I finally got things undone. Had to pry off the belts. Put on new ones & guess what--as soon as I put the tiller in forward, the new belts jumped off the pulley. On close inspection, the pully is out of allingment with where it should be & needs to be shimmed. I took it to the dealer. They ground down the pulley and shimmed it and now all is supposed to be well, although I haven't tried it yet. It took them all of ten minutes to fix. & cost me $50. Where oh were did my little horse go? All I would have had to do is get a $ worthe of shims, and I could fix the problems myself. Funny thing is I called Troy Bilt (MTD). They said they found me in their computer and that my lifetime warranty was changed by them to a ten year warranty. I had two years left in the ten. However, when I took the tiller in to be fixed, I was told it has NO warranty and whoever told me it did (which was more than one person) was wrong. they said they called troy-bilt to confirm that there was no warranty. Troy bilt that they spoke to said that is right. Funny the stories you get. I'm a bit peeved at TB (MTD). To be told my lifetime warranty from the original troy-bilt was no good, but they put a ten year warranty on those tillers, then I try to get my tiller fixed, under the warranty, and am told I have no warranty. I hope I'll never have to do business with this company again.

lotodig- Just so you're more confident, I've re-booted my computer many times over the years using the technique I've described. Several times, for example, my cursor has frozen so I couldn't navigate to do anything, such as re-boot normally. I didn't always know why some problem was happening, but I did know that the power button re-boot would not make anything worse. Usually the only time you can have a problem is if you decide to do a re-boot/re-start of any kind in the middle of some major activity where you are making changes to the computer, such as installing updates or doing a defragmentation. However, in the other 99.9% of cases, all you're doing is cleaning out the RAM of some unexplained little problem and starting fresh.

Hi Buehl, Here are the answers to your questions: "Has the garage door been moved in your layout (1st pic)? Your DH's drawing has it in the kitchen but your layout has it in the DR..." Yes, in Plan B - expanding into the dining room -- one of the proposed changes we depicted is moving the door to the garage a few feet over into what is now the dining room. That would free up space for a 36" fridge. Currently the door is still in the kitchen. "Can the wall b/w the Foyer and the table space be moved? Maybe 2' into the Foyer??" No because that wall extends well into the family room. There is also a hallway closet in the foyer that is right off the kitchen and behind our current pantry closet. "Would you consider switching the Kitchen & DR? Maybe make the table area the DR and then have a big kitchen? I don't know if it would work...I'm just throwing ideas out there! (I suspect those tall windows will be a problem, so probably not...but you never know!) BTW...the reason I asked in my previous post about expanding into the Foyer is that your first "IKEA" layout says the table area is 11'0" yet your 2nd layout & your DH's show 8'6"...so it looked like you expanded into the Foyer." Hm...switching the DR and kitchen..I don't think it would work since the eat-in area is right in the middle of the house and open on all sides. However, (now you've got me thinking!) I guess you could leave the table where it is right now in the eat-in area and then focus on expanding the kitchen area into the current DR by taking down part of the wall that separates them, maybe filling up the space in the DR with a butler's pantry along the one solid wall (as I have depicted in the Plan B layout), a larger island than I have depicted with some bar stools, and maybe some armchairs on either side of the tall windows and a small desk in the corner (depicted in black in Plan B). But would that look natural or totally contrived to fit the space? That's my worry...that if we make these changes it will look like some amateurish DIY job rather than something that fits the house organically. I just remeasured the table area and it is indeed 8'6" not 11'. Sorry for the discrepancies...the numbers may have changed a few times since I started this process! I hope I haven't confused you even further. It's frustrating that we live in a home that is plenty big for our little family (just the 3 of us) but that is so oddly configured that the space doesn't work for us. Anyway, thanks for sticking with me so far.

I don't have a scanner, but here are the measurements... pillar 'a' 12 inches distance between pillars 46 inches pillar 'b' 10 inches slanted corner wall adjacent to pillar 'b' 35 inches depth of cabinet on slanted wall 12 inches Yes, it will be a cozy coffee nook, but as you can see from the photo there is a lot of wasted space, and the extra prep area would come in handy on special occasions. I want to close the hall with a knee wall and finish off the outer side with a panel and decorative leg to give the appearance of "built in", but can't visualize what to do for a support on the slanted side.