That explanation does not make sense. Something is drastically wrong with his mower. A wheel is broken, flat tires, the blade is coming off, or something. Maybe the adjusters are broken. There is no way adding even a thousand pounds on top of the deck would affect the mowing height by several inches. There is also no way he didn't drive the first 3 feet into your lawn and realize he was ruining it. I'm not interested in blame but there is really only one place to point the finger. If he is a professional, fire him. If he is a friend, make sure he has his mower checked over before coming back. You won't need his services for at least a month anyway so he has plenty of time. Turning to your grass, you are essentially reestablishing your turf from the scalped condition. If you have any Kentucky bluegrass, then you have a prayer of recovering this season. If you only had fescues, some and maybe a lot will recover. If not, though, then you will have to reseed or resod. At this time of year sod is a much MUCH better choice if you can get it. Milorganite will not speed things up. If you are on a chemical program anyway, maybe someone here can help you with a fertilizer that will give you a growth spurt. Organic fertilizers very rarely give a growth spurt. They only affect soil microbe health, and healthy microbes produce growth regulators, not growth spurters (?). Water! Yes!! Unfortunately the water will germinate weed seeds but you need coverage. You can deal with weeds later after the grass comes back. I would water daily for a few days and see how it's going. If you see some promising regrowth, then back off again on the water to every other day and keep watching as you back off to weekly watering.

Irishdancers, I'm so very sorry for the loss of your daughter-in-law. That's another one of those things that just seems so crazy. No matter how hard you try, you just can't make it make sense. You will drive yourself crazy trying to understand why it happened. After the past six weeks, and thinking about it so much, I can only tell you there is no answer. Even if we knew the answer, it wouldn't be good enough. What possible good answer could there be for children to lose their parent? As far as anger, my pastor told me when Ricky passed, that I would have doubt, fear, guilt, anger, etc. and that it's o.k. God knows your heart. He wouldn't have given us all of these emotions if we weren't supposed to have them. My husband was 45, close to your dil's age. I don't know if your son frequents the internet or not, but I've gotten a lot of solace from a site, Widownet. As a matter of fact, I've been amazed at the number of people who have lost their spouses suddenly. I mean, you know death happens all of the time, but you really can't relate until it happens to you. I remember being at the 2 wk point. I was still in shock I think that it had even happened. I had to convince myself every morning that it really did happen. I just couldn't believe that he wasn't still somewhere on this Earth, that he wouldn't come through that door at any minute. I am so sorry for your family. I know this has been the hardest thing I've ever had to go through and I will be praying for you all to have a peace about things. That's all we can do I think, is pray for peace and mercy. You're in my prayers, Sharita

I think that these idiots are just plain not capable of fixing anything to your satisfation. Though they should fix it, and they should be responsible for it, I have my doubts. No matter how much you squeeze, you can't get blood from a stone, and you can't get good work out of people who don't know how to do it. You might be able to get money out of them, and if so, the easiest way to fix it is to have a good lumberyard or finish carpentry contractor/shop rout you new molding to perfectly match the profile of the old. The wood would be new (unless you had old wood to give them, or they could locate some, which is possible), but you could experiment (on scraps of the same wood) with stains and finishes to get it to look close to the original. If you're fixing it yourself, then you should look carefully to see if you can find pieces in lumberyards to put together to match your old woodwork. I've lived in places from the late 19'th C. to the mid-20th C., and in each place, the moldings were either built from pieces that are still around, or simpler 1-piece moldings are literally still for sale in the more upscale local lumberyards. A good lumberyard should be able to get you the pieces in pine, maple, red oak, or occasionally cherry. This is something that most homeowners don't know about, but can save you tons of money when restoring your old woodwork. To fix your old wood without replacing it, you can fill the problem areas with putty and dab stain & finish (probably shellac?) on top with a paint brush and sand it flush with very fine-grained (220 or higher number) sandpaper (draw in the grain lines with a pencil). I've also seen colored hard wax burn-in sticks that you melt with a soldering iron, mix to the right shade, then fill holes and dents with. I think you can buy it from Van Dykes Restorer's catalog. I saw a guy do it once and I couldn't see the repairs, honest. Or you could cut some patches out of wood (especially if you have some old wood around that might match well), cut out really bad sections of your damaged molding, and glue the new wood in place. The patch would show, but you can sand it down flush with the old molding, and it could look OK anyway. Good luck!

Thanks, Marinagal! I think our decisions at this point is to consult an architect, not with this specific idea per se, but for his suggestions on adding light/air/views to the MBR. Thanks, Cam. That is pretty! CL Blakeley, I won't! Mabel, good idea. Snowfalls can be highly localized. LOL, Annie. We are about 10 miles inland, and it just seems to us the weatherguys always say. "it will turn to rain on the coast, with higher accumulations North and West of the area". We often get snow here, just 10 miles from friends in Westport who say "what snow". I guess since the ocean never freezes it can reduce snowfall? IDK Thank you, Krycek. Oldbat, I actually drink tea in the am, usually iced in the summer! And DH makes a ritual of going out for coffee and the paper, come to think of it. Sonic, excellent point! Aww, Eandhl, thank you. LOL, Rafor! To be fair, the other one was a tear down! But all in all we are happier with this choice. Eclectic cottage, your community sound so wonderful. And I agree about the vibe. We don't want a proper and formal house, in fact this house is more formal then what we planned to build or envisioned in our heads. At the end of the day, it is about relaxing and enjoying where you are, and in an odd way I think quirks and imperfections make a place homier ... Thank you, Rosie! JoaniePoanie, I am just terrible and wait and see, I confess. It is even worse here because I have been waiting almost a year trying to clear up that other property! KSWL, Thanks for the tip on water drainage! As for your idea of expanding the porch, goodness, what are you trying to do to my budget!? I better not tell DH your idea, he is a sucker for verandah space. As a side note, your point about the tradition of elevated areas from which to view the water was such lovely writing. : )