I did what you suggest over some heavy clay against a fence and filled along the fence with pure compost. I planted okra. Granted, earlier we had many, many days over 100 degrees, but if I had not watered DAILY I would have no okra. High OM content compost drinks quickly but also evaporates quickly, just as sand would. On top of heavy clay, little of the water applied to the compost had a chance to really penetrate the clay. Tilling the OM into the clay opens it up, allowing better rooting, more water absorption and oxygen penetration. Now it has cooled down, and because I have "spoiled" plants that basically didn't have to root out except in the layer of compost, I still have to water every other day. Point is, if I had of tilled the OM down the okra would have done much better with less water. When frost gets the okra I will turn in the earlier layer and add another, turning it in as well. If you have heavy clay and want productive growth the way it must be dealt with is different. Guess that's the way I see it. hortster

Sarah, great info. Also, since the cabinets are such a huge chunk of the expense, really shop around for them. We have a small kitchen, not nearly enough cabinets. And still we got some outrageous quotes. First we went to 1 kitchen showroom and got quotes on the mac-daddy cabinets (Century), then a grade just below that. Century was close to 30k. The "cheap ones" were 24k. That was with full overlay, but ALL the bells and whistles. Since this is our second home, and a total rehab, neither of those were in the budget. Upon our contractor's suggestion, we went to HD to look at their Thomasville line. They had the door style we wanted. The same cabinet set up in their highest quality with all the bells and whistles was only $15k. BIG difference. I hate HD and was skeptical, but budgetary concerns won out. Plus our contractor, not HD, is installing them, which is where I've heard most of the problems arise. So yeah, shop around. :-)

We have a bathroom in our kitchen! Yays! lol It was already in place when we moved in and there was no other practical place to put it on that floor (and it's the only bathroom on that floor), so as undesirable as it was, it was what we were stuck with. Getting rid of it would have meant traipsing down a flight of stairs and walking through a bedroom to go to the nearest bathroom. That was a lot more unacceptable to me than having a bathroom in the kitchen! ;) After living here for many years, I can honestly say that it hasn't been a problem at all and has worked out fine for us. Much ado about nothing, as far as I'm concerned. :) To save some $$$, you might want to consider RTA cabinets, such as Barker or Scherrs. Ours were roughly half the cost of cabs from a big box store but the quality was just as good, if not better. I would say that your kitchen needs more drawers, but I'm obsessed w/drawers, so keep that in mind. :D

Bringing in imported soil to improve grading and direct water way from a structure is a standard landscaping practice that is completely acceptable. And often very necessary. Very true. We don't have any more information than what we started with. I set up a few scenarios to get the discussion rolling. It's working. It used to be common and accepted to put fresh human manure on soils. Is that more relevant? It is still common and accepted to apply compost on a lawn. Many of my forum peers swear by it. I think organic fertilizer is 15x more cost effective and a ton, literally, less hassle. Sometimes 30 years of doing the work is the same as 1 year of experience times 30. You know the people I'm talking about. I'm thinking of so called lawn care professionals who mow, blow, and go year after year. Back in about 2005 I joined a forum for lawn care professionals. Even the old timers (especially the old timers), thought that organic lawn care meant applying compost. After I linked them to some articles, they began to come around to the economic benefits of applying organic fertilizer instead of compost. Nor can you compare your experience in your garden to any other garden elsewhere. My direct experience (approximately 50 years of lawn care) pales in comparison to what I've learned from the past 18 years on five different lawn care forums. Before 2002 I was that guy with 1 year's worth of experience 36 times. Even after taking a few classes at an official ag school, the forums taught me that I had to forget everything I thought I knew about lawn care. I was doing it all wrong. Watering? Wrong. Mowing? Wrong. Fertilizing? Wrong. -icides? Wrong. I used to be that guy suggesting people use compost on their lawn to fertilize it. Now I think compost is a backbreaking waste of time and money. My opinions about adding unneeded topsoil has been formed by observation of hundreds of yards with soil overflowing into the streets. Here's a yard with so much washed out topsoil, the grass is growing across the sidewalk (in the distance). You can't see the 3-d effect in this picture but the soil to the right side is 8 inches higher than the sidewalk - hence you cannot see the sidewalk off to the right. The extra topsoil between the curb and the peak of the mound in the median has already washed away until it reached a stable slope with what grass is left after abysmal lawn management. So with your 30 years in landscaping, would you recommend adding 2 inches of topsoil to this yard to improve the soil? My recommendation was to remove 8 inches of topsoil and bring it all back to grade. Then test the soil to see what chemistry it needed and work on the biology from there. This yard is in the Texas Panhandle, supposedly very fertile soil. It is not my garden, but it doesn't have to be mine to learn from the obvious mistakes. As you said, we don't know what the OP's yard looks like. It might look just like the one pictured. Just for grins I Google Mapped that yard. By the street view it looks like they haven't done anything since 2009, when I took the picture.