B., I was excited when you described the wings because I knew such a distinctive feature would make it much easier to ID this critter. And then you went ahead and figured it out pretty quickly which is great. I'm still not sure they're a problem, though, unless you have tons and tons of them. Lots of the little critters that visit compost piles actually help the materials break down. Since they are flies, and they like decomposing material, I think it is likely they may be using your compost heap as a site to lay their eggs so the larvae can hatch and grow in your compost pile. If having the flies in your compost pile concerns you, or if you are afraid they'll move to something else, you could use an organic product that disrupts the life cycle of the flies. Honestly, though, I think God made each and every creature for a reason, and they all have a role to play in the balance of nature and the circle of life. So, I feel like Mother Nature works best if I leave her alone. The only time I take action against one critter or another is if, for one reason or another, the population of any given creature is out of balance. Even then, I try to figure out WHY and correct the conditions instead of trying to eliminate the insect. For example, spider mites on tomatoes. Spider mites are virtually everywhere in the summer heat but MOST of the time the beneficial mites (different from spider mites) prey upon them for food and keep them under control. If something has happened to the population of good spider mites, though, the bad spider mites can get out of control. At this point you have 2 options: (1) address the situation by trying to kill the spider mites, or (2) address the situation by purchasing and releasing good mites so they can take care of the bad mites. I would choose option #2 because it is a better long-term strategy. It is more important to me to re-establish a population of good bugs, than to wipe out a population of bad bugs. Why? Because a miticide cannot and will not wipe out all the red spider mites and I am still going to need good mites in the future to wipe out the surviving bad mites. Just a little food for thought. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Nematodes for fly larvae control

Still haven't taken a picture but shortly after posting this I repotted the fig. This time I look it out and hosed the rootball down with water. This losen the roots up quite a lot. Some of the roots were way too long so I trimmed them up. I took the 5-1-1 potting mix and incorporated the lime throughout and repotted the fig while fanning the roots. Without a couple of days the tree already looked better. The leaves have begun opening and are about teh size of a quarter now. I think repotting it helped out. As for the cutting, it did have a handful of rootlets about an inch long. I put it in a mix of 2/3 perlite and 1/3 5-1-1 mix. I used two 2-liter soda bottles. I cut the top off of one and potted the fig in the bottom portion. I used a second 2-liter soda bottle in which I cut the bottom out of and stuck the top over the fig container. I essentially have a very tall 2 liter bottle. I think this should create a a humid greenhouse environment. We'll see how it does. If it gets too humid I can remove the cap from the bottle.

Here is our house layout with all of the "easy" to remove walls gone. And here it is with all of the walls gone (chimney is gone as well, but we really can not move that). We can also move the side door a few feet, it has to move anyways because it is about 6" lower that the other floors in the house. The office area is also lower than the rest of the house - and has hard wood floors. Actually, the whole house has hard wood floors, with the dining room/hall being white oak, the kitchen/living room red oak (and perpendicular to the dining room) and the office has white oak, which are again 3" lower than the rest of the house. We can not justify reflooring the entire house, nor is it really an option to remove the flooring then put it back down. There are so many nails it's just too much to do any more than a small patch that way. The pink walls are load bearing. We're ok with removing one of them, but don't really want to remove both. We are also trying to put together a plan that can be done in stages. Thanks for your input! Oh, and here is the whole house as is.

I'd read the thread before, but couldn't think of an improvement on jakuval's suggestions--I really like the one with the peninsula. That narrow hallway must be a pain, although I understand your space restrictions. I have a 30" opening from the LR to the kitchen, and I thought that was bad. Don't know if this will be real help, but the only alternate plan I thought of is to keep the plumbing on the right wall (I have the plan turned 90°) and pull the bases forward to accommodate the pipe. That would allow you to have a standard depth fridge, and give you more counter depth. You could also have deeper uppers (15-18") for more storage. I put a pull-out pantry beside the fridge, and 15" deep cabinets on the island. I was thinking you could use those for extra pantry storage by mounting shelves on the doors, to make canned goods easily accessible. I added a 15" overhang for seating, but it could be more shallow as your space is limited. With entries to the kitchen on both sides of the island, maybe traffic flow will be improved. I used the 30" range, which is out of the way of traffic, except when someone is coming in from the terrace, but there is space to pass behind the cook. If the window is lower than counter height, the small cabinet on the end can be installed at standard depth, and it could house the MW drawer--or the MW could be incorporated into the upper cabinet beside the fridge. The shelf might need to be the same depth as the fridge box, to accommodate the pipe. I added a shallow cabinet in the corner, just inside the door. That could be a broom closet, command center for a message board and calendar, charging station, or extra pantry storage. Thanks, jakuval, for the templates.