AngryRedhead's Profile

You can learn, but you have to be bothered enough to do it. One helpful tip is to research the plant you just bought along with potting soil requirements. If you tend to overwater your plants, make the soil more freely draining than someone else might. Another tip is to set realistic and specific goals for yourself when it comes to gardening.

Also, and this is the really irritating thing, not all plants give the same cues. Someone earlier said that wilting means the plant needs to be watered. However, some plants wilt when they have too much water and are quickly killed by gardeners who start hosing the thing down. This is why it's important to do plant-specific research.

In my opinion and experience, it's far easier to garden outdoors than indoors. I've not had much luck growing inside except for a few plants, but I keep trying.

@thorndale - Oh gosh! Of course, the Before kitchen was still useable, which is exactly why I personally wouldn't have bought it in my city, but I think Jane was going for ideal. I'm finishing up (moving in this weekend) a full renovation on a house that badly needed it, and it'll be the first nice kitchen I've ever had. My husband and I have made do with our other kitchens which included setting slow cookers and food processors on chairs, rolling out pizza dough on the kitchen table, using the microwave to precook onions because the stove was occupied, etc. The new kitchen is going to be a luxury (no question about that!!!), but that's how we've decided to spend/invest our money since we don't go on vacations, don't buy fancy cars and gizmos, and cook a lot at home. I think it would seem excessive to someone off the street who didn't know our situation and history, and I can concede that it wasn't totally utilitarian - we just wanted something functional in our day-to-day lives that we can be proud of for once and enjoy with family and friends.

So I have a hard time being overly critical of someone I really don't know outside of a renovation of a fair, useable kitchen into a more ideal kitchen. There are just too many unknowns, and it feels a bit unfair to judge based on one piece of information. Maybe she scrimped and saved for years to have her forever home which included a forever kitchen that she would love for decades? Perhaps slightly excessive unless you consider that this kitchen might stay in that home for the next 30-40 years under her care. Maybe even longer since it looks like she picked out good quality materials? Plus it's more economical to bundle a kitchen renovation into a full renovation. If she knew the kitchen would need to be changed and was renovating elsewhere, it probably made more sense to do it now rather than later which likely would have been more expensive and disruptive. Stuff like that.

I understand your point and agree to an extent, but no one here knows the entire situation and should maybe give the benefit of the doubt or, at the very least, tone down the outrage a bit. And you can always find something good for yourself or understand that someone else might take away something good. I like it because the kitchen changed from an L-shape to an open galley style which should serve as some inspiration for people stuck in a rut and can't visualize their cabinetry beyond its current footprint. Maybe a little silly but it's something.

"And, if you cannot figure out how to cook with another person in the "before" kitchen layout, maybe you are cooking with the wrong person, not in the wrong kitchen."

Are you seriously suggesting divorce over remodel?

Looks to be a Schefflera.

It looks like the flow of the kitchen has been greatly improved, and flow is SUPER important when it comes to two people helping cook/prep in a kitchen at the same time. I'd rather cook with my husband in the after than the before because in the before, we'd be bumping into each other constantly.

I'm in the process of finishing a full home renovation, and I selected antique brass cabinet pulls and door knobs. Everything else (e.g., light fixtures, faucets, and appliances) is largely white, stainless, nickel, or chrome. The pulls are solid brass (from Restoration Hardware), so if the finish wears off, it'll just replace itself. Looks good to me! You can find examples of people mixing finishes on Houzz, and they look nice.

I'd probably drive myself crazy if I tried to stick to a single finish throughout the house because I like variety and figure if I keep some consistency, it'll work itself out. Plus I accepted that silver (e.g., nickel) and gold (e.g., brass) would be part of my overall color scheme and should be used appropriately with the other colors. Some people would start to itch if everything weren't the same finish, but I'm more consistently drawn to homes/rooms where people have mixed things up and made each decision look purposeful and special.

If you were to plant only natives, you have to define what "native" is because there are a lot of plants that have been bred to grow places that they normally wouldn't. For instance, does it just have to be a North American native to be "native"? Or does it have to grow within 10 miles of where you live historically? And how historical are you willing to go? Would you be unwilling to grow pepper plants because they entered North America a few hundred years ago? What about hybrids that normally wouldn't occur in nature but fit within the other criteria (e.g., native, historic orchids in Florida that have been hybridized)?

If marble is trendy, why isn't this or this? Just because they're granite?

LOVE! It looks so much bigger than 1100sqft. Perfect amount of color in all the right places. Nicely done!

I'm not an architect and can't tell where the windows are located, but this is one possibility that I can see. The purple lines represent closet organization, and the green lines represent walls. Please note that nothing's to scale.