Thanks! I always love freebies! I requested a sample, but my state is not listed under the "locations available" list, so i don't know what to make of that. I guess I'll just wait and see. It never hurts to try.

if you were near auburn i might could steer you to some. there is a construction area down the street from where i work. they demolished a house and drained a very small lake or large pond in the back. they are currently bringing in unconsolidated material which contains quite a lot of rock of all sizes to fill this area. i was thinking that the developer would let someone pick the rock from the soil, making compaction easier and more uniform. if you are interested in driving the distance, i could call the realtor and check for you.

I don't do New Year's resolutions, either. However, with this year starting out so differently (DD having moved out last summer, Mom dying a month ago), I have decided to make a few changes and have already pulled out an old, unfinished project that maybe, just maybe I'll find a way to finish and sent out into the world. But that's all I'm saying about that. I'm also toying with the idea of maybe looking for a job, what with all the extra free time I have. But it will be a challenge to find something worthwhile, where they'd be interested in hiring an 'almost 60-year old' that would be fun. Children's museum? aquarium? or some other place I could interact with and teach children, possibly.

Our kitchen was more of a rebuild than a redesign. We didn't change the layout very much but one of the small changes we did make ended up causing an issue. The original end cabinet on our cooktop wall was 9". We used the bottom for trays and it wasn't too awful but we didn't use the top cabinet at all because it was useless. After the KD laid everything out we talked about it and decided to change that cabinet from a 9" to a 12" cabinet. Good for trays below and since it would have a glass door we could put a few display items above. In order to add those 3" the KD took 3" from the super Susan in the corner. The resulting problem wasn't discovered until the cabinets were being installed and I was called at work and told that the run of cabinets 90 degrees to that run was coming up 3" short of where they should be! She had taken 3" from the super Susan and added it back on the one run but never added it back to the other side! My kitchen is not big enough to lose 3" of floor space or counter space. I had the carpenter remove that run of cabinets and move them out the 3" and add a filler. I hated that filler though. We had a pretty lengthy delay between putting in the cabinets and adding the counters so it gave me plenty of time to stare at that gap. I ended up ordering a 3" spice pull out from rev-a-shelf and it is a much better solution. I only wish I had known about the gap,well beforehand. I'd have moved those cabinets 6" instead of 3" and had a more substantial pullout had I had time to really think about it.