lb-stanleyjohn bought an LA series JD recently and has started many of these threads to help ease his mind about the longevity of his purchase. Some of the threads are: Do you think that buying a low cost tractor means its junk? How long before your CHEAP lawn tractor fell apart. JD LA100 jerks alittle moving foward The LA100 Transmission Newer Lawn Tractors vs Old Lawn Tractors My JD LA100 died today! real bummer What he really wants is a little moral support from his peers to tell him he didn't make a bad decision purchasing a box store JD.

"How did you determine how much you can afford to build / how much you need / etc.? We started with discussions on desired lifestyle and goals for house. What activities did we need to plan for? What sort of space would they need, and could it be shared? You need to have these discussions before you start drawing up floor plans. Many of the construction details and materials are driven by the desire to use minimal energy for heating and cooling, to have low ongoing maintenance, and to minimize water usage. Did you say, "We can build this many square feet", or "We can spend this much money"? We have an upper limit, based on wanting to fund the building out of the sale of the current house ... square feet is determined by life style. And we're not into McMansions, we're into efficiency. One goal is to get it into as small a footprint as possible. Did this change much as you built and your budget dwindled? We've identified places where costs can be cut, and what can't be cut. We could do some DIY, and leave some things unfinished, use less expensive finish materials. Did you start with your wants and downgrade as necessary, or did you start with the budget and determine what you could have for that money? After the "how do we want to live in a house" discussions, we started with the dimensions of and the desired view from a California king bed ... seriously that was what has driven about half of the floor plan. The plan was radically revised a couple of times as the possible lot to build on changed ... you HAVE TO take the site into consideration. To get the view, the bed has to be placed against an inner wall on the second floor, facing a large, low window or a door, aimed in a certain direction. To the bed's dimensions we added clearance for access (in a walker or wheelchair - we're geezers) and the desired bookshelves and small wardrobe. Bed placement determines door placement ... which controlled bathroom placement, which controlled ... you see where this goes. To get to the second floor bedroom, we needed stairs ... and the SO's size 14 shoes controlled the tread depth, and the building codes controlled the riser height. That in turn controlled the height of the main entry. Kitchen size was determined by appliance sizes, workspaces, need for certain size walkway, etc. We will have a large pantry because it's a small town. Need to buy in bulk and have a place to store it. It's mostly been lifestyle, activity and traffic pattern driven after that. The need to "age in place" meant that one bedroom and full accessible bath had to be downstairs. ============ Some of the things we are doing to keep cost down: * Square floor plan with almost no hallways (American Four Square influenced) * Kitchen designed to use "standard" appliances - niche for frig instead of counter-depth, etc. * Straight run counters (galley kitchen) and simple layout, simple cabinet design, probably local cabinetmaker. * Standardizing bath fixtures and finishes (you get a better deal on the tile, and the contractor doesn't go nuts remembering what goes where) ============= I could easily increase the cost of the house by 50% by using the fancy stuff: designer tiles, "pro" appliances, ornate trim, and expensive lighting fixtures. I'd rather spend the money on books, art, and travel. =========== What about resale value? Screw resale value. That's the heirs' problem :)

call several and get quotes. it honestly can be anywhere from 500.00 to 5000.00, depending on where you are, who you hire, and how they have to tie in.

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.