I love that staircase. It’s a fun mix of the white trim work with a bit of contemporary stainless cable. I think this will give you the biggest bang design for the buck
@Mom22039 - that wood in the link is beautiful! That is how alder should look. I can’t believe it’s oak, it has no yellowness, and not a real busy grain. Make sure you see a good real life sample and bring it to your space and look at it there in natural light.
I’m not crazy about farmhouse sinks, with that front panel they have. I did get one big sink though. I didn’t want it extra deep, but it feels deep enough. Especially if you are tall, those extra deep sinks are going to hurt your back.
@momofsenior1 - I found myself cleaning a lot after my kitchen reno and hating all the weeks of dust. My final clean included spraying Bona on a dust mop and dusting off the walls with it. That dust mop was pretty dirty by the time I was done! Good luck.
Hahaha @BunsenBurner, that’s awesome. Don’t think it’s going to happen though. 
I always wanted a cool floor inlay:
[wood compass](https://st.hzcdn.com/simgs/1641ce3002810702_9-7655/beach-style.jpg)
I wonder if anyone makes these for LVT flooring.
We have had a Kohler three bowl sink for 25 years with our custom built home. My mom had the Kohler sink with two bowls and a flat area for a drying rack. I love using all 3 sinks. Often I have a dish drain in one of the large sink areas, but on busy kitchen times, take the drying rack out and use all 3 sinks.
Our staircase when you enter the home is all oak - the floor, the newel posts and all the posts, along with the hand rail. Our installer told us what to order. My dad who was a builder in another state said it would cost about $10K being done from scratch; our job cost $4K. He was very impressed. He also was impressed with the quality of brick installation/quality on the finished product in our area.
Many homes have the white posts because builders can use cheaper wood and paint it. Even if the coastal ‘style’ is like that, to me it looks like cutting corners on cost.
I don’t think chrome fixtures will go out of style. IDK about other details.
I believe if many people like something, it does help a home retain or improve in value.
Nerdwallet has an interesting article about putting a price on various views - I saw it in the newspaper.
I do regret not putting more value on buying a lot on water 30 years ago (we weighed out other things as being more important), but now at age 62, I would not want to sell the place either - and more willing to sell our current home when the time is right.
This isn’t exactly a home improvement thing, but I’m hoping someone can help. Our gutters have been sort of pulled away from our house, the wood underneath may at this point be rotting, and there is apparently a hole in the wood now. Under this gutter is our above the garage attic storage.
What type of person would fix this problem - a gutter guy? A roofer? A “handyman?”
Thanks in advance
Your best bet is a handyman I think. Good luck.
I too think a handyman would be the one to call. Gutter folks are usually too specialized, and roofers are too busy.
So much for our garage painting plans this weekend! It looks like a storm is moving in. Ugh.
Thanks. We have called a handyman who lives in our neighborhood. He’s coming Monday. Hopefully the temporary “fix” my husband concocted will hold through the rain this weekend.
Fingers crossed for your fix!
With the rain solidly in the forecast, we might finally get to some indoor projects like assembling storage shelving in the utility room in the basement.
Good luck with the assembly. We spent our vacation in the rain, and I haven’t been able to go bike riding because it seems to rain every weekend lately here.
Why is it so difficult to pick out lighting? It’s been the single hardest design aspect of our project.
This is the light DW wants to hang in the new foyer. Very contemporary, I think it will look pretty cool hanging in the air:
https://www.fergusonshowrooms.com/product/ET2-EE30647-Matte-White-1178888
Tell your wife I approve her choice with two thumbs and two big toes up! 
Pretty cool light.
It is hard to pick out lights because there are so many choices, and usually quite a few look so darn good. I agonized a lot picking light fixtures for House2, but we are happy with the lights that look like large molecules Mr. ended up blessing.
We have finished assembly of storage cabinets in the utility room! Yay. I moved boxes with Christmas decorations in there and are working on getting rid of a lot of junk from the boxes that have been sitting in the library. I guess if we have not touched it in 6 months, we are not going to touch it!! Now, if only I can have my kitchen table back back… it still looks like a tool display.
NRE, just noticed that your light is from ET2 Lightning. So are many of ours. Good quality! Solid made stuff. Go for it!
We are struggling with light choices too…especially for above the kitchen island. Trying to decide if we want three smaller pendants or one larger chandelier.
Yeah, the ET2 catalog had a lot of cool stuff in it.
The gas company (or their contractors) showed up at 7am (!) on Sunday (!) to install the gas service. We were quite surprised, as they had told us it would be July at the earliest.
It was quite the production - a backhoe, several trucks, 5 workers, and a cop to control traffic on dirt road in front of the house that has 6 houses on it. Not one car came by during the entire process so it was pretty much the easiest work detail ever for the cop.
They use this really cool hydraulic torpedo thingy which makes a tunnel underground that they run the pipe through, so the don’t have to dig a trench across the entire yard. The main in the street is a plastic pipe, as is the service line to the house, and they literally melt them together to make the new connection. The whole process was pretty interesting, and only took about 2 hours from start to finish.
We are using this light in cobalt blue to hang over the kitchen peninsula:
https://www.shadesoflight.com/products/swirling-glass-globe-pendant-light
Like both your choices.
Nice. Why cobalt blue and not aqua? Aqua IMO is more “coastal”