Swinging a hammer yourself...doesn't get any better. You're not good at the creative part. OK. Are you sure? There are people who some things just come naturally. I've known some. Most creative people I've known got to be creative though hard work, risk taking and never saying they weren't good at it. I think it's more of choice. If you're more interested in having the details then for sure let someone else do the creation. But if you're interested in the creating part you should go for it. You'll likely surprise yourself and it opens up a whole new world. The last thing is home size, even room size. When I bought the house we're living in I made plans for expanding it to 2000 sq ft. Gutted it with that expectation. I don't remember why but at some point I asked myself why 2000 sq ft. Because that's how big a house is I thought. Only reason. When I gutted the kitchen I found that originally it had been tiny. The house was originally 900 sq ft and was big for the neighborhood. Pretty big families with kids were raised in these homes. Why did my wife and I need a home that was 2-3 times larger? Started searching the web and found all the tiny/small house stuff and I was hooked. The reason I bring this up is because building a small house well is easier and cheaper than building a big house. That may seem duh, but it's real easy to dismiss it. It's harder to dismiss when you've driven your 30,000 th nail. The time and money saved can be directed into things you really want. A few months ago I re-roofed the house. Think it was 21 squares. The whole time I'm up there I'm thinking how dumb this is. I don't even use 2/3 of the house. I seriously considered tearing down part of the house. Central air went out, on the roof deal. $8000 to replace so I got a split system that came pre-charged and could install myself. $2000 and the house is so much more comfortable and quiet. And best of all no ducts in the attic. There have been many more benefits. Smaller is worth a serious consideration.

I apologize for the length of this post....but, for the benefit of anyone still reading this above discussion about permeability of various brick coatings, I would like to add my experience dealing with leaking substrate to help others, I would hope, and conclude with products I've found to work somewhat. And I realize this isn't my original post, but I end my statement with a question for those with opinions on how we all go about letting brick breathe that is also letting water in! In my opinion, the two gentlemen discussing waterproofing brick vs. letting it breathe are both correct. So, it just depends, and it's almost a catch -22. I'm remodeling a large, modern home. My brick and mortar are very porous. I know Rilem Tube testing can be inconsistent and tricky, but the water placed in the tube soaks right into my brick and mortar very quickly. We did the Rilem Tube test on each - - mortar and brick. I've had large commercial waterproofers look at my situation, as well as a smaller waterproofing company with many years of experience in residential. I've had roofers and brick masons investigate. We have an area gutted in the garage where we can see the back side of the brick. The plywood sheeting was rotten on the studs when we gutted this area. Keep in mind this is a modern home designed and owned by an architect. He decided it would be a good idea to have a brick upper porch by his front door. This upper porch also extends around the side of this house OVER the first bay of the garage - -which is where we have gutted from the interior. Wow..bad idea on the architect's part. By the way, we're "peeling layers" in various areas of the house to fix many things including this porous mortar/brick. There is no Tyvek on the house (about a 25 year old home). Just felt paper sheeting over the plywood. Water testing with power washers and water hose have been done on the roof, at windows, etc. We've gutted other interior areas of the home and haven't discovered any damage to the interior walls. We've never had water coming into the house - -even at the basement level. However, in another area of the garage (not under a sidewalk!), I have seen water on the floor after days of hard rain. The brick/mortar is simply leaking when there is a wind driven rain or if it pours rain for consecutive days. I've done extensive research on permeability (WVT etc). I've always believed we should let brick breathe. I've heard so many nightmare stories where brick wasn't prepped or painted correctly, or perhaps a leak was coming from the roof or a window and getting behind painted brick. I've also researched Romabio mineral paint and love the product; however, I have to stop this water penetration. So, I've proceeded with products from Foxfire Enterprises Inc. (based in San Antonio). They have brick/concrete cleaning, as well as waterproofing products. The cleaners are amazing by the way. Their products are environmentally friendly and apparently you can even drink the cleaning products (wouldn't try that, but the company owner has!). This company was hired to waterproof the Playboy Mansion and went up against other waterproofing products in a test before they were the ones selected to do such a huge and historically significant job. Furthermore, every Walt Disney World building is now "spec'd" with Foxfire. Meaning their builders are required to apply Foxfire products to their buildings. The product I've used penetrates the mortar up to inches and hardens like glass. We've had to come back with two coats on that area below the sidewalk (which is above the garage door). So far it is stopping most of the rain penetration but not all. The penetrating sealer needs a certain amount of mortar in the vertical joints between bricks to really take hold. Some of mine don't have that. Furthermore, the brick itself is porous and this product doesn't leave a coating on the brick. Some of it penetrates, but not much. So, apparently I've sealed up the mortar but not the brick, at this point. We are probably going to apply a third coat of the penetrating sealer around this problem area and see if third time's the charm. We've looked for cracks, but maybe we're missing something. The penetrating sealer does span small hairline cracks, but again, we may be missing something. I'm also going to do a test in a more simple (just vertical brick) area on the other side of the garage to see if I can get water to penetrate and show up on the floor. So what about the actual surface of the brick? If you use a Foxfire penetrating sealer, you need to top coat it with their "surface sealer" (which needs to be reapplied probably every 5 years). Then you've actually waterproofed the brick, in addition to the mortar (which really needed that first step of applying the penetrating sealer). Instead of doing step 2 and applying the "surface sealer", the other option is to prime/paint it after you've done the penetrating sealer. This is where I'm at. I know the penetrating sealer isn't stopping every drop of water. I'm going to call the company and see how permeable the surface sealer is. I know the perms of the various primers/paints. And you're right, they aren't very "breathable", but I'm not sure I have a choice. I bet if I use Loxon primer or Loxon Block Surfacer primer and then Sherwin Williams Duration exterior latex, I'd stop the water penetration. I also know my brick/mortar won't breathe very well if I do that. If water somehow gets behind the brick in the future (roof leak; window leak etc), I'm in trouble. I also don't know if Romabio would work over the Foxfire penetrating sealer. Apparently the Foxfire penetrating sealer doesn't leave a coating on the surface, but Romabio also needs to penetrate into the mortar from what I've read. I would like to see these two Texas companies work together and test their products' compatibility. I'm not planning on using any metallic wallpaper, but I was going to use some wallpaper in bathrooms, for example. Now I'm reconsidering that because I'm not sure if any wallpaper breathes (metallic or not). We are tuck pointing a few areas. And yes, we are also using NP1 caulk in a few areas. This caulk is pretty darned solid. I'm confident it will last a long time, but by using it, you're creating future maintenance. If this caulk fails, I know...water will go in and now the brick is sealed up and not breathing that well! So, let me pose this question....what if you water proof your brick as David Jensen suggests above, but you place a large number of weep holes around the perimeter of your house and above the window lintels to at least allow for some "breathability"? Anyone want to chime in on that method? It's been a long process off and on for two years for me to come to this conclusion. If anyone has experience who can help others, I'd love to hear. Thanks.

I had virtually the same experience with Amy that sas95 did, Additionally, I sent her pics of rooms/windows and sight lines from space to space with info on compass direction so she'd have a reference point for the light. She wanted to see how spaces relate to each other and to know how the spaces would be used. I've been involved with paint and color for a long time as a decorative painter, had a faux finishing business, have painted murals, stenciled, stained designs onto floors, worked in show houses...... color doesn't scare me and 9 times out of 10 I've been happy with my paint choices in my homes (although trust me there have been some head scratchers!). But when faced with our first new build where everything is going to get painted at once and I know it's got to be fluid to work with ongoing decorating and furniture buying for quite some time, I wanted help. I had a direction in mind and wanted one *safe* non-color to use throughout the entire house which Amy understood. But she helped me, nudged me just a bit beyond my vision of safe because not only would it have been wrong but it would have been b-o-r-i-n-g. I get that it sounds counter intuitive getting color suggestions long distance but Amy has honed her process in such a way that the hurdles you anticipate just aren't an issue. And I'm confident Lori has an equally effective system that she uses. There has to be a rapport and I personally find MK to be off-putting but that's why there's chocolate and vanilla.

You're a forum admin, aren't you? No, sadly, but if they approached me with a job offer, I'd have a hard time turning it down. This forum is too much fun. I gotta say, Summer, you aren't the first one to ask me if I'm an admin on a forum. Maybe it's better that I'm not, if people are likely to suspect me of it!