Yet another manifestation of a common landscape design misperception, that large-growing trees will not fit in a small space, in this case, 45' by 60' or more. Please think about this: A low-growing, ornamental tree bears its main crown at the same level as human activity, thereby taking up MORE space where it matters. A big, tall oak, maple elm, whathaveyou, will be, at maturity, a trunk in this same vertical stratum, with its crown overhead, acting as the "ceiling" of your landscape, and like all ceilings, well out of the way of things you want to do. Don't be offended Jason. I assume you're not a landscape design pro. What does irritate me to no end is the modern tendency of people who ARE pro designers to omit large-scale shade trees from their designs, I'm convinced, because the big circle that represents their crown in plan view 'appears' to take up lots of space. Hence the proliferation of McMansions with the biggest plant material on site being your redbud, flowering crab, hawthorn, etc. Huge, tall houses with no tall-growing trees to match their scale. +oM

I had an Aleppo Pine at my other house years ago and it grew fairly fast and looked good when I had it. We had bought it as a live Christmas Tree and planted it. Some friends really liked our tree and the next year we bought another to use as our Christmas Tree and then gave it to them for their yard after Christmas. The tree did well for a couple of years and then started turning brown and died. At that time there was something going around affecting Aleppo Pines. I think it was a blight. They had a tree Dr come out and look at it and it was diseased. I'm not sure if that is still a problem or not but it is something that you may want to check on before buying one. Sorry that I can't be of more help.

April, You keep starting new threads so it is difficult to review what advice you have received. Contractor #1 Option 2 is the nicest combination in my opinion. It is a Infinity 2 stage furnace (58UVB)and 2 stage condenser (24APA7). You could consider upgrading the furnace to the 58MVC for about $400 in order to get the middle stage. I still think the 58UVB qualifies for a Carrier rebate. Please check this. I have not heard of a Carrier armour coil. I know the tin plated coil is an improvement of Carrier's old leaky coils. This is the coil I have. The contractor needs to size the equipment by doing a heat loss and gain calculation. This is known in the industry as a Manual J calculation. Have each contractor explain how he calculated the size. I assume the summers in Michigan are not too hot, so the 3 ton unit may be the correct size.

blondelle's plan has a lot of interesting ideas. Using it as the base plan, I'd suggest the following changes to it: Laundry/powder/office area-- Powder rm--fill in the wall where she has the door. Then stretch out the powder room so it's 7 to 7-1/2' long adjacent to her kitchen wall and 42" wide, with a pocket door on the right wall. Laundry--this will be outside the powder room, with the small window in it. There would be a door into the family room right next to where the powder room/family room wall ends. Opposite this door and wall would be an identical door and wall, with the office on the other side. Both laundry doors would be pocket doors. The laundry would measure about 7 to 7-1/2' x ~10 to 10-1/2'. Office--to the right of the door from the garage you could have a 4-6' wide coat closet with a 2+' wide cleaning closet next to it. Opposite it (on the back of the 42" powder room wall) you could have a bench with hooks/cubbies above it. The remainder of the room would be the office (about 9'x 10' with a chunk out of the corner due to the closets). Now for the kitchen: Keep the door from the original hall to the family room for easy access to the revised kitchen. Shorten the cabinets on her range wall from both ends from about 11' to about 8' in length. Put the range in the middle of the wall where the fridge was so it's out of the path of the kids. Facing blondelle's range wall, put the fridge on the right, the microwave to the left of it, and a bar sink to the left of it. May have to reverse the fridge and bar sink locations depending on the width of the kitchen. I'm not sure if the kitchen as reconfigured is wide enough for even a 2' wide island. On the back side of the end of the foyer closet and blondelle's fridge wall, put a hutch for dishes or floor to ceiling 12-15" deep cabinets to be used as a pantry. If there is room for the island, extend it so the end comes out as far as the hutch/pantry cabinets. Foyer: since this looks to be over 9'x9', and since the living room is so long, you might consider giving it a little bit of definition by putting an 18" square half wall coming out from each of the closet walls, with open shelves above. I remember some very pretty ones in Sarah Susanka's book The Not So Big House, I think on p. 100. (I liked that room so much that I memorized the page!) Family room: It might be a good idea to keep the wall between it and the dining room. With young kids it's sort of nice to be able to close the doors on the mess if they have their toys in there. Also, as they get older the wall will buffer some of the noise from them and their friends, and the TV if something is on and you don't want to watch it. With the bedrooms on the same floor, it also would keep things quieter when some people are still sleeping, especially when the TV is on. Many people find it very nice to have one of the "public" rooms on the first floor that can be closed off when needed. Also, if the wall remains, you could get a comfortable sofa bed for guests to sleep on. Sorry I can't draw this up for you, but maybe blondelle or someone else will be able to if there's merit to any of these suggestions. It would be very helpful to have the EXACT measurements of the kitchen and narrow hall combined. Can you measure it from the left kitchen wall through the doorway to the right hall wall? I can estimate it by using the scale, but it seems to be only 12-1/2' wide. That would be a little too tight for a built in island, with appliances in the cabinets on the walls opposite the island. However, a narrower long free-standing work table would work. Anne