Susie, We could put the footprint of our house on the deck as well. I never imagined that it would be as big as it is until after my contractor put all the posts and banding up. Only two neighbors have made comments - one asked if we were going to invite the Pittsburgh Symphony (I HATE PITTSBURGH) to play and # two asked if he could land his helicopter on it (he is a medi-thingie pilot)? Six months later and I am still drilling and screwing (129 screws per board and I have thus far gone through in excess of 480 boards) whenever mother nature cooperates. Going to spend the best part of the winter in the garage building the bench seating so that when spring comes around I can put up the "Sidewinder" water slide for Oscar and Jake-Dude, which is why it so big in the first place. I can see it now - all the posts about how there is a Porch and Deck Forum (not nearly as much fun as this one). Sorry, (but not really). Mrs. No keeps asking me where we are going to get the money to put furniture on the darn thing, and I keep telling her that is her problem :-) Seems to me that any furniture is going to get in the way of the kids trikes and roller skates and stuff!

You should have a USB A/B Cable that came with the Deskjet 930C. Look on the back of the printer for the square plugin, right above the parallel plugin. I buy my USB A/B Cables at the 99 cent store, if you can't find the one that came packaged with the printer.

Although I agree with fondantfancy, the industry frowns on tiling over ceramic mosiacs (1x1's and 2x2's). Although I don't know why for sure, I would imagine that it has something to do with the very light amount of thinset used to adhere them. As for the thinset to use, I won't go over a layer of tile with anything other than an unmodified thinset mixed with a liquid latex additive full strength, The reason is latex content. You won't get anywhere near the amount of latex in any modified thinset that you will when mixing an unmodified with the additive (and no, you can't mix a modified thinset with a liquid additive-- the polymers will react badly with each other). My favorites are one of two combinations-- Laticrete's 317 thinset mixed with their 333 additive, or Mapei's Kerabond thinset mixed with their Keralastic additive. Either one will hold on and not let go for anything.

I love old houses - the quality, the history (I was THRILLED when I saw the names of the owners of our then under 5 year old house on the 1930 census), and the style. If I don't win the lottery, I will never live in another "new" build (80's and up) because the vast majority of non custom built homes are just not up to my standards. Of the 4 new builds I lived in in my life, only two were decent. The last decent one had been built by a guy who had previously done commercial building. It was built to last and I have no doubt that one would still stand after a tornado. Because of the commercial background, the finish "prettyness" wasn't there, but those details were added later, by us. The last new build was a nightmare. The "quality" semi custom build was so lacking that I can't even imagine how much worse some of the mass produced really poor quality houses will last. Within the first 5 years the deck was partially rotting (no flashing between the house and it), the roof leaked at the chimney, many of the windows wouldn't work well and/or leaked at the top, lots of the trim wood was rotting out and the floors of both 1st and 2nd floor creaked in almost every spot as did the entire staircase. And then of course you had the "minor" issues like one couldn't use a hairdryer in the master bath before resetting the outlet in the upstairs bath if someone had used a hairdryer in it before the master bath. And the defective shingles requiring a complete reroof at 3 years is hard to forget. My brother has a friend who last year moved into a house in one of those new mass built neighbourhoods in South Carolina. Brand new. 6 months after moving in, a water pipe junction burst (iirc, they thought it hadn't been correctly connected or something) in the attic while they were on vacation and ruined most of the house and their items. The builder denied responsibility and the insurance company was blaming it on the builder since the house was still under "warranty" and it was turning into a huge mess, to say the least. New does not equal free of work and I'd rather strip wallpaper than deal with finding out what corners were cut.