Hi Appledeco, I read your post early this morning but have put off responding while trying to think of how to phrase my answer. Anyway, here goes..... First of all, I am not a landscaper or a landscape designer, so feel free to ignore every word I say. Secondly, when you are landscaping a home, you should base your plant selection on at least two factors: 1) what plants will grow well in each planting location, in terms of the type of soil available, light exposure, the ultimate mature size of the plant, etc., and 2) the style of the home and what kind of plants will complement and enhance that style. But, you aren't doing that here. Instead, you are digging up plants from a different home and attempting to use them at the new house whether they are suitable for the location and whether or not they will enhance the style of your new home. (sigh) I swear, I am not saying this to be mean....just realistic. To me, what you're doing here is comparable to taking the pieces from one jigsaw puzzle and attempting to force them to fit into another jigsaw puzzle. I just don't see it working out very well and I'll explain why. Zebra Grass---these can get really big and they do best in full sun. They really aren't going to get full sun with a northeastern exposure so having less than ideal light might help keep them a bit smaller, but they still will be too large for the bed that currently has boxwood and they'd be way too big to plant in front of the rock wall. Unless you have an extremely dwarf form of zebra grass, they'll just bury that rock wall and hide the front door. Yucca--The will get too large for the current boxwood bed and also a bit too prickley to have close to a walkway or entrance. Yuccas are beautiful, but they don't belong along a walkway unless you have a really deep bed and can plant them far enough away from the bed that they won't reach out and 'grab' people as they walk by. Elijah Blue fescue is pretty compact and wouldn't mind the northeastern exposure. If I was going to put anything in the bed where the boxwood is now, I'd put the fescue there with a tall part-shade perennial or wall-hugging vine behind the fescue to break up that expanse of wall. 'Walker's Low' catmints are gorgeous plants, but they need room to grow and sprawl. If you wanted to plant them in front of the little stone wall, they might do well there if they get enough sunlight to bloom. I tend to put my catmints in out of the way places, though, and not out front and center because my cats like to lay down on top of the catmint plants, roll on them and crush them. Even if you don't have cats, undoubtedly some of your neighbors do, so you might want to put the catmint plant in the backyard or sideyard where it won't bother you as much if the local cats keep rolling on them and crushing them. I have one old tom cat who thinks it is his duty to roll on my catmint twice a day and smash and crush it to smithereens, although the other cats don't bother it much, so maybe some cats don't like catmint. As far as the window, it is better to use mini-blinds, plantation shutters, draperies, window shades or other internal window treatments for privacy. If you plant something very thick and dense in front of that window it will ruin your view from inside the house and it will give burglars a shrub or tree to hide behind while they're breaking into the house through that window. Instead of planting for privacy, I'd plant something fairly low growing and prickly or spiney to serve as a security barrier to anyone who might want to crawl through that window. You could use one of the forms of Chinese holly that have spiney leaves, or you might put your yuccas there if the kind of yuccas you have are fairly spiney or prickley. If you really want to go with an ornamental tree in the front, I'd plant one of the taller, tree-form crape myrtles and I'd probably choose a multi-trunk one. A crape myrtle will give your four seasons of interest. In the spring, you'll have the new foliage coming out, followed by recurring periods of bloom during the summer, and then the leaves turn some pretty shades in fall before they drop. During the winter, the trunk and limbs look almost like modern architectural elements, especially if you carefully select one of the crape myrtles with especially lovely bark. If it were my house, I'd save the zebra grass for a side yard or back yard, put the fescue in the boxwood bed with something, preferably a vine, behind it, put the yuccas in front of the window with a crape myrtle in front of them, and put the catmint wherever it would be happy in full sun, but not in a highly visual area just in case it becomes a 'cat toy' for the neighborhood cats. You know, you could take a photo of the house into a local nursery with you (and I mean a real nursery with trained and experienced nursery personnel, not a garden center at a big box store where many of the garden center employees know nothing about plants) and ask for them to suggest some plants. Or, you could drive around the neighborhood and see if you spot any landscaping ideas you could 'borrow'. From looking at the homes that are in the neighborhood around yours, you can see what works and looks appealing and in scale with the home and what doesn't. I'm sure you'll get some good suggestions over on the landscape forum too, undoubtedly from people a lot more experienced in landscape design than me. Good luck landscaping the new house. Dawn

Thanks all! We are definitely open to looking for something to replace the media cabinet, but have looked intermittently over the years and had a hard time finding something that closes (DH feels strongly about this aesthetically, and we also have young kids so the out-of-sight-out-of-mind thing is very valuable for both safety and sanity) and is deep enough to accommodate the receiver, tuner, etc.--many of the newer pieces made for flat screen tvs seem to either be intended as bases with the tv out in the open, or do close but are quite shallow. I'll take another look around and see if anything new is out there, though! @roarah, thanks for the photos--your space is beautiful (and I love the window seats!) I can show DH and see if it's worth revisiting the tv on the mantel idea. We'd looked at hanging it rather than just setting it on the mantel, so maybe that would make a difference. We do have a 40" tv and replacing it is not in the cards, though. We've been considering what I think is normal-sized furniture--current sofa is 84" and you might be able to tell from the photos/plan that it has quite a big of space in the room (there's room between the sofa and the bookcase for a light and a side table), so thinking if we go with an 81" sofa (one option in a design I like) that would be a good bet if we keep it on that wall and then get a slightly smaller one (72") to form an L. If we go with chairs instead of one sofa/loveseat--and I do like that look in roarah's room--I'll have to rethink that a bit, though. Off to play with Homestyler--thanks for that tip!

My wife and I added a front porch to our house 3 years ago, and our contractor installed white vinyl structural posts, newels, and railings. These have now gone through 3 winters and 2-1/2 summers here in Southwestern Pennsylvania, which means they have seen wintertime temperatures in the single digits and summertime temperatures in the 90s (like the past three days). I'll try and respond to your specific questions: 1. Our contractor used his preferred supplier's vinyl posts and railings, which I do not believe are made by Certainteed - although I have a hunch most manufacturers will have similar characteristics. Although, it appears from the literature he gave us that our structural posts are rated higher than the Certainteed ones. 2. I'll answer the whiteness issue first. Ours have shown no sign of yellowing. They look like new three years after installation - including those parts that get a significant amount of summer sun (at least 6 hours). 3. The "plasticy" question is most likely in the eye of the beholder. Like I said, our posts look like new, so they look like they have been freshly painted. From a distance (in our case, our porch is within 50 feet of the public road), the posts and railings look like wood. Quite honestly, they feel solid like wood to me when you put your hand on them or try to squeeze them (I've had friends do that, when they find out they are vinyl. I think they believe plastic will give - but it doesn't on ours.). Now if you wet your finger and rub it on the post, then yes, it will probably sound like plastic - but I've not tried that. I'll admit this is the most subjective issue in deciding between wood and plastic building material. I think you really need to see the finished project in order to evaluate it - and by then you are already committed. By the way, my wife and I and our family love the front porch - and the vinyl posts and railings. 4. Yes, our posts, newels, and railings look like traditional turned wood. Now, a couple of other points: 1. I recommend getting the 6 inch porch posts. The 4 or 5 inch posts simply look too narrow to me. If this is for a front porch, you really want the look of the 6 inch posts. 2. It sounds like you are doing this project yourself. If so, I recommend you go the the Vintage Woodworks web site - do a search on the web to get their web address. The are located in Texas, but ship all over the U.S. They specialize in porch posts, newels, railings, and the decorative "gingerbread" items for porches. If this is a new project you are planning, I would order their book titled "Porch Design". It is excellent and we used it to help our contractor design our porch. 3. The Porch Guy recommended HB&G porch posts, which are made of polyurethane and can be painted. I looked at their products for our porch, so I still have their web page bookmarked. Vintage Woodworks now carries polyurethane structural porch posts that can be painted. They did not have these 3 years ago when we did our porch. 4. Since you are looking for porch posts to be painted, check out the wood posts at Vintage Woodworks. They make them out cedar or hemlock, and we almost ordered these for our contractor to use.

shades, I have a dolly (no straps tho) but I still couldn't move things. could maybe stack a few smaller boxes on it. jed has some stretch bands? with hooks on the ends that he uses. I actually have 2 small ones like his. should buy longer ones. yes, I have different people say they'll come do stuff - but then something happens and they don't show up. I've been trying for over 3 wks to get new front tires. my mechanic said he'd get some for me and put on. then stuff happened at his shop (to do with wind storms here), after that his elderly mother needed help up in phx... I had a test scheduled and had to cxl it! he got here and took wheels off to have tires put on... then many days later on NYE day he made it here and put wheels on front. and left. about 2 hrs later I got in car to go to store and heard horrible noise when backing the car up. couldn't go anywhere. he finally made it back here on sat. Tires were wrong size. too big and were hitting the struts. He put those on the back and my back tires on the front so I could at least go to the store. he's coming back tomorrow to take car to the tire shop to have them changed and rotated back. good grief! that something so normally simple would be such a bear to get done. this has also had me stranded in my own house for days. I wanted to get out and pick up take out from local Mexican rest. - tired of my own 'cooking' - lol! (finally got my 'dinner' today!) Then Jed over watered my plants last sunday and ran me out of water - but I didn't know it... had to shut down the pump til more water could be delieved - on Wednesday! (that was today and I now have water again). just thinking of these things tires me... oh, and in between these things my son landed himself in the hospital in the Midwest with a blood infection. been in there 5 days, has something connected to him/in him by his heart. could have died / or lost his leg. will be able to go home (info from dd) but will need to return to hospital every day for 10 days to have more antibiotics put in whatever that 'thing' is attached to him. he says it's called cellulitis (what he has). I would have guessed that meant he had cellulite - he's way too thin and fit for that! And with my fibro I've been sleeping a ton again. and cold, damp weather outside here - that doesn't help. I hope anyone reading this survived...