No, not yet. We filled a 10x30 storage unit completely with stuff stacked all the way up to the 10 foot ceiling And, the garage still has all his tools and a late 70s motorcycle which I am absolutely not taking responsibility for! Weather this time of year is unpredictable; Sunday was an ice storm so we ended up just closing up mid afternoon. Monday was decent and today was really warm - 16C - low 60sF - and then the rain absolutely poured down so we had to stop mid afternoon again. Tomorrow is supposed to be rain in the morning, changing to snow and getting colder by afternoon but the furniture and tools absolutely must get moved anyway as Thursday is supposed to be even colder. My patience is almost completely worn through. Today I concentrated on getting the stuff I had no use for out of the house and garage. The other stuff either he can take with him or not, but I'm feeling that he's taking advantage of the situation by not doing a reasonable amount of effort. He's running out of storage space so he's trying to cherry-pick the good stuff and leave all the junk behind...nope, that wasn't the deal! We agreed to help him move, not do it for him. Then, it took me 25 minutes with the blasted automated assistant for the electric company then finally had to go to a live agent and start over and once again provide all the information already entered with the keypad. And, we aren't done yet as we have a choice of service providers so we have to call them too Ridiculous. I just keep reminding myself that it's a nice house at a nice price, even after I have to pay everything to get him out

Roo – As far as drying things in a microwave, at my salon, they have a bunch of small wet towels rolled up & sitting in a small microwave, to use for your feet & hands, when you get a pedicure or manicure. It feels wonderful!! I think people here like that you can choose to live in a smaller municipality that doesn’t have a high school, so the tax levy is a lot less. The students have a choice of attending one of the neighboring towns, and the town pays a per-student fee for them .. which winds up much less than having the overhead of an entire school. So in areas that were developed for retiree/senior housing, the school taxes are minimal .. and that’s the whole point of it. The larger the area used to calculate school costs & taxes, the more likely that you’re paying for a large student population elsewhere. As someone who never had children, I got tired of paying such high school taxes for the 23 years I lived in north Jersey, while the parents kept thinking of new programs to add .. for which we’d all have to share the cost! We also have that short-term capital gains tax for turning around a house, and a “millionaire’s tax”, that's an extra levy on homes sold for > $1 million. So it often made sense for people to sell just under $1 million – if they were close in price – just to avoid the tax. Mary Poulos – Great list .. I created something like that in Excel for myself .. a “cheat sheet”! MPoulsom is also from South Carolina.

JudyG – Happy Birthday!! Tras – I had that exact issue with where to transition colors, because my house is open concept. The kitchen & dinette are a pale teal .. but they’re open to the great room & foyer, which are peach. I paid the color expert at the paint store for a consultation, and we talked about how far towards the blue I really wanted, I could go in the kitchen/dinette .. leaving a medium green ceramic backsplash, and where to transition colors. We also talked about light & warm colors to replace the dark colors in the main bathroom & finished basement. It was worth the $125, and I didn’t have to wade thru 100 conflicting comments on Houzz! Darzy – I so agree with you, about the scope of fixes some posters recommend. If I asked how well a fabric I was considering for the couch went with other furniture already in that room, I wouldn’t appreciate people telling me to paint the walls, change the windows, replace the flooring, and change the stone on the fireplace! Another subject for us OLLDs to chat about – Consumer Reports magazine/website – are they really unbiased & even handed? Do they have a bias against high-end manufacturers or products?

Astraea, from what I have read, it seems the force of that tornado leaves nothing unscathed. Kutchie mentioned silos made from concrete 16 ins thick being reduced to rubble - how thick would walls need to be!!! If they can dig a whole in the ground 6ft deep that is a long way down for a basement to be. One would think though NASA could come up with something - spaceships have to withstand huge forces. I was so relieved to hear tonight that the death toll is nowhere near as high as first thought, in fact only a third. Of course one death is tragic and the poor little kids who drowned was horrible. Unfortunately, the mob next door are exempt from zoning laws, they have special protection as part of the Govt's cost cutting methods. Instead of having facilities for serious mentally disabled people they lease homes and, in this case, put 5 of them into the home with full time live-in carers. This is the first time the owners have ever trimmed the trees, despite my constant requests for them to do so. We even had to chop one back that is on the street front as the postman couldn't get to our letter box. This time they have taken the top off them although it is still not necessary for them to be so high, but they did have the power lines running through them which was the biggest concern. I have been going to complain to the Council about them a few times but there is not a lot they can do, I would have to go to some mediation board that has been set up for this sort of thing but it is too far away. The main issue I have is that if any work is done on them, it all has to be done from my side which means they are clomping over my garden and I get the mess, but if I stop them, which I do have the right to do, then I have to put up with the trees right over my side garden and driveway. Legally, they should come to my door and ask permission to enter my property but of course workmen never do. I'm actually wondering if the Charity that runs the home may have organised it as they pruned every tree and shrub on the property, but it is the first time it has been done in about 20 years, so at this rate I may never see them again.