Hong, I wish I was rich and could afford to fly you here, lol. I pulled a Mike today in walmart and went to the garden area fisrt and had all kinds of goodies in the cart then went to the paint section and got a few cans of green paint then I saw the manager of the garden dept and she told me they had the pond I had looked at a while back on clearance with the pump liner and the whole kit for $45 with a 36 gallon liner. So I put back the some stuff and got the ticket for the pond. Then hubby kept calling and adding things he needed so the paint ended up near the produce section. I'll either have to go with black since I already have some or wait a little bit til I get more money. Now I have yet another project to do, lol. I hope it is big enough to have a fish or two in it and it has ledges different depths for plants. Oh boy I think I have ADD I can't seem to stay on track lately. Lol. I will take pics as I go but it will take me a little while to get everything situated. I have some landscape fabric already and will probably use round up then put the newspaper then the fabric then the mulch for underneath the gazebo. I think I am going to move it some too. We sit on the back porch a lot and you can't see it way over where it is very well. I just feel like I am putting everything on one side of the yard because of how far it is to the faucet, lol. If we get some extra money I really would love another water line or dream big and wish for a sprinkler system. Lucy we just wish each other Happy Birthday or you never know and might get a surprise in the mail sometimes. I have to get to bed soon. I have a doctor appt in the morning. Sorry I have been hogging the forum. Its been an exciting week. Karyn I will check at Lowes and see if they have some left. The one I got is small enough to ship. I'll send you that one and get 2 more. Patty might go with me and do some enabling, lol. They didn't have any at Walmart and with the high wind we had today what they had outside looked terrible. I drove an allamanda around in the buggy for a while though, lol. There should be lots of stuff on the clearance rack after today at Lowes, lol. I am going to have to get an advance on my payday, lol.

Re: Thryallis... I planted one about maybe Sept last up here in the Dallas area. We has wet/cold spell a few weeks back and most plants were covered in ice for about a day. The Thryallis came out of it fine. Still has a few leaves and will probably come back fine in the month. Its an Aggie suggested plant for Texas too. Think they are a bit hardier than some websites make them out to be. I had a couple of suggestions. For a bushier look try Mexican sunflower. You can get seeds form many in state sources or general seed sites. For the Trellis, a native cross vine would be great but they can sometimes take years to bloom. The flowers are yellow/orange/pinky and IMO a bit nicer looking than normal trumpet vines. Something else you might try is Purple hyacinth bean. Last summer when it was 107 I saw these thriving and still flowering until the first cold snap. I collected some pods and hoping those sprout. Cant say enough good things about Plumabago. Bought a few that were on discount and destined for the dumpster if they were sold that week end. This was maybe Oct. Thought I would just get them in for next year but the started blooming again and we had blooms until around christmas

Perhaps I should start over with a new post. Maybe I will. But to answer your question Rhome - Here is my existing kitchen and the surrounding rooms. I'll work on drawing a more clear layout on graph paper with all dimensions and dark lines. Basically, the remodel must include a keeping room, island, breakfast room, cubbies (like you'd see in a mudroom), a desk and all the regular appliances. So, what would you do to make this work? Janet, Rhome, Blfenton - I don't bake much but currently this is where I already bake. For the most part, I get everything I need from the fridge before I start. Baking will probably also happen on the island but the cabinets in the corner would "store" the baking stuff. Blfenton - "BK" is supposed to be "Bookcase" but apparently I was tired last night when I added it. I would thinking about doing storage on the back side of the island but am not going to do it. In all honesty, I probably just need to make the addition another foot or two but then it is even longer and puts more distance from the fridge and the existing part of the kitchen. The fridge is where it is so it doesn't block traffic flow and it close to the island, cook area, prep area, k.table and still accessible to "outsiders" not working in the kitchen - but yes, it is VERY far from the other side of the kitchen, dbl ovens especially. But does that matter? Believe it or not, I have thought through a lot of different options (like having the desk in the keeping room but then I can't have cubbies, and it's far from the kitchen table - which I need b/c of little ones) but it is a tricky space - long and narrow. I appreciate all your comments though and certainly need "fresh eyes" to make it the best it can be. Off to prep dinner. I will check back in later tonight after the kids are in bed!

FYI, a gable is just the wall under the pointy part of the roof. The decorative boards on your garage gable are, I think, battens, which are just pieces of wood that cover up the seams between the wood siding. They are primarily decorative, and if you don't like them, you could probably take them off. (On older Tudor homes, you might see a similar effect created with actual beams, and those would be structural and not just cosmetic). Because your house has the whole California/Mediterranean thing going on, I don't think that highlighting the battens is going to be in keeping with the style of the home, so I would favor painting them to blend in. You could remove them, but you might find that makes the garage gable too plain and boring. As others have suggested, you will have to choose a paint that works with the stone, unless you want to remove the stone. The stone definitely has some of that peachy thing going on, although it has some more muted grays that you could work with. Based on your pics and my images for Waynesboro Taupe (that is, take this with a grain of salt since computers don't always render color right), I don't really like the Waynesboro Taupe with the stone. Here are some colors I liked better: Chelsea Gray Gettysburg Gray Sandy Hook Gray Fairview Taupe Iced Marble (this one runs to blue-gray, which might be too much out on a limb for your neighborhood) I think that you could keep black as an accent color (I like black and taupe together) for the shutters and maybe the front door. I would like to see the garage door go dark, either matching the wall color or even going a few shades darker. The white draws too much attention to what really isn't a great feature of the house (I'm not a fan of prominent garage doors in general, let's not make them stand out more than they have to.) Benjamin Moore's color viewer has a sample picture called "Ageless Tudor" that has some characteristics in common with your home (stone, board and batten gable) that you might want to use for experimenting. Or I think you can upload your own photo, although I can't vouch for how well that works.