"I would like to think it's cheaper because nobody wants to buy anything from the company that single handily destroyed most of Prince William Sound in 1989...." ********** Maybe I am missing something. I spent two days touring Valdez and Prince William Sound recently and found no damage nor animosities among the people who live there. I also spent two weeks along the pipe line and found everything in order and well kept. I am at a loss as to this hostility, they spent billions cleaning up and were instructed to stop because they were going too far. Exxon/Moble must be doing something correctly for I see them frequently being critized for making obsene profits. I fear few people realize how much gasoline we use. I saw in "NC State Magazine," that we here in just NC alone used over 441,000,000 gallons of gasoline LAST MONTH. What are we going to replace that amount of energy with?

"they are not huge nor are they that heavy" The glass is custom 1/2" thick glass 5 1/2 ft tall sitting on top of a 2ft high tub wall. Each pane is well over 100lbs, there are 3 panes across (pic attached). If a single pane is on the floor and you've got 2 guys prepped to lift it, i guess it's not that heavy. If you're a kid taking a shower and a 100+ pound pane whose top height is 7 1/2 ft from the floor comes down on you, that's a different story. Edit: i wanna say it's actually closer to 200 lbs per pane because i have glass in my other shower too, and it is much lighter than the glass in this shower.

kec01-"dreamgarden, Where has Martin Weiss actually worked so that he could gather what you call "any real experience in the finance industry)"? Are you a salesperson for his work? " No. I am not a salesperson for his work and I don't paid to spread news about him, I do it as a public service. I receive his free newsletter but do not invest with his brokerage. I like him because he is one of the few experts in the business who is willing to tell it like it is. Here is his background so you can determine what 'real experience' he has had in the financial industry. Far more than those writers for financial publications that keep telling us that now is the time to buy..... ;) MARTIN D. WEISS is one of the nation's leading providers of a wide range of investment information. He is chairman of The Weiss Group, Inc. which consists of four separate corporations, including Weiss Research, Inc., the publisher of the Safe Money Report. The Weiss companies companies have helped thousands of individuals make informed investment decisions and objectively discriminate between strong and weak stocks, insurance companies, HMOs, banks and S&Ls. Dr. Weiss began his career in 1971 when he founded Weiss Research, dedicated to evaluating the safety of financial institutions and investments for consulting clients. After spending two years in Japan as a Fulbright Scholar studying management techniques at Japanese financial institutions, Dr. Weiss returned to the United States in 1980 to begin issuing formal safety ratings on banks and savings institutions. His firm issued the first independent insurance ratings in 1989, the first ratings of brokerage firms in 1992, and the first HMO ratings in 1994. Acclaimed for his accurate, objective evaluations, Dr. Weiss has appeared on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNBC, and network news programs, including The Today Show. He has been quoted in hundreds of newspapers and magazines, including The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times, Esquire Magazine, Money, Business Week, Fortune, and The Institutional Investor. Plus, books by Weiss have been published in Japanese and serialized in major Japanese business magazines and newspapers such as Economisto and the Japan Economic Journal. Articles have also appeared in the London Spectator and other European economic journals. His Weiss Ratings, based largely on the Weiss proprietary computer model, has won acclaim by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) for having beaten the competition by three to one in accuracy. Dr. Weiss has testified before Congress and the National Conference of Insurance Legislators regarding insurance company stability, where he has proposed legislation requiring full financial disclosure to the consumer. He testified before the U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations when it considered the financial difficulties befalling Blue Cross/Blue Shield member companies. He is...

Sorry to be MIA - life and keeping an eye on by GC and subcontractors got in the way...I followed this for a little while, then got out my checkbook and wrote a check for the full amount of the bill, not because I felt that it was fair or that I got what I had asked for, but simply because I didn't want to talk to the designer again. And I was really turned off by some of the "scolding" I received, simply for asking what others would do in my situation... And to those of you who were sympathetic and offered their interpretations, thank you for the support and kind words! Here's my thoughts on the entire situation: I was naive about this entire renovation project. I trusted "professionals" and now I know that not everyone has the same ethical nature that I have. I honestly thought that by starting with "professional" architects, having them recommend "professional" GCs, having the GC (and architects) recommend "professional" decorator that I would end up with people who knew what they were doing and who would make sure that I understood the process. I started each conversation by explaining that this is the first time I've ever undertaken a project of this scope/nature and what my goal was. What I found was that the architects would cover for mistakes/omissions made by the GC, the GC didn't check the work of his subcontractors and would often cover for them, and the decorator was completely a joke - recommending that I get rid of furniture, then, 6 months later, recommend that I purchase almost the exact same piece...I end my project much wiser, much poorer, and with not the best opinion of people who call themselves professionals. It's not that the GC hasn't made the subcontractors return to fix their errors/problems and that the architects didn't back me up when I pointed out the GC's errors/omissions, but it was clear that unless I did the research and inspections, no one was looking out for my best interest, although, when explaining what their role in the process was, both the architects and GC proclaimed to be my employee, my advocate and to work in my best interest. Hahaha...I still chuckle when I realize how I swallowed that hook, line and sinker. As to the decorator dilemma, I appreciate those posters who offered insight, advice and were sympathetic. I think I must have struck an extremely sensitive nerve with some, especially palimpsest and marcolo, as I felt they were quite defensive about the situation and I didn't particularly care for what seemed to be a condescending tone in their posts. I didn't ask for an itemized bill from the decorator because I didn't want to be charged $120/hour for the decorator to sit down and list all of the time that was supposedly spent giving thought to my project and I honestly felt that given my experience with the decorator, I'd have about $300 tied up in getting an itemized bill - which still wouldn't have made any difference in the bill. Was I going to say, um, did you really spend 3 hours looking through magazines to select that sofa - you know - the same one that you selected for another client? Rip me off once, shame on you. Rip me off again, shame on me :) What irritates me the most about the designer is that I specifically asked for recommendations for floor stain and paint colors and instead I got a bunch of furniture and fabric recommendations. I can't help but to think that there was more money for a decorator to make by selling me furniture than by recommending floor stain and paint colors, thus the decision to start with the furniture. If furniture and fabric needed to be chosen before paint colors, shouldn't A PROFESSIONAL have educated me to this point? Shouldn't there have even been a discussion as to how we intended to spend time in the rooms and if there were any special pieces of furniture that we wanted to incorporate? I don't think it's unreasonable to expect to have that conversation prior to someone charging me for their time to make recommendations as to what furniture I would like. Would an attorney go ahead and draw up a divorce settlement proposal without asking me what I wanted in it? What assets we had to settle? would a doctor go ahead and prescribe tests and drugs without asking what was wrong...what my symptoms were? Then why should a decorator feel it's ok to recommend furniture purchases when what I've asked for was stain recommendations and paint color suggestions? I'm almost finished with my renovation and have to say that I'm doing a much better job than the "professional" that I hired...Sorry to offend those who thought so highly of the decorator's suggestions, but they weren't appropriate for our family and personally I feel taken advantage of by the decorator. For what it's worth....