Hi everyone. I'm married to the adorable, fun and totally hot toking PINKMOM. (scoring points with her here friends) I've been hearing her rave about this site for awhile now and am finally getting around to my first post! I have to admit that PINKMOM isn't the most patient of women. And now that we've decided to grow she's anxious to get started. SO, off to the home improvment stores we go on Saturday to start our project. We have had some great advice from a few kind members here. I'm hoping that this long and elaborate post will allow us to develop a great plan to get us going. We've bought the Indoor/Outdoor Medical Growers Marijuana Horticulture book and it's fabulous! I really appricate the kind soul who pointed it out to my wife. If you have time and energy to help us out some more that would be really great. I'm going to spell out what we want/need and then also what we have to work with and see if you all can give us ideas. I'd love to have a nice list and blueprint so to speak by Saturday. WE WANT: Stealth. ABSOLUTLE. We live in a great house. It's fairly large. BUT, my honey runs an in home business and lots of folks go in and out of our home. Even when we are not home as we have a full time employee. We have a space where folks rarely if ever go, but it still needs to be smell free, sound free, and locked tight! To shoot for...About an ounce a month. That's quite a bit more than we smoke now. But that's cause we can't find any and besides I figure more is better than not. We're unsure if we need to set up a SOG setup to continually harvest or if for our needs harvesting maybe every 3-4 months would work. We'd like to completely remove the having to make a purchase from a dealer... ever. No more than 4? plants??? Hydro, we think. Cause of our space and that we've read that it produces better quality herb in less space. If you disagree please explain to us why because we're total newbies. But we've never grown anything. So, if hydro is too confusing for newbies then we're open to a soil grow too. BUT, we don't want spend a bunch of money on a soil setup only to switch to hydro right away. We wanna do it right from the start. A way to go on vacation every FEBRUARY for 6 days and either be able to leave plants that long OR be on a grow break so they don't suffer while we're away. Does this mean we couldn't keep clones? Have to have more seeds? And we'd like to do things RIGHT. Not messy. Neat and clean. I'm a pretty good electrician if I have to be. And I'm handy so if it's explained well, I can probably pull it together. She's creative as hell, and pays attention to detail. She's a bit of a perfectionist as well which has made this hobby difficult to finally begin because as soon as she thinks she has a plan, she reads something else and changes it. We need materials easily found. We're traveling to get to a home store this weekend. But any upgrades will have to come from a local hardware type store or online if absolutely necessary. We live in a small town. WE PLAN: (We need your imput here desperately) Budget (500 or so dollars) To order 10 seeds, 2 different strains, feminized, from a seed bank that someone here suggested to us "drchronic". We'd like to have a different address to ship to, but we can't figure out a way to do that. So, we're hoping that it's safe to ship them to our home. One strain we're interested in is Northern lights. Since PINKMOM seems to think it's a good strain to start with. (please suggest) 4 plants. 2 in Veg. 2 in flower. 2 sections in our space. Which is under a cheap white pressboard laminate type counter. It's 6 foot 10 inches long. 24 inches wide. And 29 inches high. The sides are regular 2x4 insulated sheetrock walls. There is carpet on the floor. And it's back is an interior wall to our kitchen. There is a gas fireplace on this kitchen wall as well. The wall to the right is an outside wall where I can easily vent the space outside. There is one oulet in the space. The room that it's in is one only my wife uses. The front of the counter is covered now with a curtain to block the "crap" she has stored under there. We need to figure out if we should build another Cabinet that fits under the counter, OR if we should use what we have and weatherstrip the hell outta the joints and cover the floor. add doors, locks. etc. Advice here appreciated. This room also stays relatively cool as there isn't a direct heat duct and we live in Minnesota. So, I'd say the room is usually high 60's in the winter, and low 70's summer. It has to be STEALH and neat. Ideas?? We need a great carbon filter! We thought about using cfls. But my wife is very confused about lighting (and myself) So lots of input here would be really appreciated. I'm thinking we need a light that may put off a bit of heat since the area is chilly and can be vented outdoors to keep fresh air rotating. We realize veg needs different than flowering. and veg can be 24 hours... flowering 12/12. But what lights are good? and does lighting change for hydro vs. soil grows? We also need a place to dry I guess. I see some folks have a drying area in their grow space. But with our limited area I'm not sure this is possible. But on the other hand, since we have a very busy household we're not sure if we can risk just picking a place to dry. Advice? We have a water softner, water that is fairly rusty witout the rust reducer salt, and our own well. We plan to use timers. Not sure which ones. We are very excited!!! Especially my wife. Which is hot. Ok. So, that's all I can think of at this moment. Hope I didn't waste your time. I (we) really, really apprciate this forum and all of your help.