My old neighbor, Donna, is one of the most resourceful people I know when it comes to decorating a house and knowing how to fix things and stuff like that. So yesterday, I finally had the good sense to call her. She had a lot of good smart things to say.

First, she told me that tile was probaby cheaper than linoleum, especially after the flooring guy quoted me almost $900 to put linoleum in the two bathrooms and I expected half that. I started pricing tile and it's a whole lot cheaper. Most lino is starting at $3-5 a square foot and tile...the stone stuff...that's $1-5. Donna knew a store that has a discontinued tile room that she told me to check out and she told me I could get a coating thing that would make it easy to clean.

We talked about the paint and she told me that if there was paint on the ceiling that shouldn't be there that I should just rent a sprayer and hose everything down with white paint to get it cleaned up and get it done. Mike thought that sounded good, but I really want to decorate, so I think we may do that to just get a coat on, but that we'll also still just buy the regular paint we'd meant to order and paint that as the second coat. She told me instead of stenciling, that I might consider using rubber stamps to do the peppers in the kitchen. I think I would have to make them myself, but it's certainly an option.

We talked about ways to fix the mismatched fixture thing. Apparently there's some kind of paint/surface stuff you can buy that will resurface your tub for you, so that you can have a white tub, rather than the yellow and mauve tubs we currently are looking at. Anyway, we talked for two hours about all the possibilities on the phone, and I think about a week before escrow closes, I'm going to make a date with her and bring her out and get her ideas and then go buy them all up.

Her other idea on the windows is that Pella is not worth the money and she gave me the number of a good window place in town. I talked to the guy and I can get most of the work done for substantially less, have similar results, and not have the name brand.

Things to do, people to see, places to go...like the University to study -- bye!