I have a outdoor swing that had very dirty & mildewed cushions. I was about to give up an find some new ones but the cost got the better of me. I spread them out on my deck, sprayed them with bleach and some soap and took a broom and started scrubbing. I was amazed at how cleaned they looked after they dried. Its worth the effort, if your afraid to use bleach try a non-chlorine type cleaner, or get some "greased lightening" and get scrubbing. Make sure you rinse the cushions out well and hang over something to dry. Good luck!

The things you don't like about other peoples dogs, you may not believe it now, but having your own, a lot of times those annoying things end up being the things you love about them the most. One of my dogs is a beagle/lab and beagles were near the top of my list of dog breeds i did not want, and she is everything I thought she'd be, but I love her personality. She does bark but it is fairy easy to teach the "quiet" command to a dog once you've taught them speak. Dogs won't track in much, mine aren't on flea and tick preventative because i am uncomfortable with it and i know i don' have any fleas in my yard, and i just tick check them daily during normal affection, but as easy way to avoid that is just to use a flea/tick preventative from the start and you won't have a problem. Most will have fleas when you get them so the pill from the vet that kills fleas before it's in the house plus a bath with blue dawn dishsoap will get rid of any fleas and you won't have a problem. Mine sleep in bed and they are allowed on the couches and they don't track a whole lot of dirt in. I can't imagine not having a fenced in yard with my dogs though, my life would be miserable and so would theirs. They like to run around out back and hang out. My beagle/lab came from a house with cats when she was a puppy and still 3 years later she loves cats. So gentle and submissive around them, and she is a very hyper playful dog you would not expect to be good with cats. I was a cat person and I love having dogs. A big thing to consider is how much work they are. They are like kids you can't just leave them like you can cats. Especially one that hasn't been trained because they will wreck stuff. Crate training is great for this though, and they learn pretty quickly. You can train a dog out of almost anything, but there are some things that you are better off just adjusting your life to. Trash picking is one of those things, a trash picker is usually going to trash pick given the opportunity and chance alone, so we shut our bathroom doors instead of leaving temptation out there. A digger is gonna dig especially when it comes to hounds, and while you can train some out of it sometimes you just have to give them a designated digging spot. Jumping up is very easily corrected I've worked with a lot of fosters and it's the easiest thing to stop. Crotch sniffing more difficult but I would say most don't have that problem. intact males mostly. They CAN be very well trained and it doesn't take a ton of work to do so. They will learn a lot of things without you even teaching it to them, mine picked up room names and i can tell them which room to go to and they will go. If told to get off they won't come back up until invited. You can teach them to go to their crate very easily, and use that command when people knock on the door, and soon they will learn knocks on the door mean crate until invited out. The key is to get basic commands down and use them to teach the dog more complicated commands. One big thing I can't stress enough, if you get a puppy do not adopt a puppy from someone who has the litter and is adopting them out at 6 weeks. 8-9 weeks is the responsible thing to do. I've fostered litters and they learn bite inhibition starting at week 7, any dog leaving before that will have the mouthing problem and it's very annoying to have a dog mouthing constantly and so much more work to train that when two more weeks with it's siblings and it would learn most of it on their own. If you want to avoid a dog gutting things it's simple, never give them any toys with stuffing. There are plenty of stuffing free toys to keep a dog happy. Give them plush toys to tear into and they do not understand why it's ok to do that and not gut pillows etc. One plush toy removed and corrected the second the dog starts to gut it so they learn gutting is bad. Clicker training is someting i can't recommend enough. It is one of the best training tools out there. People don't understand why their dog isn't learning things because they have people with different tones, a clicker is cheap and the dog will remember that click means good and the click can come immediately after the dog has correctly done what you wanted. So many people praise their dog too late and the dog has no idea what it's getting praised for, and so many people have monotone voices that a dog can't distinguish positive from negative. That is also the cause of so many dogs not listening to commands, a stern voice is needed, i could take any dog ive trained who knows the "off" command, or get off. or down. and will do it immediately. Now tell them to do it but say it in a cheerful voice and no they are not going to do it. They are taught commands in stern voices, they obey stern voices, not voices that mix in with normal conversation that they hear all the time. It's not mean it's communicating with your dog. The biggest thing is to understand that your dog doesn't know what you want. If your dog isn't trained yet, you can't throw out commands and expect them to understand. You can't expect them not to do bad things, they aren't doing it to make you mad, they are following their instincts and you need to teach them what you want from them. you need to show them the behavior you like and what you don't like. Dogs like to please, training sessions are a great bonding experience and provide a lot of mental stimulation which a dog needs just as much as physical to tire them out. They are happy when you are happy, the moment you first teach a dog a trick and they do it and understand it you will understand by the look on their face that they are happy, and how awesome it is to have been able to communicate your wants to them and have them understand. Great bonding, training sessions, not necessarily from a trainer, just you and the dog are highly beneficial even for adult dogs as an ongoing thing it strengthens your relationship with the dog. It's really not work either,, it's just taking a few minutes to work with them. Socialization is also key,and it doesn't stop with dog to dog interation and dog to human interaction. It involves experience and situations as well. You don't want a dog afraid of storms or who won't go out in the rain, so when it's raining, excited play time in the rain so the dog sees it as a good thing. Car rides. you leaving the house, come back with something for the dog and they will learn that you leaving can be rewarding. Even with the worst barkers that i couldn't train 'quiet' effectively, i could train lay down and stay, and that is usually effective in stopping them from barking.

punamy--thanks for the close-up and how-to! looks just as good up close as from afar. I'll definitely have to add that to the to-do list. Texashottie, your cushions are even cuter looking at them again! Great looking area and the plants really bring in life there.

Width would be an issue. Let's see if I can explain this. Trees are living, breathing things. They contain water. When trees are cut down they begin to dry out. As they dry out, they shrink. Some more than others' But they all have some basic guidelines for shrinkage. Logs have growth rings. And shrinkage is measured in relation to those growth rings. Growth rings form (almost) concentric circles. Logs tend to shrink about twice as much tangentially as they do radially. Here is a picture. As you can see, since the rate of shrinkage is not the same, cracks form, called checking in lumber. This can be mostly prevented by milling the logs quickly after felling them. Milling the logs changes the internal stresses affecting the logs. Logs are milled (sawn) in 3 different ways. Each method has its own benefits and disavantages. First is the most common way: flat sawn lumber. Logs are just sliced into lumber regardless of grain direction. Lumber sawn using this method tends to contain growth rings that orient in both directions. Drying causes cupping. Cupping occurs as the growth rings try to straighten out. So cupping occurs in the opposite direction of the growth rings. Next we have quarter sawn lumber. There are several different methods of quarter sawing. All of which are meant to get the highest quality lumber with the least amount of waist. Quarter sawn lumber tends to come in narrower widths to avoid flat sawn growth rings. Then we have a rare form of milling known as rift sawing. Rift sawn lumber is cut so that all the growth rings are perpendicular to the wide dimension of the lumber. As you can see this method produces a huge amount of waste. But it also makes for exceptionally stable lumber. What I have given you here could be construed as sweeping generalities. Someone else can give you specific shrinkage rates for a species of wood from the Wood Handbook. But hopefully this does explain wood shrinkage. My apologies to dial up users for the long download of pictures. Pooh Bear