Hi, When it comes to gardening, it all starts with the soil. In order to get good results with whatever you plants, your soil needs to supply good nutrition and it needs to have good, loose tilth so that the plant roots can grow. So, after you cut out the sod and lift it, check the soil you have remaining and determine if it is primarily clay, sand, silt or (hopefully) sandy loam. I'm going to link a Fine Gardening magazine article that shows a very simple method to use a jar of soil and water to determine what your soil is composed of. Then, depending on what you find improve the soil accordingly. I have very red, very clayey soil for the most part, and it is very high in nutrients. Its tilth is poor, though, so I have to add organic matter every year to keep the soil loose and fluffy. Remember that the plant roots do not, technically, grow in the soil itself. They actually grow in the air pores between soil particles, so you need loose soil so the roots can grow easily. Your soil test, obviously, will tell you if you need to make any adjustments to correct any nutritional issues. If the tree stump is pretty old and is rotting on its own, it shouldn't pose too much of a problem although you may not be able to get anything to grow too close to the stump if the tree was cut only recently and there still are a lot of small and large roots in the area near the trunk. If the trunk is so large underground that it poses a significant problem, you can pay someone from a tree company or landscaping company to come with a stump grinder and grind out the stump. You can grow whatever you want on a fence. They make great trellises. At various points, my garden fences have served as trellises for cucumbers, vining types of squashes (not so much for the bush varieties although they will lean against a fence and sort of look like they are climbing), pumpkins, gourds, pole beans, half-runner beans, sugar snap peas, mini refrigerator-sized watermelons, both muskmelons and true cantaloupes, and oodles of flowering ornamentals like morning glories, moonflower vines, cardinal climber, cypress vine, firecracker vine, black-eyed susan vine, etc. If you plant blackberries within a couple of feet of a fence they won't exactly climb it, but they will lean against it. With some veggies, you may have to gently weave the first stem through the fence once the plant is tall enough/long enough to reach the fence, but most veggies climb the fence on their own just fine after that. With some of the larger melons, winter squash and pumpkins, you may need to make a sling out of cheesecloth, burlap, nylon stockings, etc. to help support them once the weight gets pretty heavy. With muskmelons climbing a fence that will slip off the vine on their own when they are ripe, there is a possibility they will crack and split when they fall to the ground. You can work around that to a large extent, and there are several ways to do so. FIrst, just put 4-6" of mulch on the ground beneath the fence (on both sides of the fence) to cushion the melons and break their fall. That alone will prevent most of the potential cracking and splitting. Or, you could use knee-high stockings on the melons as a sort of sling. Just gently slip the stocking over the melon and tie it to the fence. The stocking will 'catch' the melons when it slips off the vine and that will prevent cracking from occurring when it falls to the ground. I grow nasturtiums as companion plants in my garden every year and they do not have any more of a pest problem than any other plant that I grow. Usually, if you have persistent aphid issues, there is something out of whack in your soil or in your garden fertilizing practices. Be sure you aren't adding excessive nitrogen to your garden, either via amending the soil with nitrogen-rich amendments or via the use of a fertilizer that is high in nitrogen---or using one that is lower in nitrogen too often. It is not at all unusual to have aphids pop up in the spring time. They're everywhere. However, if their population skyrockets and gets out of control, a gardener should try to figure out why---and often it is excess nitrogen. Some of the folks I know who have had a problem with a huge population of aphids have brought it upon themselves, to some degree, by using a broad-spectrum pesticide that has wiped out the population of beneficial insects that eat aphids. Be sure you aren't engaging in any practices that harms your beneficial insects because they will do a lot of pest control for you. If you do not believe you have any beneficial insects in your garden, you have a couple of ways to bring them back to your garden. First, you can buy and release beneficial insects from either a nursery or online from an insectary. Secondly, you can buy insect-attracting seed mixes that will draw beneficial insects to your garden. Sunflowers sometimes can have a alleopathic effect on some desirable veggies, flowers and herbs so be careful about planting them too close to other plants. I usually put mine in their own area away from almost everything else. I like planting sunflowers for shade, but I live out in the country where every pest alive devours their foliage and, if allowed, their flower heads, including deer who will strip the stem of a sunflower plant naked in a heartbeat, including eating both blooming flowers and dried seedheads, so for me they are an "inside the fence" plant only. Since you live in town, the deer may not be an issue for you. However, stink bugs, among other pests, love, love, love sunflowers and will be attracted to them so be careful about putting sunflowers close to any of the veggie and ornamental plants they like or you may find you are attracting stink bugs to your garden merely by planting the sunflowers. One good way to use sunflowers is to plant them away from the garden in order to draw the stink bugs away from your garden plants. When you use a plant like this, it is known as a trap plant. In my garden, some years the marigolds are trap plants for spider mites. Once the mites are all over the marigold plants, I pull up the plants and either burn them or seal them up in a black garbage bag and throw them out with the trash. Other years, the spider mites ignore the marigolds and in those years I get to enjoy the marigolds all summer long. When it comes to planting outside a fence that has a sidewalk, roadway or other public space on the outside of the fence, it is important to remember you shouldn't plant anything that blocks the sidewalk. Also, if you plant anything too pretty or desirable, it may disappear. In areas that are more public, I usually plant tough plants that can handle a lot of abuse, often zinnias or tall verbena (verbena bonariensis) along fencelines, or easy climbers like black-eyed susan vines, morning glories or moonvines. All of those vining plants tend to reseed vigorously and can become invasive. I just consider the volunteer seedings I pull up by the hundreds every year to be the price I pay for growing pretty vines on the fence. It is hard to make too many specific suggestions without knowing your level of gardening experience, but you have a very nice-sized plot and could grow a lot in it. I use some of my fences for succession planting. For example, I might plant sugar snap peas, which usually finish up in my area in late May or in early to mid-June in a year with a cool spring, first. After they are done and I've yanked out the spent plants and put them on the compost pile, I might plant a flowering vine that will be in bloom by mid-summer, or a flowering veggie like pole beans for a fall harvest. (Our typical summer heat normally will prevent you from getting much of a yield in summer from beans planted in May or June, but they will grow and will look nice if kept watered, and will bloom and give you beans in the fall.) You can plant cucumbers that late and still get a good harvest, as long as you keep them well-watered so they won't develop an unpleasant bitter flavor. You also could follow a vining cool season crop like sugar snap peas with a vining type of southern pea (cowpeas, black-eyed peas, purplehull pinkeye peas, zipper peas, lady peas or cream peas). My favorite fence-climbing southern pea is known either as Red Ripper or Mandy and it will grow as high as your fence goes and then will cascade back down. In fact, if you plant if by a tree, it will climb 10-20' up into the tree. You could plant a less common vining crop on your fence, like decorative autumn gourds (I like to grow birdhouse gourds on the fence around my corn-growing area), mini pumpkins or luffa gourds. There's just a million options, so have fun with it. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Soil Jar Test for Texture This post was edited by okiedawn on Thu, Feb 13, 14 at 16:15

I read your blog this morning and have been thinking about your dilemma. I thought about it in the shower- I have the Oceanside Sandstone #005 Iridescent in my bathroom which similar to the one you called "funky". I really love that tile but it may be too much in your kitchen (although I think it would compliment your floor quite well). My favorite for your kitchen is the Veil. The photo on your blog does not do it justice. It's very beautiful, timeless and definitely does not look harlequin. To me harlequin would be black and white diamond shaped tiles. I think the Veil would allow you to accent your kitchen with any colors you liked and paint the walls whatever you wanted. It would not limit you like colored tiles could. It will not call more attention to your floor and will look good with it. I think Veil is the tile shown on Kraftmaid's home page. Here is a link that might be useful: Veil tile

oops, first I feel I must apologize to msm859 following my rant about "90-counters". I meant no disrespect to your advice. To be honest, I only very briefly skimmed through your post and didn't even catch the part where you mentioned 90s, so I wasn't trying to be rude on that point. You recommended going with larger pipe anyways and my personal gripe is with those who still use 2" pipe and then boast about avoiding 90s. Respek! Note to others: Somebody could just as easily be thinking I'm a hack for using big pipe and not worrying about 90s. We all draw the line somewhere. Jennifer: The 1.5" returns are typically branched off a 2" main return line. They go to 1.5" where they penetrate through the wall because the eyeballs (trim pieces) are that size. I'm guessing that is what your builder is intending, but I could be wrong. In a perfect world, or if you were a Kennedy or DuPont, then that main return line would be the same size as the suction, so 3" is my armchair recommendation. If it was built with 3" suction and 2.5" return, I would not really frown on that either, but I wouldn't do it myself. Well actually, that's not true because I am doing exactly that on a current project, but that's because of some other fuzzy logic and it's not that my return is downsized, but rather my suction is upsized. If your pool was built with 2.5" suction and 2.5 or 2" return, then that would probably be better than average, but you'd be amazed at how much more you'll love your pool with bigger pipes. I mentioned to somebody here before that one of the first pools I built on my own, I used a 1/2 HP filter pump on 2" pipes and I was a little disappointed that the pump did not seem to be any quieter than any of the hundreds of 3/4 HP pumps I've seen in service. So last year, I did a project of several small fountains like you might see at a ritzy shopping center (these things are more painful than any pool I've ever built), each on its own filtration system. I used 2.5" suctions and returns, reducing down as appropriate for the returns and fountain nozzles. The pipe runs were all well over 100' in each direction, two of them approaching 160', and those pumps were so quiet I was stunned and amazed. If you do go with the Intelliflo, then the Intellitouch will certainly be a nice complement to that, but you might also consider the EasyTouch. In a nutshell, the EasyTouch is a value-engineered, toned-down version of the Intellitouch. I'm not familiar enough with it to know for sure that it controls the Intelliflo in the same manner, but it's definitely worth looking into. If your builder doesn't know either, he can contact his local Pentair rep. who will be happy to lend a hand. Something else I just noticed is that they've spec'd a 1 or 2 HP Whisperflo for the two laminar jets. This equation is way out of balance because those laminars only need 10 gpm each. Even with a 1/2 HP Whisperflow, you will wind up sending the majority of its output through the bypass line, directly back into the pool. The 1/2 HP will give you 2 or 3 times the flow you need for the laminars. Laminars are delicate and fussy, it's imperative not to give them too much flow or they can be damaged. At the least, they won't work correctly with too much flow, so there is zero advantage to oversizing the pump which runs them. Additionally, they should receive filtered water, so I would put a small cartridge filter on that pump (Clean & Clear 100 or 150 is fine for the task and not much $$). You also want to have the flow to each laminar adjustable with gate valves or globe valves because they are much more suited to very fine adjustment. Most builders would use a 3-way valve or two ball valves, which can be difficult to adjust in the fine increments needed for laminars. The laminars are proposed to be lit, but I do not see a fiberoptic illuminator listed in the specs. They are available with or without color, so you'll want to be sure and clarify that with your builder. hmmmm...a couple other things off the top of my head; you might consider going with two pool lights, along the long wall on the house side so they aren't shining into the house. This is a basic thing that many others here can vouch for. Regarding the auto-fill, I may be splitting hairs at this point but I don't really like the Pentair/Letro autofill. They have a tendency to cause hammer knocking in your house plumbing because of the way they're designed. I much prefer the new autofill from Pour-A-Lid or my former favorite, MP Industries' Auto-Lev. The prices are roughly the same and these two are much easier to install, service, and live with than the Pentair/Letro version. Well this was fun. If I can help you spend any more of your hard-earned money, don't hesitate to ask. hahaha

Shee, Ha, I found out today, it will be at least another 6-8 weeks now before we get the sofa because it isn't expected to ship now till the mid part of August and then there's another couple of weeks for shipping & delivery time! I sure hope we have it before the holidays. LOL In regards to the chairs, I'm not willing to brush paint 4 chairs but we are seriously considering painting them with spray paint. (if DeeDee's idea doesn't work out) Deedee, You are brilliant! Thank you so much! I hadn't even thought of that but the owner of the store we got the cabinet from is a real character and he just loves to wheel and deal. He has a woman on staff who does all their painting and he once offered to refinish our dining room table for us. She uses a sprayer for all the base coats and seems to do a good job on other pieces I've seen. I don't see why he wouldn't be willing to work something out with me. Oh! Then they'd match the hutch! We're picking it up tomorrow morning, I'll ask him if he's in. Oh boy, I'm excited now, wouldn't that be great! Suero, That's a great price unfinished but buying them online means I'd have to paint them and I'm not really up for that. There were a couple of styles we were considering at our local naked furniture store. They had that same chair for something like 109.99 and they wanted 70 to stain it or 80.00 to paint it. Add tax and it was close to 200/chair, which was just more than our budget for the dining room would allow. Thank you for your help though, it was a good suggestion and I do appreciate it.