You can use Dirtex to clean your walls. Sanding with a power sander is fine, but you will find that it gets dusty doing it that way. I may use a pole sander for bulk sanding and then use my orbital sander on stubborn drips or areas that hand sanding just isn't cutting it. If you do power sand all the walls, then cleaning them is probably overkill. The sander is going to remove any contaminants that may affect adhesion of the new paint. Be sure to remove any sanding dust before painting.

Dear Lori, The best advice I can give you is to buy a good scrapbook idea book. It can give you the basics, and be there later in the middle of the night (yeah, after the addiction takes hold you will do it at all hours.LOL) when everyone else is gone to bed, to help answer your questions and give you good ideas on what to do with your pages. There are plenty available at Walmart. I think there is one there for about $12.00 (good money spent) that has a brownish cover that is great for beginners. Penny

Gourds that have grown to maturity will easily spend the winter outside, stored in a sheltered, dry spot...it doesn't matter if they freeze. The outside dries to a hard shell and will last almost indefinitely. I have several I have left outside, in the garden, for YEARS as an experiment, to see how long they would last. I come across them as I tend the garden every spring and kick them to another part of the garden. :-) The problem is....gourds are very much a hot weather fruit and require a long growing season to truly mature to the stage where they will successfully cure to a hard shell after being picked. I live in SW Ontario near Sarnia and have grown gourds for years. Even with our longer, milder summer, I still have to plan my gourd growing carefully, to get gourds that mature on the vine before the cold weather comes and the vine dies off. I start gourd seeds early and grow them indoors under lights or in the greenhouse to get them to a nice size plant before the last frost date is past and it safe to plant them outdoors. I "harden them off" before planting outdoors. I take old 2 gallon plastic nursery pots and cut the bottom out, then place one around each gourd plant. It protects the young plant from the wind for a while and also creates a nice warm microclimate for the plant until it becomes more of a vine and starts to climb out of the enclosure. Then I remove them. So...yes, you can put your gourds out into a nonheated shed for the winter. Having some mold grow on the shell is normal and can be cleaned off later. You REALLY don't want that mold in your house anyway! I'm sorry to say the ones that have gone soft are starting to rot and won't get a hard shell....time to throw them in the compost pile. Those ones didn't get mature enough on the vine before being picked. I hope you get some that are successful!

@Sammy Thank you for your questions. Please see the responses below: 1. I agree with the space limitations! I really like the look of a wall mounted oven, so was going for that. But you may be right that we do not really have the space for it. 2. The original drawing is with the sink and dw in the island, but we relocated to the counter top since we wanted to have a big open island to prepare food on, serve food on as well when we entertain. 3. The pantry used to be where the fridge is now. We replaced it with the fridge. The fridge used to be right next to the living room which we did not like. In place of the fridge there is now counter top and cabinets. We will be adding a pull out pantry next to where the fridge currently is. 4. Click on it to enlarge! :)