Peach and apricot often bear heavily in alternate years. IOW - a heavy crop one year and a light crop the next. If you can detect and identify this habit in your trees, it would be best to root prune while dormant in the spring of the lighter years. That said, for the peach/apricot trees, root pruning shouldn't have much of an impact on yields or fruit size. In fact, root pruning of in-ground trees is making a comeback as a way to tame wild growth and increase yields in for many types of fruit. It is a fact that root pruning is an ESSENTIAL part of long term care of trees in containers, unless the tree's care giver is willing to tolerate the decline and loss of vitality that always accompanies root congestion. So, even if it did have an impact on yields, you'd still be pretty much obligated to do the root work. You probably have seen how growth can come to a virtual standstill due to root congestion. A famous tree biologist pioneer, Dr Alex Shigo, contends, "A tree that isn't growing is dying", and it's true. Trees grow when they create more food/energy (via photosynthesis) than they need to maintain respiring organs and keep their systems orderly, simply because they need a place to store the excess food. Trees stop growing when they make as much as or less food/energy as they use. No organism can sustain itself long term when it uses more energy than it can produce. So literally, as a containerized tree starts to slow down due to root congestion, it will eventually stop growing and start its terminal decline unless the grower intervenes on the tree's behalf. One might think that trees suffering from root congestion in containers regularly die from the fact they are using more energy than they are using, but that seldom occurs. Plants have a 'pecking order' determined by how strong different organs are in terms of their demand for energy. The stronger the energy sink, the more obligate the plant is to deliver energy to that part. Energy is first allocated to respiratory function, i.e. to maintenance of living tissues, then, to production of fine roots, followed by flower and seed/fruit production, then primary growth (extension of both roots and shoots), then secondary growth (thickening), and finally, the synthesis of defensive chemicals. Notice that defensive chemicals are at the end of the list. Most plants in steep decline, regardless of the reason, usually die from insect herbivory or disease pathogens due to the plant's inability to defend itself. You can also see by the pecking order (1 - living tissues, 2 - fine roots) that fine roots get the lion's share of energy outlay when the plant's chemical messengers signal an imbalance between top mass and root mass. So the first thing that will occur is, the plant will start regrowing the the roots you pruned off. That puts a temporary hold on top growth until roots catch up. For dormant tree which have been root-pruned, root pruning puts a temporary hold on bud activation until enough new roots have developed to support more top growth. Let's say you start 2 tree cuttings from the same genetic source in the same size pots. One gets potted up in the spring after you notice the root/soil mass can be lifted from the pot intact, while the other gets a full repot based on the same trigger (root/soil mass can be lifted from the pot intact). After 10 years and all other factors equal, the repotted tree will be many times larger that the tree potted up, it will have far greater vitality, will have produced much more fruit/ nuts/ seed/ ....., and will still be growing in a pot a fraction of the size of the tree that was potted up. Root pruning makes that much difference. Al

My intent is NOT to hijack the thread but I thought jsweenc would appreciate this info... The farmhouse was built in 1790 and the barn in 1786. Here's some pics of our cellar that may interest you and show you how well old houses were built. They don't build them like this today . . . This is a fireplace in the cellar. I can't get a nice photo from right in front of the fireplace without seeing the unsightly furnace (which is placed to the right in this photo and vents out the chimney above the mantel area). The cellar has a dirt floor. This arch cellar is directly underneath our kitchen. It limits where you can place plumbing. The last thing you want to do is drill through a solid foundation like this. Obviously, we haven't done any remodeling in the cellar and we don't plan to. It houses the furnace, oil tanks and misc scrap material (lattice, spouting, old wavy glass windows, etc) Don't mind the cobwebs - they're harmless. :-P

This post is old, but I too have old Douglas Fir flooring that we just refinished in our 1940's house. Our Fir is in the Dining Room, hallway and downstairs bedroom. We did the hallway a few years ago - the DR and hall had carpet over bright orange tiles that were tarred down by a previous owner in the 1960's. We used paint stripper to remove the tar and then sanded the floor (hand sander in the hall years ago; a rented stand-up belt sander in the DR). Most floor refinishers REFUSED to sand down the tar, so we did it ourselves. It left a lot of stains, and in the DR there were also stains from pet accidents over the years and stains left from the carpet tacks. We stained it English Chestnut and then Tung Oiled it (8 coats). I think the hallway only had one coat of stain, but the dogs' claws scuffed it really bad over the years, and since the DR was so badly stained in spots, I just second-coated the stain and am currently waiting for it to dry - the stains are hardly noticeable now. When we expanded the house the idiots broke the first two planks of Fir when they put in the header between the new kitchen and Dining Room (when I went nuts yelling at them they said "You are going to replace this ugly old floor, aren't you?" My reply: "Are you NUTS?!?! This floor is irreplaceable!") and so we had to get three new planks, and luckily our local lumberyard carries a lot of traditional building supplies like rough-sawn siding, and they actually carried Douglas Fir flooring in many different widths! None of the flooring places carried it. The three new planks fit the t&g, but they were a lot lower than the old, so the old was sanded down to match the height. The new planks also are going to take AT LEAST one extra coat of stain to be equally dark (old wood always absorbs more finish than new wood). I like the Fir natural, but the stains on mine were just awful. Also, it meets up with the new Sassafrass in the kitchen / family room, and that is a similar color to the natural Fir, but a totally different grain, so it would look really weird where they meet. Also, the dark floor looks really dramatic in the Dining Room. We are DEFINITELY putting a rug under the table / chairs to prevent scratches, though! As for wood floors in kitchens, we put Sassafrass in ours, and that is a fairly soft wood, but loaded with character. We have neoprene mats for in front of the sink and stove. I wouldn't personally put anything other than ceramic or porcelain or glass tile in a full bathroom though (even natural stone needs to be re-sealed every year). Athomedads, the floor in your pics is OAK! We refinished all our old oak in the entry / living room by hand sanding and 8 coats of tung Oil and they are GORGEOUS! All I can say is that having refinished both really OLD wood floors, and also finished new wood floors, I HATE NEW WOOD!!! Old wood floors sand down easily and soak up stain and / or tung oil really quickly. New wood takes WEEKS to absorb 8 coats of tung oil, and a LOT of steel wool in between. The old floors were completed in one week with 8 coats; the new took over a month! You MUST allow each coat to dry fully before the next or the entire finish is destroyed and you must sand it down and start over (TRUST ME ON THIS - I learned that the hard way - don't rush it!). As for sanding you own floors - it truly depends. Personally, I cannot handle a real floor sander (I'm a 125 pound female), but my brother rented and used the stand-up belt-sander with no problems. I would NOT trust him with one of those huge stand-up orbitals, though! On our old oak floors that just needed a light sanding, I did that myself with an orbital and it was fine. The only problem is being on your hands and knees for so long - invest in a good pair of knee pads!

I too have heard wonderful things about Flexsteel quality, but- I am not sure if it is still the way it was. Melly says hers is older, which reinforces my questioning on this. Not trying to be too much of a skeptic but I was in the market for family room furniture and su:rfed the web tirelessly- and found all sorts of conflicting opinions.......... I have had Broyhill which I know is a very moderate line, and I also know that might not be an option now as they have had a good deal of financial woes but the furniture was great. (also very old so not sure of what is made now) I had Thomasville which I believe is supposed to be a better quality than Broyhill and is more $. It was ok but it was not any better than the others. I ended up buying Rowe, which I believe is probably comparable to Broyhill- anyway it's only a few months old but it seems great and it is made in USA. I didn't spend a lot, as that was what the moral of the story seemed to be- there was no longer a correlation between quality and price. This may still be valid for much higher end lines but for what I was considering.... that's my 2 cents. I still do love your wallpaper though:)