By their definition I'm a red neck in a number of ways. But I'm an uppity red neck. My claw foot bath tub planted with flowers) sits on slabs of Alexandrite that I scrounged from the local marble and granite shop! My satellite dish is the roof of my gazebo that has wrought iron furniture in it. My tan is a farmer's tan. I didn't make anything out of beer cans but have LOTS of things made from bottles. My fountain is made from galvanized tubs. I'm proud to be a redneck if that is how you define it!!! ~~Mimi

WHHHHAaaaa......"ME".....pulling a prank like THAT....?!?!? I'm "sincerely" offended...;-) Yes....I hate to make you all go "all the way out" to the Paint-Forum, click into it and.....oh my....it IS a lot of work....;-) BUT... gotta show all the PITA prep-work/details for a flawless job! That's the REAL secret! Faron

Well, there are lots of things that offend my exquisite decorating sensibilities, but most of them are in other people's houses, not mine, and they have to live there, I don't, so I guess it doesn't matter what I think. And, of course, vice versa. If people don't like the looks of my piano, they don't have to play it. In fact, they don't even have to look at it. To tell the truth, they can just stay home in their own lovely pianoless houses and enjoy looking at the big old honking blank spots on their walls. That's how much I value other people's opinions about my house & what I have in it. Nada. What, though, if something that I have offends me? Well, I could do as Jesus recommended we do when dealing with, say, body parts that offend us--pluck them out or cut them off--but then, this is one of those times where he's speaking metaphorically, not literally. Ya gotta be careful about that. He didn't really mean we should cut off our hands or yank out our eyeballs. How, then, would we read the Bible? Or even turn the pages? No, it's just an expression. But his point is clear: don't ALLOW the thing--hand, eye, piano, whatever--to offend you. Just deal with it. Same here. Sure, some pianos are more attractive than others, but a piano (for the fortunate) is just a fact of life, and therefore something to work with (or maybe around), not against. I, myself, don't have a piano, but I do have a CD player, and I can tell you this: it's not particularly handsome. That is, it isn't a sleek techno-marvel, it's not an expensive designer icon of Cutting Edge Modernism that I get points for even owning. It's a $79 no-brand cheapie that I picked up at Circuit City a week before they went down the tubes. But the thing works, and I'm not ashamed of it or the fact that I don't have something fancier, so it's not hidden away in a special cabinet to conceal its offensive cheapness, it's right out there in the open for everybody to see. In fact, several hundred thousand people have seen my cheapo CD player because it was in my O at Home shoot, and what I loved was that Roland Bello, the photographer, nixed the suggestion of another person to remove it--it & a messy stack of CDs--from the shot. "No, let's leave it right where it is. It's real." In a day when overzealous stylists typically remove any shameful vestige of normal, everyday reality--the dog's slimy chew toy, the slightly past-their-prime flowers in the vase, the trashy paperback novel on the bedside table, the copy of TV Guide on the coffee table--from the photos in Glossy Home magazine, or the 'After' shots on TV decorating shows, it's refreshing to see a talented professional embracing the simply, ordinary facts of life. Why are such things so shame-ridden? They shouldn't be. In fact, in one of the most famous photos of any 2Oth Century interior, Nancy Lancaster's famous yellow drawing room in London, you can practically smell the 2-day old water in the vase of flowers on the desk. But, then, such matter-of-factness is really no surprise coming from her. One of my favorite NL lines is "If every piece is perfect a room becomes a museum & lifeless." Short, easy answer to the problem of what to do about offensive eyesores? Stop looking at 'em. Slimy vase water, cheap CD players, big screen TVs, pianos--even 'ugly' pianos: they're all evidence of real life going on in a room, and therefore, they're good. Really good. So don't sweat it. Magnaverde Rule No. 4O: Sometimes, the easiest thing to change is our attitude.

Beagles said exactly what I was thinking. To be honest, your old hand drawn sketch was too difficult for me to really understand. I knew what you were trying to do - figure out if it would work. To see if your concepts were sound. I get that. But I can also understand how the more technical-minded folks on GW would get annoyed when your responses were brushing off what they considered to be the bones of your project. I read most of your posts (here and on th other forums) and it always seemed like you were saying "eh, we'll figure out if the house is going to fall over later...but look at my pretty inspiration pictures". (if that wasn't what you were saying I apologize but that's the impression I got) Not knowing if the bones are good enough seemed to be the big stumbling block in the lines of communication. You want to know if it'll look right and everyone else is trying to ask if it's even possible. But now with the new plan sketch it's much clearer to me what you're trying to do (maybe it's the engineer in me). As far as your first floor layout, I like it but I would consider shrinking the opening to the living room on the front wall and move the hall/coat closet into that corner by the front door. So when you do have guests coming in they don't have to walk to the center of the house to get their jackets. Your clawfoot tub bathroom is nice but I think that if you moved the sink to the common wall with your master bath then you could maybe add a small linen closet where the sink is now. That way guests wouldn't have to go into your bedroom space to get extra TP or towels or anything. Just some thoughts. I have no idea what to tell you about the roof lines and outside view of the home without seeing what your mock up looks like. I'm not good at picturing things in my mind. And macybaby I have a picture of myself looking much the same except I was covered in plaster dust from our demo. We haven't gotten to the mudding stage yet, but I'm sure I'll be covered from head to toe again. We knew going into our kitchen renovation that the sunporch would have to come off and be rebuilt. There was essentially no structure. As soon as we took the trim off we could see that the corners were made from 2x4's in an L shape...we thought we might have load bearing windows. No headers back there at all. The only we saved was the roof. Luckily we didn't find any other major damage in the rest of the kitchen that we didn't anticipate. We're tearing out the floor down to the joists and even some of those are going to be repaired (sistering new joists to them to even out the floor)...but again, we knew to anticipate this before starting. Our kitchen budget was roughly $25k (not including a 5% contingency) and I think we're going to come in at $26k. I consider that a success. Of course we were hoping to come in closer to $15k but we did all of our investigation work a head of time and knew what kind of budget we needed to do it right. Of course I would've rather been thinking about paint colors and stain for the cabinets but I kind of figured, why waste my time and tease myself thinking about the pretty stuff if I didn't even know we could afford it. And the only reason our kitchen is getting done in the budget we have is because we're also doing all the work ourselves (with the help of some friends). All the demo, framing, flooring, electrical, plumbing, drywall...everything.