GreenDesigns, This was the kitchen design that I uploaded over in the Building a Home sub-forum back on Jan.31 as part of my first draft. Renovator8 made a useful comment - "A double loaded work space is a counter across from another counter that allows a cook to turn and use either surface quickly with a minimum of steps involved. This ability is essential not only for productivity but in order to avoid a disaster. Unnecessary walking in a kitchen should be avoided even if you are alone." His comment has steered me away from G-kitchens precisely because they all seem to have a lot of space in the middle and have the counters on the perimeter, meaning a lot of walking through empty space to get from A to B. Your design, while avoiding the mistakes on appliance placement that I made with my G-kitchen produces the same outcome that Renovator8 was warning about. Doesn't it? You guys are both pros so I'm not really in a position to see the nuance that makes your plan work but which sets off warning bells when I have a lot of open space in the kitchen. Lisa_a, I hope you won't mind some gentle critique. . . . It's precisely because of criticisms that everyone is kind enough to offer than I keep coming back and subjecting you all to more long-winded posts filled with new variations on plans. I am taking the criticisms to heart and they do percolate in my mind as I'm reviewing the problems with the plans, so please offer gentle and not so gentle criticisms. It's all good food for thought. For instance, the majority of people aren't keen on a powder room right next to the front entry. Don't I know, I've tried to avoid that but it's there because of a series of trade-offs. I have a copy of every single iteration that I've created on this plan so if I ever want to post a case-study on "The Evolution Of A House Design" I could demonstrate how each problem discovered shifted the plan to a new look and then the next problem again shifted the plan and so on. Here was the very first plan which had the master on the first floor and before I realized that I had way more space on the 2nd that I had absolutely no idea what to do with, which pushed me towards a smaller first with 2 bedrooms on the 2nd. Note where the powder room was. Note the lack of "birds on a wire seating" note the appliance placement. What I've been struggling with is that the first floor has 3 principal rooms, LR, DR, KI, and then I need to fit in a powder room, stairs, elevator, mudroom and central fireplace. There are only so many design options one can play with when you have 3 rooms and also want to maximize southern exposure. So I understand the drawback of placing the powder room right at the front, but because I wanted a wide-spanning gable roof on the front, I needed some space opposite the centered doorway to counterbalance the living room. Besides, the 2nd floor cantilevers out over the porch behind the powder room, so absent the powder room that porch would be very deep. I thought of putting the powder room next to the basement stairs, in the back of the house, next to the garage, but that would create the problems I mentioned above. I like your kitchen design. I like the big island. I like the appliance placement. However, ever since LWO made his comment about "birds on a wire" I realized that I agree with that viewpoint. I tried to avoid that situation in my very first plan and now that I've played around with banquet seating I think I want to stick with that instead of island seating. To refer back to what I mentioned much earlier about all sorts of hell breaking loose when I played around with the walls, your moving of the "fridge wall" now creates all sorts of misery on the 2nd floor and especially at the roof level for that wall was a load bearing wall essential for roof support, but there was no way for you to know that. I'm going to keep your kitchen design in mind as I once again mull over starting with a blank slate for the whole house because I'm finding that if I pull on one end of the string somewhere then matters on the other end of the string start to unravel. As for the back deck, that was there principally as a wood storage location. The main entertainment and relaxation would be on a tiered stone backyard - I'm really dealing with a 3 dimensional area back there, so it will be very engaging visually, with stairs, slopes, tiers, terraces, etc. Kind of like this but much more involved. I understand your reason for making the mudroom door be part of the back hall but now I lose the airlock quality of the mudroom. I'm up in the mountains near a major ski resort, so I'm dealing with snow and cold and I'm really wanting to isolate the heat loss from opening doors. As for the exercise bike, it had to be next to a counter so that the grain mill and motor have a place to be stationed. I'm not really looking forward to balancing the grain mill in my hand as I peddle the bike. I joke, but I really am looking forward to the ability to get a morning "ride" in when it's miserable outside and do double duty by milling fresh flour for the day. Of course this isn't an iron-clad must have but I'm going to be living in the house solo far more intensively than I will be using the house for entertaining, so I can always move the bike temporarily when it would be unsightly to guests. Putting the door there and removing the cabinet works for guests in the house scenarios, but for a single guy living alone it doesn't give me an advantage. The challenge I'm facing is that, unlike with a game of poker in which many different hands are possible, I'm playing with a deck of cards that only has 3-4 cards, say, so the limited combinations of rooms and purposes is really cramping me up. I do like your big island, principally because I like the surface area it gives me to work with. I'm going to keep the short and squat idea in mind rather than the long and narrow that I was working with.

"So, for newly planted perennials and shrubs, how long does it take before generally they are considered established?" Establishment with regards to plants defines the period of time it takes the plant to develop and spread out a proper root system so that it can support itself and derive what it needs from the existing soil conditions - water and nutrients. The larger and longer lived a plant, the longer it takes to establish. Annuals typically establish in a matter of weeks; perennials are usually considered established after one FULL growing season (if you plant in summer, that means the following summer). Shrubs, vines and trees are most often considered established after 3 full growing seasons. For larger trees, the rule of thumb is one year of establishment per every inch of caliper. Climate and growing conditions can have an effect on the timing but these are the guidelines referred to by horticulturists and the nursery industry.

Fun thread! Of course (as Elmer points out) not all yesteryear memories were wonderful or longed for by today's standards (DDT being sprayed on wasps in a summer cottage, cotton candy stuck in long hair, non air-conditioned summers, spankings, snowy TV reception, the horrid polio shots, for example). However some memories really stand out. A fish monger who came to our neighborhood in his horse-drawn wagon. His oyster-colored horse was equipped with blinders and I loved the smell of the horse, it's reins and the sounds of the whole setup. Any in those days, oysters were large and affordable. I loved going to the ice shop and then putting my child mouth on a large clear block of ice after wiping the sawdust from it. My father used to come home from work at the end of the day with large paper bags full of fresh garden peas that were best tasting right from the pod. Local grew real plums and peaches as well. No felt fruit. One great thing was that we didn't need a clamming or salt water fishing license. The beaches were clean and not crowded. No loud intrusive music. Lots of large salmon and trout (wild) from clean brooks. As a kid, occasional leaks in the roof were a fun occurrence, necessitating a wild scramble for pots and pails. We had a huge tabogin (spelling?) and could be towed through farmers corn fields. We could skate on or swim in just about any pond we came across. In the winters we could slide down large hills with abandon, on privately owned, undeveloped property. No one thought about law suits. What fun. I was always outside doing something fun like rowing, skating, sledding, walking through privately owned woods whose owners didn't mind. Coca cola from a machine hosting those thick pale green bottles never tasted as cold or as good. Three cents for the returned bottles. Chips, Oreos, ice-cream sandwiches, donuts were all enjoyed without the troublesome awareness that came later about the negative health effects. For many years our family had this incredible large metal, glass-lined vacuum bottle wide-mouthed Thermos. My father made batches of the most delicious lemonade. He'd add lots of ice cubes and some of the squeezed lemon halves to the mix. I regret no one was forward thinking enough to have bough a couple of cartons full of the wonderful large thermos jug. Although I probable couldn't get away with guzzling down homemade lemonade, I still would love to have one of those very same jugs. Heavenly, was my father's lemonade. Remembering those picnics now, I'm taken with all the caring, work and vigor my folks put into all they did. I see photos of events, dinners, and see how peopled dressed (better, more carefully) in those days and before carefree materials came about. I used to like being around when my mother was ironing -- the resh clothes from the line and the smell of the iron on clean cotton. As a youngster, few understood the amount of labor involved. Whew! Oh, and remember those wooden handled, wheeled metal garden cultivators?! Thanks for the interesting thread, seniorgal, and to all those sharing all sorts of memories.

Cracking or redirecting both furnaces just slightly Must be technical terms I'm not familiar with! 2. Filling the entire perimeter joist pockets above the block wall will R19 Absolutely pointless! Insulate rim joists with foam or XPS cut to size and sealed with caulking or foam. The R2-3 in so-called "insulated" siding isn't likely worth the price. The best return will come from the caulking and spray foam sealing of the crevices, cracks and penetrations. Finally, trying to isolate the basement from the rest of the house can't be done with fibreglass. But since you evidently use the basement, what's the point in the first place? Your handyman may be trustworthy. But he's definitely poorly informed. See US Department of Energy's many useful sites, such as this one. Or Building Science Corp. articles and papers, free here.