WildPlum

I get that the writers want to show the complexity and range of characters - the same group of people (Belters) who viciously spaced the "Inners" from Ganymede are also the ones who came together enough to allow an orderly evac of only SOME of the people in the loading bay. Hmm, are Amos and Naomi going to be okay after this? There is a thread for book spoilers, please don't even hint at them here - if we wanted to know what was in the books, we'd have read them ourselves.

He seemed a little less wooden this episode, plus a bit more competent. I don't like her any better, nor am I impressed with her taste and staging and picking the right countertop seems to elude her first try, again. The slab their little boy picked, now THAT would be picking "out of the box." For people who have allegedly done 140 houses, there were a bunch of rookie mistakes - the fireplace, for example. The manufacturers have an exact template available for pre-installation, so you'd know exactly the opening size, even if you didn't have the product on site. Leaving the window behind it, walled in (presumably so that they wouldn't have to pay for the stucco work to remove the old window), was just ... cheap. The tile mosaic floor in the entry was put in before they realized where the stair railing would have to be bolted and the railing covered part of the mosaic and had to be bolted down over it. Could be that she's right about the Vegas market, though, and glitz is more important than anything. Never much of a Vegas fan, myself. I hope the other Flip or Flop spin-offs involve people less "Tarek and Christina"-lite with more taste.

Good to see that the show has a forum now, hope this isn't the kiss of ratings death... Yeah, the budgets are either only materials or are after the show's producers have kicked in money, because they are way too low. I think one of the last R&R had a tile "bar" backsplash (from http://www.missiontilewest.com/ , an extremely upscale tile place) that was something like $35 a sf. Granted, it was backsplash which isn't as bad as countertop or bathroom walls, but my little eye says that was something like 35 sf or over $1,000 in just tile for a backsplash.

We didn't actually SEE the Vegas husband doing most of the work. He hired the garage door repaired, the island placement was done, according to the wife, by someone else while they were on "vacation," there were multiple workers in the background during most of the "work" shots, we did not see them putting in any of the tile, someone else put in the countertops (no one in their right mind would try to do countertops themselves - specialty equipment, really specialized skills, especially if seams are involved). We did see him doing some demo, putting in a short section of flooring, making the wall decor pieces. I don't actually mind that they don't do much of the work but rather act as the general contractor (as in Fixer Upper - you don't think Chip does all that work himself, do you? - Flip or Flop, Property Brothers, etc etc), I just want them to admit it. I hate seeing Tarek tile, he does a TERRIBLE job, gets thinset and grout everywhere. I'd rather see competent people working. The thing that this show sort of had going for it was the reasonable reno budget - except that for anyone hiring a contractor, the actual budget would be twice that. I was also amused by the "oh, we'll get $250k for this easy" then they listed in the high $240s and accepted an offer in the $230s

I actually thought it got more interesting this episode - I was right at the edge of deciding to FF through the Fillory scenes. Not fond of Margo's Queen Bitch character, glad to see Eliot call her on it. Not that Eliot is a great or even good king by any measure - waaay to self-absorbed, that that could be said for pretty much any of these characters (eg: Penny, who never seems to learn that being a jerk to everyone has real consequences). Watching this and The Expanse as my 2 TV shows - I like The Expanse quite a bit better. Yay for Syfy, though, putting out much better stuff than network TV (although I tried to watch both Killjoys and Dark Matter and that seems much more standard "regular" TV fare).

Well, as has been shown before, the Belters have a variety of medical issues - the guy in the bar shows the ridge on Miller's neck where he was given sub-standard bone growth/strengthening formulas as a child, Dawes talks about his "beautiful sister" that he killed (a mercy killing in his eyes), the developmentally delayed miner's kids in the flashback episode where Fred Johnson offs an entire ship filled with the miners and their families. So there are a variety of issues that kids in the great beyond have. But it seems SO unlikely that all those kids that you see strapped in at the basement lab in Ganymede all have the same autoimmune disorder, unless that is some sort of environmental hazard unique to the situation on Ganymede.

HGTV's Facebook page seems to be running about 90% negative (although a lot of the comments are about being sick of flipping shows).

Christina does go for the shiny and the very trendy, but she also has a better grasp of proportion, use and space, I think. That wooden plaque wall made the room far too busy and added nothing from a function or use standpoint (also the version she saw in the shop had fairly ornate carving, the version he made was stained plain 2x4). The house had zero storage and instead of the wall-o-lumber needed a built in or at least a credenza with drawers. I liked the idea of green better than the actual avocado green. It is harder to flip in an area where the prices are lower because your reno budget is much tighter - although, percentage-wise, they made more on that flip than T&C usually make on their very-high end stuff. Where I live, the land is worth more than the house, so you don't see a lot of price discount for a house that needs a ton of work versus one that has been remodeled, so it makes it hard to flip for serious profit. Which is why most of the distressed properties that come to market here get bought by investors who slap finishes on and then rent the properties (vacancy rate of around 1.5%).

Prax's daughter had some sort of immune disorder, as did several other children, which apparently made them experiment fodder. I wonder if they were born with it or it was something the Mad Scientist inflicted on the kids to have the research subjects? And, series doesn't seem to care for scientists. With the exception of the guy on the Venus mission (the one the actor is doing his best to channel Elon Musk for), if you are a scientists on this show, you are evil, evil, evil. Of course, that goes for industrialists (Mao) and a lot of commissioned officers.

Eww. Just ... no. Awful couple, awful house, awful staging with too much STUFF crammed in a tiny space. That kitchen counter should have been half the width so a normal dining table would fit. Lol, loved the disclaimer the man made (I paraphrase) about "normal" people not being able to do the reno for $20,000, but since they were doing it themselves, they could. Hmm, except in just about every scene, it is someone else doing the actual work. So what he MEANT by "themselves" was "me and my cheeeep labor." At least it was a reasonable price.

I think it was last episode that the casting limitation was really obvious - the biologist was going to join his girlfriend and go back to Mars and the Belter in charge of the lock stops him because he recognizes that the biologist is a Belter and not an Inner. Maybe in the novels (which I haven't read and don't plan to until this series is over) the difference is obvious at a glance, but in that episode it certainly is not and I wondered what the cue was, until I remembered that Belters are supposed to be physically very different from the Inners. The language has evolved over the show, too, in the earlier episodes on Ceres they used the Belter patois/creole and a sign-language based communication method (the big square "new guy" Earth cop who gets shot in the chest is learning it from his prostitute girl friend) in addition to the broadcasts on the subway pod car which were in what sounded like Chinese and maybe some form of Arabic. Lately, though, we've gone to just English and Belter. Funny that Belter has had such linguistic drift from Earth and Martian hasn't. Of course, the first colonists/terraformers on Mars could have been a more uniform group, likely better educated and better off than the original Belters.

First you have to have the $425,000, which is most likely in the form of a short-term loan from a bank or an investor (I don't believe they actually pay cash for houses). You'll need to make payments on that for the 3-6 months it takes to flip the house (remember there is a bunch of time you don't see on the show as they draw up plans, get permits, before they can even START). Then you have to be able to come up $125,000 cash from somewhere (likely rolled into the note or mortgage) for the reno work plus staging, etc. Then you get the $60,000 after the buyer's loan closes, which is likely another 2-3 months (and that is if it sells immediately). Flipping houses is as much a game of cash flow management and time management as anything else.

Hmm, I see Errinwright as knowing he has been tossed aside by the movers and shakers and trying desperately for a way out of this that doesn't involve being hung for treason (or sent out to live on the streets with the common riff raff, or sent out into the Belt, or whatever Earth does for a serious sentence in the future). What is implied thus far is that Mao had to have 2 simultaneous protomolecule programs going. The original contact with the protomolecule would have likely been on Phoebe Station. From there, 2 samples were sent out, one involving the Julie Mao storyline and the other off to Ganymede.

I thought that every time Jane reset time, a new reality was created - so she created 39 (or 40, whatever) new timelines parallel to the present timeline and in each one of them, except this one, her brother doesn't die. So, presumably, there are 39 other timelines out there in which some or none of the group are alive after the clash. Although the parallel worlds are similar up to the point that the students enter Brakebills, they start to widely diverge after meetings with the Beast, such that the reality they pulled Alice in from is fairly divergent by this point, especially in realities where there is no more magic. The thing I liked about this show is that it seemed like they were really pumping up Quentin as the pivotal character in the first few episodes, when it turns out that it is really Julia and Alice who are the characters that matter, as far as the main plot of the Beast (which is now a closed plot, although I am pretty sure Still not liking the Fillory episodes or any of the characters in Fillory. I like the addition of the Library, though, it's pretty clear the Poison Room is one of our next big plots.

Happened to me as well (also DirecTV) - getting to be a pretty frequent thing. Plus a couple weeks ago there was a sync issue between the image and the sound, making the dialog off. I watch entirely off DVR though (never live the looooong commercial intervals would drive me batty), so I have never been sure if it is a transmission issue or a DVR issue.

Over the years I have removed wallpaper from about 10 rooms, with varying levels of success/difficulty. It entirely depends on what kind of wallpaper over what surface with what prep - and whether the wallpaper has been painted over. In one case I just lost my temper and yanked the drywall down for one wall segment and redid the drywall, which was much less frustrating. I don't actually believe any of the costs in this episode. That "little shack on the prairie" had been moved on to the property (in one view you could see the hitch) so this was an entirely new build, from the foundation up, with some donor materials from the shack. The renovation cost was supposedly $160,000 (plus land). The house looked to be 1,100-1,200 sf when done, which means a construction cost of about $140 per sf. That is about average in the US, although I suspect, in this case, they had to update water and sewer as well, because I don't think the original shack was connected to anything.

Just caught up on all the episodes - can't say I am loving this season. The musical number fell pretty flat for me and it seems like trying a bit too hard to out-Buffy BTVS (I say that as someone who was NOT the world's biggest Buffy fan). I see by the trailers that one of the next subplots looks to be reintroducing Julia's shade. So it looks like we will be in for a double dose of Julia-as-Beast AND "Julia suffering over all the harm she's caused." Even Niffen Alice has more heart and more affection for Quentin (even when she's berating him for being useless) than either form of Julia. I'd much rather have Alice back and send Julia off into the beyond. The other irritating thing is Margo lecturing Elliot on being an adult and then being so wrapped up in herself that she pretty much causes the majority of Fillory's problems. Pretty tired of the Fillory scenes, but Julia-as-Beast is not wonderful, either. Since I am 9 episodes in, I will probably watch the end of the season, but at this point I am hoping the Fillorians DO kill off all the Earthers and go their own merry way into starving to death as the magic dies - although, by the little glimpses of the pocket universe that Fillory inhabits on a slice of land floating in the vastness, I expect Fillory will vanish when the magic does.

Permits are an odd thing. I'd like to do some hallway work in my daylight basement, but I know that the stairs, built in 1955, don't meet code (too narrow and too steep). If I changed the area at the foot at the stairs, the city would very likely make me upgrade my stairs to modern code (even though the work I would be doing doesn't involve the stairs, but it is NEAR the stairs), and it can't be done without completely reworking the entire southern section of the house and I'd likely loose about 1/3-1/2 of my living room. So the permits I have gotten are for things that stay far away from the area. As far as the trees - since the stated reasons were that two of the trees were dying (which they clearly were) and that the roots were invading the city services (water, sewer), you'd think that the city would require the new mature trees to be from a list of trees with certain types of roots. Crepe myrtle roots aren't considered invasive - I didn't get a good enough look at the other trees to tell what it was.

Lol, I happen to LIKE gray and was planning my upcoming bath remodel in gray and white, but this showed has pretty much soured me on the idea.... Also, it used to be dark wood cabinets and dark wood-look floors, the "basic aesthetic" of their flips has changed over time. And I know I have whined about this before, but their prices are unreal and reflect a massive discount on labor and materials. They walk into a kitchen, decide to do all-new cabinets, counter tops and floor and say "ohh, 8 grand." Huh, NO, the cabinet materials alone will likely around that, even if you buy the RTA cra stuff from China and the labor to set tile is usually double to triple the tile price (assuming you use reasonably-priced tile, I once pined over a tile from http://prattandlarson.com/ that was more than $26 a 6x6" tile...)

It is a pretty simple problem - they pay too much and spend too much flipping. The houses in the high-value areas go for a lot because it is the land, not the house, that holds the value. The expectation, in a lot of cases, is that someone will buy the property, tear it down and build the most expensive house in the neighborhood. If you look at the high dollar flips they have done, the percentage return is quite low - they rarely include the time value of money in their cost estimates, but I doubt they are actually paying cash for the houses (even if they say they are). Some portion of that price is financed, whether traditional mortgage or investor backing, and they owe a ROI.

How open is the shower? Very large showers are VERY drafty and it's easy to get cold while showering, particularly if the shower is open.

Lol, that was an odd little episode: "Fixer Upper Goes Flip or Flop" - there were a couple places they actually looked lost, without the routine to fall back on. Interesting look at their first "fixer" in which they did an extremely .... basic job.

In case you wonder about death by being spaced out the airlock: http://www.space.com/30066-what-happens-to-unprotected-body-in-outer-space.html So they mostly got it right but decided not to show the immediate bloating (or decided not to pay for the Fx and leave it). I am actually surprised that you have a minute or so to be pulled back in.

It's interesting how the language has developed over the show - in the first season, Belters spoke an entirely different language (the "speaker's corner" guy playing to the crowd that Miller interacts with in the first or second episode - very little of what he says is in English). I remember thinking "huh, they are going for Firefly" but it's changed since then. Now it is more of a pidgin, which is what you'd likely get when the very "working class" of many cultures with many languages gets thrown together and English is picked as the basic language. That implies a separation/isolation of at least a couple hundred years in culture, which is probably a little longer than the timeline gives them. I thought the use of the word "for" as a replacement and the mixup of personal pronouns sounded good. This is just a TV show, but someone's trying and I appreciate that. Dawes always sounds South African to me, but the rest of the Belters seem to speak with a more unified accent. Dawes' backstory (as given in the TV show, I haven't read the books) has him born a Belter, to an asteroid mining family, and they are even more separated than the people who live on the stations or moons, so maybe it makes sense that his accent is stronger and different from others.

What a waste of good material. While I like most of the actors, I just don't care about Sam Phillips as portrayed on the screen and his various storylines. Plus I have never been a fan of Jerry Lee "the younger and the more related to me the better" Lewis or Jimmy Swaggart. Every now and then we get a chance to hear a snippet of great music and then it has to cut back to the melodrama. Meh.