jspen jspen you are asking questions for which there are currently no clear cut answers. At this time the sheer number of university abstracts published on the subject is enough to boggle the mind. Not to mention the endless discussions about them. I gave up keeping up on them a couple years ago. This much we do know. What we as lay people call FMV is not. Its only the visual expression of a virus. In fact its not just one virus but many. Apparently there are many viruses that produce the same visual expression. Each can be spread to plants in different ways. Some by insects, some even through bird droppings. We also know that plants can have the virus and not exhibit any visual characteristics of infection. The only reliable honest to goodness way to know if a plant or tree is infected is by looking into that particular plants RNA. Then you would need to continually test the plant to be sure it had not become infected since the last test. Since visual cues of infection in infected tissues is so idiosyncratic. There are a myriad of theories that have yet to be proofed. One thing is for sure. Without continual RNA testing it is impossible to know with any certainty that any tree or plant is not infected. With what testing has already been done at the university level it appears that these viruses are prevalent and in fact endemic. It is more likely that any given plant is infected than not. In other words if you assume every fig tree you see is infected you will be right more often than not. With what little we already know its obvious that as lay people we cannot effectively fight FMV. We don’t even know if the trees in our yard have it or not. Ask yourself these simple questions. How can you fight something you cannot see? Something that can infect your trees without you even knowing it? Something that more likely than not my trees already have and I have no way of knowing? Again; Nearly every nursery and every fig collection has received trees and or cuttings from three main sources. All of which have long been infected. Not that they are the in any way responsible or the original source. Just stating fact. Not to mention all the collectors selling and trading trees and cuttings that originated from those sources. In closing. You cannot fight something you cannot see. It is utterly futile to fight something that spreads so easily. Someday people much smarter than I with lots of funding will find all the answers you are looking for after dedicating a lifetime research to the subject. When they find all those answers there is still a good chance they will find out its incurable and inevitable. I just don’t want to be the person spending all my waking hours trying to find out. Why would I? Most trees produce well in spite of the virus. Others appear only to be affected for a short time. Other varieties appear to show no signs even when RNA shows they are infected. Given all this I choose to spend my time thinking about other things. If or when a cure comes I’m sure someone will tell me about it. Perhaps that person will be you. One thing for sure. I’m certainly not going to pull anymore trees over it. Trying to fight something I can’t see ludicrous; tantamount to jousting at windmills. A blind baboon brain surgeon with one hand tied behind his back would have a better chance of success.

That's funny, that is except for the truth factor involved. I just e-mailed it to dh. Linda

In looking at your hand drawn diagram with your revised plan, I think kgwlisa's suggestion is the one to use. If you move the FR door that is in the kitchen, you'll have a very functional layout. That would mean to shove the cabinet section that contains your cooktop/oven down to join up with the other wall of cabinets. Then use the space you have beside the relocated pantry to put the doorway into the family room there. I don't think you'd need a door on it, just leave it as a doorway into the FR. If the other FR doorway is too close, you can consider it a column and add moldings if desired to enhance that look. You might feel like why have two doorways so close together when both lead into the FR? It's because one goes to the walkway you'll create along the kitchen and one goes to the LR. I take it you'll be using the upper end of the kitchen room where the window is in your first bird's eye view as an eating nook, since the doors to the basement and mudroom would work better there. Perhaps you can even enlarge the window there to provide more light into the kitchen? JMHO of course without knowing your budget, etc. I think you'll have a kitchen you love!

Really glad you passed this along, GD. You're absolutely right that corporations just want to maximize the bottom line, which means they'd rather pay peanuts. I just have to inject that my son with a college degree earned $20,000 last year working full time for Barnes and Noble-it was his third year with them. Moving up the responsibility ladder wouldn't have made much difference. It's amazing to me that the guy in charge of handling all the receipts, tens of thousands of dollars a day, is paid $10.50-$11.50 an hour. The good news is that he got a real job utilizing his skills other than charm and good looks, and the ability to keep the cash drawers straight. Or, at the end, his ability to energize people to buy Nooks, which are well worth the money BTW. At least they offered health insurance. Back to HD and Lowe's: I liked it that at HD the sales guy we worked with wasn't dependent on us putting in our order one second sooner than we were ready in order to enhance his income for the month. I liked it that his income didn't depend on him urging us to buy a more expensive line, although ours was at the higher end, or to purchase add-ons we didn't necessarily need or want. When we ordered 4 tall cabinets with glass fronts, he volunteered that it would be significantly less expensive to order them "glass ready" and get the glass locally. I didn't feel bad about coming back multiple times and using up his time. Time spent with us nailing down down every last detail didn't mean he was failing to make a potential sale elsewhere. He also called the company to ask a couple of things and got us at least one more expensive freebie than we would have gotten otherwise. Would he have done that if it cut his commission? Maybe. You're right about hiring the kid who doesn't know or care diddly about kitchens vs. people with depth of experience or at least enthusiasm. In a different HD than the one we bought from, we thought of a question we wanted an answer to, so asked the kid on duty. He hadn't a clue what we were talking about and clearly had no idea about the line we were looking at. Why, one wonders, was he working in the kitchen department? Would I seriously work with him to design my kitchen? Not a chance; I might have walked across the street to Lowe's if that were the choice. We tell everyone that Steve at the Melrose Dr. HD is great to work with. I'm pretty sure a couple of people have bought cabinets from Steve on our recommendation. HD needs to think about this and pay the Steves in their employ a comfortable wage.