See picture below of a 3 x 6 work bench I built for the garage. It has swivel casters at all corners. If I was going to use it for plants, I'd lose the OSB/carpeted top & replace it with a sheet of FRP. I'd build the top so the FRP sagged slightly toward a hole in the middle, so when you water & inevitably spill or collection saucers overflow, the excess water flows to the center hole & drips into a collection vessel you can empty at your leisure. It's even wired, so all I need to do is plug it in to have electricity at the 3 outlets (can't see them in the pic). Alternately: I just bought a HDPE service cart from Harbor Freight for $120, similar to the one you'll see if you copy/paste this link to your browser: http://www.amazon.com/Rubbermaid-Commercial-Heavy-Duty-500-Pound-Capacity/dp/B0007Y1SJQ/ref=pd_cp_hi_1 Al

Toro bought Wheel Horse in 1986, but the Toro name didn't appear on the products until 1990. The old Wheel Horse plant in South Bend, IN was sold early on, I don't know the exact year but in the late 80's I believe. I think the story on the Classic is simply that Toro has been hugely successful with ZTR's (which Wheel Horse actually had in the 80's, by the way) while their traditional lawn and garden tractor sales have been slipping. They are also losing traditional consumer oriented dealers, as many of the ZTR sales seem to be from commercial oriented dealers who may have never even heard of a Wheel Horse tractor. So I guess the bottom line is they have made a business decision to just about kill off all their traditional lawn and garden tractors. While I can't agree with the decision, it's not mine to make, and I have to say a big "Thanks!" to Toro for keeping the traditional Wheel Horse alive for as long as they have. I will add that Toro has a long tradition of making all sorts of turf care related products, and they seem to have always adjusted and altered their product mix to the demands in the market they sought to serve. Perhaps because their specialty early on was in the commercial side, many people do not realize this company goes back to before 1920. Turf care has always been their business, not agriculture, and I think Toro was a bit uncomfortable with even touching into agriculture with their garden tractors. Why else would they have designed the otherwise very capable 5xi series with no provisions for a rear pto, no added hydraulics, and no 3-point hitch? Various ag type attachments that WH had offered were also dropped. There's no question that modern design l&g tractors have more engineering in them today. Engineers are good at figuring out the least material that will perform the intended function, and safety factors today are obviously not the round 2 or 3 times like they used to be. So today's l&g transaxle, for instance, is built to a relatively tight tolerance for HP and torque, and is expected to handle the loads for "X" number of cycles. It's kind of like "battery science" - if a Sears battery claims a "4 year" life, by golly that's usually pretty close to what you'll get out of it. On the other hand, the Wheel Horse uni-drive was designed in the days when iron was cheap, things weren't supposed to break, and owners of garden tractors expected them to not only mow grass, but to really be more of a small tractor and not just a lawn mower they could ride on. The first tractors to use the modern style, 2-piece cast housing WH uni-drive transaxle were the 5.5HP 551 and the 7HP 701 in 1961. While the design had changes and revisions over the years, most major dimensions did not change, and the fact that some of the later 6-speed transaxles are handling 50+ HP in competitive pullers is a sure sign that they were built to last a lifetime in the intended application. Todays thin-wall close-fit aluminum castings and powdered metal gears may be very cost efficient and are probably well suited for most of today's purchasers, but they are nothing like the old cast iron gearboxes that Wheel Horse, Cub Cadet, Bolens, Peerless, and others used to make. I can't do much about today's realities in terms of lawn tractor purchasers, economies of scale (the box store "make 'em cheap and sell millions" syndrome), and manufacturing economics, but I'll sure do what I can to preserve the remaining thousands and thousands of Wheel Horses that are out there! Ed

Two-island kitchens are soooo 2013. Maybe so, maybe not but that wasn't my point, that being this kitchen worked VERY well. Edit: I do agree that the best two island kitchen is more than just building the same island twice. In my kitchen each island had a different function, one was a "working island" with the cooktop there...OMG!!! and the other was more of an entertainment island with a bar sink and beverage fridge.

My windows 7 computer that is a year old boots very fast, minute or less so I don't find boot time to be an issue with 7 for me. Friends how ever that have their computer clogged with so much junk have slow boot times I have noticed. So many people are complaining about windows 8 it's nice to hear something positive for a change as I was curious about it. Will be a very long time before we need a new desktop so I am sure they will be on to something other than 8 by then. Mary