DestinyVP - have you installed and used them yet? Quality control of the products at HD and Lowes aren't perfect, so I would imagine you get a lot more duds in the bunch at a store like that, but based on what you paid it's still probably a net win! good for you! Jujubean - once i learn a new skill i'm usually happy to share it, but in this case if i never see another lightbulb it'll be too soon. :) Basically, decide what color you want first as the same kelvin scale applies to all types of lights whether you get all CFL, all LED or mix and match. If you want soft white like incandescent, your shopping will be a lot easier! and if you're not in a time crunch that will make it easier too as you can order from lots of different places to get exactly what you want. Seww - "green built" homes in our area refer only to using materials and systems that are energy-saving. it doesn't factor in, unfortunately, anything else like wasteful use of materials on site, and we are not restricted to renewable resources or anything like that. Nonetheless, I'm so grateful we found a builder that's so keen on energy efficiency here.

Hi Dee, I am glad you are here. I checked out the menu at Limoncello and I can picture you, Raeanne and me sipping chilled white wine while we chat over lunch! We need to pull that off again soon. I get so much done by getting up at 4am every morning! On the days I ride I am in my barn at 4:15 to give the girls a snack and muck a little. Then back to the house for tea and change into my riding clothes. At 4:45 I am back in the barn grooming and tacking. By 5:15 I am in the saddle and my ride takes about an hour and 15 mins. So, back at the barn by 6:30 latest to finish chores. Then to the chicken coop to let them out. I am back in the house by 7am and have an hour to shower and get ready for work! I leave my house at 8:15 and am in my office at 8:30! That's a 15 minute commute. Then there is after work! It's easy for me to get up that early this time of year - I love the early morning when it's light enough to see it! We need you all to weigh in on who the biggest AI fan is at this thread ladies. You too JOhn if you are lurking.

Zinsser is neither more nor less effective than the Killz. One coat MAY do it, but two DEFINITELY will. Even if I were using the Zinnser (whichever way that goes, two n's or two s's, LOL!) I would still use 2 coats. It's better to just bear down and do what you KNOW will work than to take a chance thinking one coat MIGHT do it. I have no brand loyalty. Either will work. I chose the Killz because it is easier to find and costs less in my area. Coming along and claiming that "TSP will cause paint failure" and providing absolutely no evidence to back that claim up isn't going to fly. For every "pro" who claims TSP is awful there are others (professionals) who have used it properly and successfully for literally decades. Dirtex, btw, provides absolutely no deglossing whatsoever. I don't think it provides much in the way of degreasing to speak of either. TSP does both. However TSP can damage tile and grout so we'll be using something else in the bathroom once the tub has been hauled out of there. If TSP has caused paint failure for you, it wasn't the TSP that caused it. It was your incorrect application and use of it. Proper use can be finicky and time-consuming from the point of view of a professional who just wants to get in there, slap the paint up, and get out. However it is very effective and well worth the effort when you are the one living with the paint job and you don't want it to peel, blister, or otherwise fail to adhere in a few years. When we get around to doing the exterior, I WILL be washing the entire house down with TSP. It is the best thing I've ever found for getting rid of that chalky residue. I can't use a power washer or any sort of wire brush, nor sanding, because the exterior is clad in 60 year old asbestos shingle. So me, a bucket of rags soaking in TSP, and a regular garden hose will be doing it all. I've seen other houses in the neighborhood that are peeling, blistering, and have the new paint flaking off because the professionals they hired to paint didn't bother to prep, or didn't prep properly. MY house won't look like that when I'm done. I have had well over 50 years of success with TSP when prepping old walls for paint, between me and my father. I'd say 100 years, but I don't actually know how long its been on the market, LOL! @dchall_san_antonio - you did your paint prep with stuff I wouldn't have used nor would I recommend using it, especially for mitigation of cigarette smoke residue, but if it worked for you, great. And OF COURSE you had to prime - even using the correct cleaning methods and substances, you will never get all that stuff off. Any encapsulating primer will do. The 2 with which I am familiar are the Killz ORIGINAL (not the other primers they make) or the Zinsser BIN. You used the latter. I'm not surprised it helped. And I'm not surprised nothing worked until you primed over it with an encapsulating primer. I am surprised you got away with cleaning just the 2 rooms. There is tar and nicotine in every single room in this house, even the one no one ever smoked in because there was a parrot in there. They kept the door to that room closed. There was LESS of it, but it was still there and still not something you want to try to paint over. In the room where the chain-smoker lived (all 3 adults in this household smoked but one was a chain-smoker), I thought the walls were yellow. The same shade of yellow. They weren't. 3 walls had been painted a peachy cream, and the 4th wall was (supposed to be) white. That was tar and nicotine coating the walls, floor, ceiling and baseboards, ever surface in the house has this guck on it. Trust me, you are VERY lucky you got away with doing as little as you did, LOL! Good on you for taking the job on and seeing it through. @jn3344 - I thought that might have been what you meant. Nope - still working my way through this project. My son was too tired to go out yesterday or the day before so we've had a 2 day break, but we're off to the races today. I get tired too, but he's not used to this type of physical labor and we've both got a thing about heights, which makes doing the 10' ceiling kind of nerve wracking even on the scaffolding, LOL! So I'm careful to be extra meticulous up there. The only time I've seen the kind of blotchiness you're talking about was my very first paint job on my own, when I let a sales guy talk me into their one-coat (allegedly) primer/paint combo to go up on brand new unprimed drywall. Sure enough, it soaked right into the drywall like it was a sponge and looked awful. It was pretty obvious it was NOT working right away so I didn't waste much time or material on it, just went out and got a good primer, double coated with that (its a habit of mine to double coat with primer on new or very old walls anyway but this REALLY needed the double coating). Years later the new owners contacted me through friends to find out what I had used because they were just now getting around to repainting it and wanted to know what I had used that held up for over a quarter century, LOL! Hopefully we will finish the washing and rinsing today or tomorrow. Then I'll go around with the orbital sander to get the worst of the paint runs and any other problem areas while my son comes behind me to clean up the dust. Then I'll be stripping trim. Then priming everything. Then we'll be in the homestretch. In some ways this is the hardest job I've ever done, between my general debility these days and having to clean tar and nicotine off (that's a first for me, I've never seen this before, lucky me, LOL!) In other ways, its the easiest. This is the first time I've ever been able to paint a completely empty house. It makes a lot of things lots easier.

Consider yourselves fortunate that you can get something altered down. I am 5' 11" and before back surgery I was 6'. You can't add length. As far as shoes, It is just as impossible to find a 9.5 narrow (the size I wore pre kids) and now an 11 shoe, as it is to find a small shoe, but more and more manufacturers are adding larger sizes in shoes to accomodate for the change in society. Stuart Weitzman was my go to shoe too Flo. One of the few designers that made a 9.5 narrow shoe at the time. You would have loved working in the shoe department at Nordstroms. The small feet gals were given all the sample sizes and the designers would come in and talk about their shoes and give them samples too. Ferragamo especially. I was so jealous!