rene's Profile

The moment the kids are free to get up from their bed in the middle of the night and roam around their room or the house is a life changing moment.

Not only will they try to come get you in your room but could get into all kinds of trouble around the house attempting to do the things you usually don't let them do when you are around (testing that newfound freedom!).

Our approach to transition a 24month old out of crib was to teach him when it was acceptable to get up (teach to read time, get a color coded clock, whatever you have to do). Once he would wake up but stay quiet in his crib waiting until the acceptable time (630am) then we knew he was mature enough to wake up from a bed and not go bonkers but try to remain calm in or very close to his bed until ok to roam around (i.e. our alarm clock goes off)

So if you are not willing to have two cribs at any costs, teach how to read the time and discipline until there 100% accuracy. And you better do further baby-proofing and installing better locks on outside doors (we still woke up to see our kid having pushed a chair to a door to try to stand on it and open the top bolt!!!).

good luck

Thank you all for helping!!! Will send in pictures of the finished project

If you don't want to pull up the tile, you can do a non-skid epoxy resin. It is sold in cans like gallons of paint. You can "paint" the floor or pour it to self level (carefully, making sure to put something inside the drain to collect the excess). Any hardware store person (not at Home Depot or Lowes!) can help you with this.

It is the Scandi Dropside Crib from Babi Italia: http://www.babiitalia.com/html/bi_sc.html

We purchased it at Babies R Us.

Thank you all for your thoughts. I was leaning towards a striped shade sail because I like the way the C&B umbrella looks, but sticking to solid colors sounds like a smart move.

"thepictures": my wife used the free floorplanner.com to create the floorplan... It has its pros and cons but works on the visual aspect. If you need serious measurement accuracy, use Visio or real CADing software.

Use a flexible "hospital curtains" track attached at the two ends. This has been covered many times at AT. Search the archives.

Everyone else already addressed the smudge, so I'll just go with the "what if none of those worked?" assumption:

Lean a large framed mirror against the wall in front of the smudge. I'm not talking about a $400 mirror from Pottery Barn but a much cheaper one from Ikea or Surprise Surprise or something like that.

And I believe there's an electric outlet around the spot, so you can but a colored bulb behind the mirror to give it an interest glow at night.

Your setup is quite nice as well, RandallB. It's all a matter of taste obviously, my wife doesn't like seeing the equipment so that's why we hid it. Heat build up in the stack hasn't been a problem yet but I will be building out a rack in the closet anyways to further expand the system so it will be addressed this summer. Any recommendation on the HDDVD player? Which one do you have? And why HDDVD over Bluray? (That's my next purchase).

BTW, can you unscrew the handles on the top of your TV? Just a thought. I took them out of mine once installed. A small screwdriver will do the trick.

Thanks for the nice comments.

Designaddict: The cable run is about 50 feet including the closet. We went straight down from the TV inside the wall, horizontal until we got under the dropped ceiling, straight up to the dropped ceiling, across the dropped ceiling to the front of the closet, and through the wall and ceiling into the closet. See installation pictures (comment #2). Running cable was obviously the hardest part, but I patched up all the holes myself (which i had never done) and it looks great! You just need to take your time. (The entire install took me 3 weekends as i work crazy hours in the week) We also future-proofed the cabling which is why there are so many running through. We even left a couple of Cat 5s as spare.

Ondrej: We get very good channel separation and incredible sound from the Pinnacle LCR. The combination of the Denon and the Pinnacle create very good virtual surround. And the subwofer is unbelievable. I have it at HALF the volume and it still shakes the apt when watching movies. Since I knew I could only do 3.1 speakers that's why we spent a little more on the Pinnacles (they're a bit expensive but worth every penny).

rene

Thanks Pixie!!! That's perfect!