tufaenough - Your remark about tufa breaking every time you hit it with a hammer reminds me of the very first time I tried to make 'tufa - but the result was different. I'd mixed the dry ingredients - 1/4 portland and 3/4 peat moss I think it was - and then added about the same amount of water as if I were mixing ordinary concrete. It immediately soaked up the water so that all I had was a very dry-looking crumble. Not a bit like a concrete mix. So, I added lots more water & it got too sloppy. So I added more Portland. And then a bit more peat moss. And so on.... I then decided that the solution must be more Portland, so I added Portland until I got a fairly stiff mix. When I took the casting out of the mold it certainly felt lighter that regular concrete. Being curious to see how strong this Hypertufa stuff was, I hit it with a hammer. All it did was it made a dent. I tried hitting it with a sledgehammer. It still wouldn't break - all I got was a bigger dent. I still can't decide what the final proportions of peat moss and Portland were. Maybe it was 2 Portland to 1 peat moss........! Herb

STOP - serious trouble on plant SFLR - sorry for late response WIP - water it please HT..GT - Here today, gone tomorrow SIS - succulent inappropriate soil For fun! Had a good laugh, thanks.

Well, I am not trashing the daylilies, usually I just move them. As far as these ALL FIRED UP daylilies, when I bought it I bought the standard two fans. But I bought others from the same vendor at the same time. When the orfer came there was enough ALL FIRED UP for five clumplets. I had not planned on that. So I thought on were I could make a mini row and that was the spot I came up with. Now that the tree out front has come down this March, more sun and I am fixing up more of that area. So the row of daylilies that were just a stick em here cause I had to find a spot, were going to leave for more of a variety of cottagey style in that garden section. I am relocating one of the clumps and the others are spoken for. I find its not very difficult to give daylilies away.

Beagles said exactly what I was thinking. To be honest, your old hand drawn sketch was too difficult for me to really understand. I knew what you were trying to do - figure out if it would work. To see if your concepts were sound. I get that. But I can also understand how the more technical-minded folks on GW would get annoyed when your responses were brushing off what they considered to be the bones of your project. I read most of your posts (here and on th other forums) and it always seemed like you were saying "eh, we'll figure out if the house is going to fall over later...but look at my pretty inspiration pictures". (if that wasn't what you were saying I apologize but that's the impression I got) Not knowing if the bones are good enough seemed to be the big stumbling block in the lines of communication. You want to know if it'll look right and everyone else is trying to ask if it's even possible. But now with the new plan sketch it's much clearer to me what you're trying to do (maybe it's the engineer in me). As far as your first floor layout, I like it but I would consider shrinking the opening to the living room on the front wall and move the hall/coat closet into that corner by the front door. So when you do have guests coming in they don't have to walk to the center of the house to get their jackets. Your clawfoot tub bathroom is nice but I think that if you moved the sink to the common wall with your master bath then you could maybe add a small linen closet where the sink is now. That way guests wouldn't have to go into your bedroom space to get extra TP or towels or anything. Just some thoughts. I have no idea what to tell you about the roof lines and outside view of the home without seeing what your mock up looks like. I'm not good at picturing things in my mind. And macybaby I have a picture of myself looking much the same except I was covered in plaster dust from our demo. We haven't gotten to the mudding stage yet, but I'm sure I'll be covered from head to toe again. We knew going into our kitchen renovation that the sunporch would have to come off and be rebuilt. There was essentially no structure. As soon as we took the trim off we could see that the corners were made from 2x4's in an L shape...we thought we might have load bearing windows. No headers back there at all. The only we saved was the roof. Luckily we didn't find any other major damage in the rest of the kitchen that we didn't anticipate. We're tearing out the floor down to the joists and even some of those are going to be repaired (sistering new joists to them to even out the floor)...but again, we knew to anticipate this before starting. Our kitchen budget was roughly $25k (not including a 5% contingency) and I think we're going to come in at $26k. I consider that a success. Of course we were hoping to come in closer to $15k but we did all of our investigation work a head of time and knew what kind of budget we needed to do it right. Of course I would've rather been thinking about paint colors and stain for the cabinets but I kind of figured, why waste my time and tease myself thinking about the pretty stuff if I didn't even know we could afford it. And the only reason our kitchen is getting done in the budget we have is because we're also doing all the work ourselves (with the help of some friends). All the demo, framing, flooring, electrical, plumbing, drywall...everything.