Purple, I was messing with my photo album last night and accidentally deleted the wrong photo. :( Next time, I'll upload it... at least that way if I move it to another album or in this case, it gets deleted, it'll still be on here. *sigh* Teen, I can still see you plant a little bit too, that looks like a happy plant! Planto

Jenny, We stop up the line going into the first tub.(we use a nerf football :) Then we let the pump run to take as much water as possible out of all the tubs. Then either using a scoop or shop vac we scoop out all the muck. Cliff usually mucks it out will a jug -- emptying the muck into a 5 gallon bucket, then he walks around watering all the flowers and plants with the fish muck...The flowers and plants love it. Keep in mind we built our pond in 1997, that was the dark ages as far as the internet was concerned. We took books out of the library and then went shopping for a liner (nowhere was a bottom drain ever mentioned) Fortunately for us we shopped in a large pet store that sold pond supplies and liners. The owner had a large pond in his backyard and explained to us the necessity of the bottom drain and the dome top on the bottom drain. The pond floor is all slightly tilted toward the bottom drain to enable all the muck that settles on the bottom to naturally gravitate towards the drain. The water swirles around the drain with the dome top and flows through the drain into the tubs. The first and second tubs have the filter material. We cut sides of milk crates and wrap them in various materials like cotton batting and force them standing straigt up into the tubs. Most of the waste is trapped into the first tub. The last tubs hold our pumps, we have about 5 or 6 pumps ranging from 1200 gph to 500 gph. We usually have 2 going all the time one for the main pond and one for the biological pond, which we added the next year... (more about that another time) We like to have several small waterfalls all over the place, that's why we have several pumps. Another reason for the different sizes of pumps is we have more control over the flow. When the filters are in need of a cleaning the flow of water slows down and we have to slow down the pumps. If you want koi, forget about goldfish. The goldfish multiply like crazy and soon you'll be trying to catch them to give them away. We only have two goldfish (our original goldfish that are 12 years old) We also have 3 orfs they are the population control in our pond... One more recommendation, think about using a 4" drain. We have a 3" but if we were doing a pond today we would use a 4" drain. The shelf, be sure to build a shelf all around, ours is deep and wide -- we then built up to ground level with rocks. The only place we don't have a shelf is in the beach area. We also replaced all our small beach pebbles the next year with bigger round stones. It's easier to keep it clean, we hose it out about every two week, and when the rocks start to get an alge build up, we just turn them over to show a nice clean and shiny side. Our beach is about 5 foot x 4 foot, maybe a little bigger... Joann More beach... Here is a link that might be useful: Our website

Depends on what you mean by recover. Sometimes I've found only a few scattered eyes with bits of roots where previously there had been a big hosta. There are about a dozen individual Antiochs along the slate walk. One year one of the crowns looked like it was slightly sunken. I touched it and it fell into a cave. I think chipmunks had dug out the area underneath for a winter hibernation spot, but voles came along and ate all of the roots and part of the crown. The only way a hosta has a chance to recover is to move it to a safer place. After that, it depends on how much root is left, and how nice the new home is. Steady watering is essential, plus a nice hole filled with some compost and manure, along with the soil. It also depends on the variety of hosta. Some have fast growth rates, others are slow. The year after the damage can be very disappointing. The following year most hostas will look pretty good. I sure hope this is true.... Last winter something ate almost all of the dormant eyes on my large Jewel of the Nile (boo hoo). It had puny growth last summer. I tell myself it was getting too big for its spot anyway. I hope this spring it looks better.

Custom -- unique -- those can be euphemisms for weird and bad. While this house contains some nice features, it also contains some bad ideas that will not live comfortably -- things no one's going to like in real life. And it is expensive in ways that don't help the looks or efficiency of the house. - The entryway has a barrel vault that leads into an arch . . . and beyond that is a coffered ceiling . . . and then you have another arch off to the left. These are all expensive, showy ceiling features -- but having all of them within arms' length means they will "compete" with one another. One feature of good design is that it contains "enough" . . . without going overboard. Note that your inspiration plan contains multiple coffered ceilings, but it doesn't mix and match ceiling features. Repetition in design creates a sense of harmony. - On the subject of arches -- I love them and wonder why people aren't building them anymore. But they're an expensive feature, and I would never spend the money to build one between the kitchen and the mudroom, especially since it's tucked behind the kitchen cabinets and would literally only be seen as people come /go from the house. Unless your budget is genuinely unlimited, put your resources in spots where they're going to show. - I agree with the poster who mentioned the difficult turns necessary to enter either of the secondary bedrooms. If the aforementioned elderly relative needs a walker or a wheelchair, this will be difficult. It would be easy to move the door to the smaller bedroom to an easier-to-access spot. Will this relative live with you all the time? If so, he or she will probably need more than an 11x11 room with a small closet -- could you happily move all your personal effects into this room permanently? I ask because this was a MAJOR FIGHT with my easy-going grandmother only a few years ago, and she NEVER got over having to get rid of so much stuff. I agree with the poster who suggested making the larger office room a bedroom for the elderly relative. - An ADA bath in a 9x9 space. Is that possible? Okay, it's possible, but I mean, is it possible to do it well? - The master bath is large but contains SIX DOORS. Stop and visualize six doors in this space. The master bath is also laid out poorly: When you walk in, your sightline is the corner of the shower. And the toilet closet is tiny and cramped -- backing into a 6' deep closet and scootching over to the side so you can close the door (plunging yourself into darkness) won't be comfortable. Why plan two sinks in such a small vanity? It means you'll have no drawer space. What is the dry area in the shower? What is keeping it dry? Note that when you walk into the bathroom, you'll have to close those double doors and reach behind them to turn on the light switch. With all this space allotted to the master bath, you can absolutely have something better than this. - The great room is a positive ray of sunshine in an otherwise chaotic plan. Ditto for the foyer. - The odd extra hallway (containing a butler's pantry?) near the dining area is wasted space. Why would anyone walk through this hallway when the foyer is literally two steps farther away? - The kitchen doesn't work on any level. It's huge, but everything is so far apart! Your "major players" -- the sink and the stove and your prep space -- are all disconnected from one another. Why would you want your ovens in the dining room? Look at the floor plan and imagine yourself going through the motions of preparing one of your favorite meals. Likely it's going to include too many "walk across the kitchen" trips. I think you're falling for the oh-so-common idea that a BIG kitchen = a GOOD kitchen, and that is axiomatically false. An EFFICIENT kitchen = a GOOD kitchen. - What you're calling the Hearth Room could be an incredible dining room, and it's completely wasted as a sitting area. Because it is connected to the great room, it has no privacy and serves no purpose as a separate room. - The table, in its current position, is blocking access to the kitchen and the Hearth Room. Imagine squeezing by either end once chairs are in place. - If you move the sink in the mudroom to the same wall as the washer/dryer, you will save significant money. Why? Because you'll limit your water needs to one wall. That means only one wall needs to be thick enough to run water, and the plumber only has to work on one wall. I don't love the island in the middle of this room. This is a storage room / a pass-through room. The island actually creates a barrier. - I personally dislike the "friends' entrance" concept. I'm making the front door nice. I'm arranging guest parking to encourage people to see /enter through the front door. I'm setting up a table for purses/keys, etc. I don't want people traipsing in through the back door where I'm storing plastic bags, recycling, and dog food. And if this is a "friends' entrance", for whom is the front door? Enemies? I don't invite them over. - I agree with the posters who say most rooms are over-sized. You could easily reduce most rooms by 25% and still have comfortable spaces. The exceptions are the two secondary bedrooms, which don't seem to fit in with the rest of the sizing. - The hallways could be vastly reduced, and that could make up the price difference you mentioned -- you need the foyer hall and the two small halls to reach the bedrooms, but the giant freeway running through the middle is just expensive wasted space. I do like the inspiration plan's connection between the mud room and the hallway -- it promotes good flow in two directions, without being over-sized. Were you the poster from a couple months ago who loved hallways because of a wall treatment you saw in a model home's hallways? - A garage sticking out on the front doesn't make for a very attractive exterior. - You're going with a basement AND a bonus room over the garage? I'd pick one or the other, which would eliminate one staircase -- do not underestimate the cost of a staircase. Actually, staircases cost in both money and square footage. Either a basement OR a bonus room will give you a secondary living space. Again, this house has some redeeming features, but they are so buried under the oddities and mistakes that it's hard to find them. I vote for a fresh start. This post was edited by MrsPete on Thu, Sep 11, 14 at 18:21