Rapaire,

I have friends who used a fridge to make a smoker, with the shelves and all. Maybe you can set some of these up and convert them for smoking fish?

The bookshelves sound wonderful. I got tired of looking at the clutter in my office last weekend and went and got the heaviest-duty (but very attractive, with black epoxy paint) standards and brackets, and some very good pine boards (no knots--this isn't the cheap white wood!) and put up 24 linear feet of shelves over my desk. Cost about $100 total. I can see quite a few books that I should go ahead and sell because I'll never read them or use them, but for now they're up and out of the way. (I will one day read all of the Foucault that I put up there.) I still have many more shelves to build myself, and as you note, this doesn't even include the LPs and the CDs and cassettes.

I also have trunks and trunks of antique glass from my great aunt's house. I would love to display some of that. Like yours, my house was a custom home, well-built, lots of interesting extras (gorgeous woodwork). I had to upgrade from 150 amp to 225, and that's expensive. We had to wire a couple of new rooms and a new garage. I also ran CAT-5, and coax, and have a "home run" or "star" pattern set up for the phones and cable. I haven't put in the cable yet, but will do two rooms, no bedrooms. I don't watch much now, but given cable, the little I watch will be more select. The house needed all new flooring so I chose to put in tile and am doing it myself. That's about 2000 square feet of tile. I have about 300 sf left to do.

Houses can make a great sucking sound when they're anywhere near your wallet, but given a good one, you can really create a work of art and a great space to live in. I've been very busy with work and a writing project so I feel like my weekends haven't been my own--I need to cut tiles, plant my daffodil bulbs, paint, do so many things. As long as I have that vision of how it will look and make incremental progress, this is a fine form of recreation.

One of these days I'll host an open house and have my builder and electrician and the neighbors in. A hoot would be a great way to break in a new house also. When will you be scheduling yours, Rap?

SRS