I'm sitting here smiling. I routinely rip out large beds, do a few every year. Thugs or not, I need a visual change and doing the work is good for body and soul. Earlier this year I hired my niece and nephew, home from college and not yet at their summer jobs, to help me whack back an overgrown shrub border and take plants to the compost heap as I shovel pruned them. Usually I do it all myself but it was nice to have the help and these two young collegiates worked hard to earn some pocket money. One of the best aspects of being a winter sower is the lack of any significant expense to create new swaths of plants--you can rip out and redo to your hearts content and not feel it bite your wallet. I've got a back border very overgrown with massive clumps or Siberian iris, hibiscus, herbs and assorted shrubs I've all WSed. Some will be 'rescued' and go to a holding bed and then donated for charity sale next spring, but the rest of the plants will feed the compost heap. Once upon a time I felt guilty about doing such a thing, but I don't anymore. Rip out and make new. It keeps me busy and my garden is not static, it's a perpetual work in progress. Earlier this afternoon, I was looking at the new growth filling in on the shrubs which were cut to ankle-height a few months back and I am very satisfied with how it looks now. There's lots of room still for new perennials and I've got a few pots of eupatorium to go in to the emptiest areas, but I'm not in a rush. Lots more still to rip out and lots of seeds to sow in August, and then I'll put in the seedlings by late September and they'll snuggle into their spots through October and November and then comes blessed December when the garden gets put to sleep for the winter and the Winter Sowing season begins again. It's a constant ebb and flow of plants in and plants out in my garden, the life cycle is in full force, as it should be. T

Okay, so I must say I have experienced exactly what you are going through. Yes, I lost lots and LOTS of hair during and after my pregnancy. My baby is 13 months old now and my hair is still growing back. I am having to buy a whole bunch of head bands to hold back the growing hair. Without these headbands, I look like Albert Einstein! As far as scalp treatment goes, I highly recommend a product by Arbonne. It is called Thermal Fusion hair and scalp revitalizer. At first I didn't think this would work (being that I tried countless others). I tell you what.... IT WORKS! The product is well worth it's price. It has and is still making a difference with my hair. It actually feels good on the scalp. Seriously, buy it... you'll thank me later! Below you will find a link to the Arbonne website. You will have to buy it from an Arbonne consultant. When in their webpage, click on the link "Locate a consultant". It is really worth it. Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Arbonne

Is the elastic covered by the waistband or sewn to the outside of it? If it's inside the waistband and you don't mind spending the time, you could take all the stitching out of the waistband(you may have to remove it from the shorts). Adjust the width of the waistband to match the new width of your shorts, sew it back on the shorts(if you removed it), fold it over and make a casing that you can pull your elastic through and adjust as needed. If the elastic is sewn to the outside of the waistband, you might get away with taking it in along with the side seams of the shorts. Just reinforce your stitching(stitch over it a couple of times) so it won't come apart and trim fairly close so it won't feel bulky. Good luck. I hope I'm not confusing you.

We installed a similar vent-a-hood (48" with 900 cfm triple blower fan), and you will definitely need to do some work on your ceiling. We installed in a 1 story house, and we were using the vent-a-hood liner, not the stand-alone housing. They built a decorative plenum above the range (cathedral ceiling) and recessed the hood liner up into the plenum. The ducting then connected straight up to a vent through the attic and to the roof. I believe that the unit you picked is actually two 600 cfm dual fans that each require an 8 inch duct. You can then use a duct combiner (about 17" tall) to bring them together into a single 12" duct. The centerline of each 8" duct is about 11" away from the centerline of the hood. Do you plan to build any type of decorative plenum/trim above the hood to get the hood to the correct height over the range? If so, that could give you some working room for ducting options. The option I am considering is whether you could use two 8" ducts, but jog one over so you could run them between two adjacent floor joists or one above the other (hidden by a plenum). It still requires removing quite a bit of ceiling, but will fit well with typical joist spacing. The other choice is to run each 8" duct a different direction along the joist, but you will probably run into a load bearing wall in one of the directions. The other option is to look at the floor above to see if you could route the 12" duct (or two 8" ducts) vertically. If you could grab space from a closet or the corner of a room, you could run the duct(s) straight up and out the roof. The code requirement for make-up air when a fan moves more than 450 cfm is a relatively new requirement. If your city follows code, you will have an added expense for an automatic make-up air vent that opens when you run the exhaust. However, I installed a 600 cfm fan during renovation of my current house in 2014 and the inspector never even mentioned make-up air, so YMMV. Removing and replacing sheetrock ceilings is messy, and looks bad when its out, but its really very straightforward construction work that does not require a licensed professional. I would not get very concerned about how much ceiling has to come out. Bruce