When mc was having the sudsing problems with the Whirlpool Duet I had suspected it may have been the detergent. I went out and purchased some Tide HE liquid. Upon using it I had the same trouble as mc with oversudsing and the suds not rinsing out. Out of curiosity, I sent Tide an email explaining my problem in detail. I explained that I had purchased Tide HE liquid for my Frigidaire Affinity. Specifically told them the type of machine too. I informed them about the excessive suds, the poor rinsibility, the stiffness and the fact I can not use fabric softener due to having small children and the effects it would have on the flame retardent on their clothes. I explained that due to the liquid formulas concentration, I was unable to cut the amount of liquid used back to a safe level. I even informed them that I had seen others mention similiar problems on the net. I was very nice in my email and this was the response I got. Mon, 9 Jun 2008 09:29:26 -0400 (EDT) "P&G Consumer Relations" cleanclothes@custhelp.com Thanks for contacting P&G. [Incident: 080608-001294] I'm sorry you experienced oversudsing while using our detergent. There are a few situations that can cause this. They include: -- Using too much detergent for the amount of soil in each load. -- Water hardness level. Less detergent can be used in soft water. -- Do you use cold water for most wash loads? You might be experiencing buildup of detergent and mineral deposits in the outside tub of your washer. This can happen when cold water is consistently used for washing. Here's how you can fix that: add 1/2 gallon of white vinegar to a full tub of hot water. Run the washer through a complete cycle without clothing. If this resolves the problem you may want to repeat the process every 6 months. -- Overloading the washer can be a cause. Suds can become trapped in clothing if there's not enough room for them to circulate freely. -- Using regular detergent in a high efficiency washer. If you have one of the new HE washers, make sure you're using HE detergent, like Tide HE. A final word, it isn't unusual to see suds in the sink when the rinse water drains. The force of the water coming from your washer can generate suds as the tub empties. Since I'm not able to help the way I'd like via email, I'm following up via postal mail. You should hear from me in 7-10 days. Thanks for taking the time to write. Debi Tide Team [---001:001084:47166---] As you can see per the response they did not read my email to them in it's entirety as I had told them I was using the Tide HE liquid. They also totally neglected the fact that the suds were not rinsing out completely aka still seeing suds in the washer, not the rinse water. I also as of yet have not gotten this secondary contact she refered to. To be honest, I really didn't care one way or the other. I just wanted to see what they would say.

Buehl, when I said, "Anybody? Bueller?" that was actually a play on a line in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. I wasn't calling for you, but any help by ANYBODY at this point would be appreciated. P.S. That lead you sent me was a dead end. sandca, I take it you changed your mind about opening up that opening, no? Even your original quote is quite costly for me--that's 10% of the assessed value of houses around here! No wonder nobody does that thing in this area. Of course, if people live out west or down south in 200K-300K homes & made their fortune, perhaps they should head back East where they can live like kings on $4.99 prime rib roasts and $2.69 NY strip steaks and practically buy blocks & neighborhoods! What Tom's engineer/drawings costed, I could have bought half my new cabinets! I think I'll look in the basement tomorrow and see exactly where those support posts line up. Maybe someone can then explain the relationship of the location better; in effect, I'm trying to open up a 5ft wall that when done still will be supported at the ends of the 5ft span but no longer on three studs between the end points. Those 3 studs only span 32'', yet without cutting another stud on each side, a 46'' opening should still fit between everything without cutting more than 3 studs--enough for 2 people to sit at. Enlarging the door opening I'd probably just need to go to the next stud on the right, which should be another 12''. I just figured if I'm going through all this, then it may just be easier installing one laminated beam from the left corner of the wall to the stud at 32'' from the right corner. Total width from the left corner to the 2nd last stud would be ~8.5ft.

Greetings all, Thank you all for the input and ideas. Some notes and answers to questions: * The bonus room is actually 11 x 8 feet , not 11 x 7. This makes it moderately more useful, but still an awkward space. * The black box between the dining area and kitchen is the fireplace. It oozes craftsman charm and we are hesitant to remove it. * Laundry in the garage is certainly a possibility, though we tend to do laundry at night. The idea of walking back and forth from the garage in the dark, especially with the exterior doors that we have, is not particularly appealing. A lighted breezeway is a possibility. * Enclosing the rear porch is a possibility, though the space is only 5.5 feet wide and there are a pair of steps from the bonus room to the porch floor. It would take quite a bit of work to enclose that area and incorporate it with the interior of the house, and I'm not sure how we could make that a useful space once enclosed. * Due to the odd roof configuration for the addition, all walls in the rear are loadbearing except the wall that separates the laundry with the bedroom, and the wall that separates the bedroom with the bonus room. I believe the wall between the bedroom and the living room is also loadbearing, because of the shape of the roof. I've attached a diagram of the latest iteration of our potential remodeling plan. The way it changes our current floorplan: * The hall between the laundry and kitchen is closed off. * The resulting closet in the kitchen becomes a pantry. * The old laundry room becomes a bathroom. The exterior laundry room door is enclosed. * The bedroom connects to the bathroom via a pocket door. * The bonus room is divided into two rooms, a walk-in closet on the right and a laundry space on the left. * The walk-in closet addresses our current problem of having very little functional closet space. The laundry room in this plan is intended to serve multiple roles. The floor would have some kind of resilient material: we have marmoleum in the kitchen and we think it's fantastic. The resilient floor allows this back room to be a nice transition room to and from the backyard. The laundry wall, which is 8 feet wide, has enough room for a linen closet, and a long counter with a sink over a compact washer + dryer. This layout gives us a linen closet, a place to fold clothes (the countertop), and a clothes bar to hang clothes to dry. These are all features we miss having in our current laundry room. For entertaining, we can use the countertop and sink as a buffet area or bar. We do a lot of entertaining in the summer, particularly backyard barbecues, and having the sink and counterspace in the backroom might minimize the amount of foot traffic between the kitchen and the backyard. Right now, most of that foot traffic goes through the laundry room which is, as you might imagine, quite uncomfortable. This plan is more in the direction of making the back of the house functional and comfortable, as opposed to trying to make the space work for a family with kids. We aren't sure a 2 bedroom house will ever appeal to a family with kids. The laundry + closet idea for the bonus room may not be the best solution, but I honestly can't think of a good use for that space. The 8 foot dimension makes it narrow, and the sheer number of windows and doorways is overwhelming. There's almost no empty wall space to work with. I don't know why the addition designer did not simply skip the rear porch and extend the house out the extra 5.5 feet. We really wish that we had a better way to get from the kitchen to the backyard. The ~3 foot wall between the kitchen and laundry has a considerable amount of electricity and plumbing in it; removing that small section of wall would be quite expensive. When we were designing the kitchen for the remodel we tried to include a direct door to the backyard, but we couldn't come up with a plan that didn't otherwise kill the efficiency of the space. We love to cook, so reducing the effectiveness of the kitchen to gain access to the backyard wasn't a compromise we were willing to make.

Oh Buehl, I have just spent 10 minutes getting all examples into this post to illustrate how many ways I have tried to link into GW from photobucket....Then the thing jumped to the main kitchen page and all my text is gone. This happens a lot to me. Other things that happen are that when I am adding a "link" into the "link" button below, it does not insert the link into the text where my cursor is set. I will try again. When I use the pasting of the photobucket "share link" into the text, like I did before in old GW, they are just text and not hot linked (green). When I link them to the link button below, the link is hot. In addition, when I copy the Photobucket "share link(s)" ("email&IM"; "Direct"; "HTML"; and "URL") into the "link" option below, it auto copies into the upper box of the "Link" option as well as the intended spot for the link in the bottom box. I have to "control"+A to highlight the text in the upper spot so I can delete it, and type in my title to my link. There seems to be a lot going on that isn't working with my Mac OS and Houzz. And there are others. I will link the Bathroom forum thread that has been trying unsuccessfully to solve the image problem, no pun intended :) ["What Are Your Thoughts on this New Format"[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/what-are-your-thoughts-with-this-new-format-dsvw-vd~2830259)