Thanks Flora-UK for finding the above link! There's quite a bit of information here regarding Miner's Lettuce. Apparently, it's one of the first things that comes back after a forest fire. Who knew? Anyway there is some nutritional information provided: NUTRITIONAL VALUE : The nutritional composition of miner's-lettuce has been determined to be 37.1 percent protein, 42.5 percent total carbohydrate, and 12.4 percent crude fiber. The calcium:phosphorus ratio is 0.66:1.0 [37].

Oh, I can now see why you thought they were deer droppings, Gumby. You were probably referring to the clay pellets like what howelbama said haha. I was referring to the black dots on the lettuce leaves. Not the brown ones. But again, thank you sooo much to all of you who tried to help me out. I knew there had to be something living in my lettuce.. but I didn't know what it was. I used to live in missouri and I never had any caterpillar problems before for some reason. But then I moved back to California and now I'm finding all sorts of pests I've never seen before. : )

Oh crud. All you practical people who don't like split skulls and broken legs had to chime in :^) You can't really see it from the pic that includes the family room, but the wood is a perimeter there with carpet in the middle. We like that look and don't really want to put carpet all the way to the step (to provide the visual clue). Also, that wood strip (the one just below the step) is a high traffic area between the back door and door to the garage. We have friends (who have the same model) with the whole family room carpeted and that path on the carpet gets pretty dirty. So, we aren't in favor of any plan that puts carpet or anything else (e.g. bookcase) on that wood strip. We are replacing all of the wood on the upper level with the remodel (if we don't replace, there is a lot of patching that needs to be done because the wood is not currently under the cabinets. It was only $800 more to replace and when the wood was installed by the previous owner, it wasn't properly acclimated and there are large gaps). We can easily do something like Chicagoans suggested: using the wood pattern or stain color to define the edge of the step. Any ideas or pictures of this? Also, I measured the area behind the chairs to the step: 3.5 feet with the chair pushed in. 2.5 feet with someone sitting. 1.5 feet with a normal push the chair out to get up. 1 foot with a bug push the chair out to get up.

People are doing more combo rooms like library/dining, den/dining or office/dining - so don't be afraid of that. I understand that with some houses that have living rooms and family rooms, the dining area is being moved to the living room and the old dining space becomes a sitting room. In our tours through junk shops, we settled on a small dining table with leaves. But I saw an amazing variety of tables - ones that looked like a console table or buffet, but had a table that pulled out to seat twelve. Ones that were actually a set of tables - a pair of demi-lunes and a drop leaf center that could be used alone or in combinations (round or just part of the drop leaf, the whole drop leaf or the whole drop leaf with a demi-lune on each end. Ones that closed up to 40" x 40" but had leaves to become 40" by 96". Round tables with leaves that went around the outside. If you decide to go forward with eliminating the eat-in area, be assured you can find a table that will work with other purposes if you have a little patience.