. I have bought some Grants' specials to gift to others knowing the piece it replaced would be tossed to the curb though. It is amazing what people consider garbage. People used to think I made and refinished furniture because I enjoyed it but that was the farthest from the truth. I just like nice things and you could not buy them at G. Fox et al. So now that your table is done and you're anxious to have some people over for dinner the moment your chairs arrive what's on the menu for the christening?

Sure, and they all have memories and stories. Many years ago, I worked on one of Christopher Alexander's houses in the Berkeley hills. He used a lot of graduate student grunt labor. His team would take months to make even the most trivial decisions, with endless discussions. IIRC that house took five years to finish, and the couple who commissioned it got divorced before it was done. I once lived down the street from a pair of Thomas Gordon Smith post-modern numbers (the Tuscan and Laurentian), kind of a snarky send up of the typical suburban snout house. They were painted in a sort of Pompeii meets Miami Vice color scheme, with a neoclassical column in the middle of their wide garage doors, to break up the span. Sadly, one house was eventually repainted in boring colors, and some quirky exterior details removed. I never saw the insides, which were painted in huge classical style murals. When I first got married we went to England and saw the Colefax and Fowler building, the one with the Wyatt/Wyattville yellow drawing room. It's up on the second floor, via a dark, narrow, twisty flight of stairs papered with what look to be bad baroque paintings, but may be theatrical backdrops. The room itself isn't as wide or tall as it looks in pictures, and the arc of the ceiling is quite shallow. When I saw it, all the Nancy Lancaster furniture was gone, it was full of lamps. The paint work was a little obscured by nicotine and wood smoke, but you could still see the complicated oil glazing-- there are tiny pin point flecks of many colors in the glaze, which give an almost pearly effect. I think Fowler deliberately allowed the painters to use dirty brushes!