This sounds somewhat similar to my setup. It works well. Some things that I learned are: -Two pounds of worms was not sufficient for starting a bin of this size. I should have used a divider until the population rose. -Straw and grass is a worm food of last resort until after the mushrooms are finished blooming. At that point, they have damaged it enough that the worms can start into it. -If the worms eat the newspaper and cardboard but leave the grass and straw, then they are out of food and need more immediately. They generally eat the paper after all the desirable stuff is gone. -Chicken manure will turbo-boost the composting process, thus making more food for the worms. -The side drain is too high. Water will stagnate on the bottom. -If the bedding is deep enough, and the area large enough, you can make a deep hole in the bedding and hot compost everything right in the bin, to the worm's delight. -The bedding must be kept very deep in an outdoors bin. My worms traverse the entire height of the bedding on a daily basis, depending on where the temperature, moisture, light, and food are just right for them. An outdoor bin does not have a stable and even temperature, so you have to make it large enough that there will be a 'Goldilocks zone' large enough to fit all the worms that want to be there. -An outdoors bin can steam and smell however it wants and nobody will complain. -"Critters" as in all sorts of insects, will be in the bin. It does not matter though because spiders will come in with them and keep some control on that. Now you asked about skinks and frogs... They both eat worms. Move them to the garden so that they can eat bugs instead. I found that by lining a hole that my dog dug with a piece of plastic (the corner of my winter garden cover tarp), rain collected there, my dog could drink from it, and a pair of frogs soon launched a flotilla of tadpoles there. Of course there are also mosquito larva in the puddle with them, but I have not been attacked since spring (I live by a stagnant water basin, so mosquito control wouldn't really do anything but kill the tadpoles that I want near my garden when they grow up). Yeah, anyway, what I did to fix the stagnating water problem was to put the bin up on blocks like you did, and then drill some holes in the bottom center. This let the water drain into a water heater pan, that my plumber friend piped to a faucet, that I keep a 5 gallon bucket under. The bucket (and it's backup bucket) have aquarium air stones in them to keep the juice fresh while it matures into some fine liquid gold. I'm concerned about your choice of a metal tub and no sun in an area that I think has a hard frost, but I'd like to know how it goes. I'm sure by now you have noticed that your cardboard is loosing its structural integrity. You may want to replace your divider with outdoors-grade plywood. Also, with the anticipation that water would collect on the bottom of the tub, but before I realized it could not stay there, I dumped a few inches of pine bark wood mulch on the bottom and covered it with about 1/8" of newspaper. This payed dividends when I finally said "enough" and drilled the drain holes though the bottom. Your tub is galvanized steel though, so drilling holes may cause it to rust out prematurely. Unfortunately, those metal stock tanks probably cost twice as much as the rubber stock tank (which is why I bought the rubber one) and likely, less durable. Mine is supported by its ends, with a few hundred pounds in it. Checking with a straightedge, it is not bowing... yet.

Hi all,Good Morning! I see that a lot of you haven't received your books yet, is no problem to wait, lets give it the rest of the week for everyones books to arrive. After all the first lesson involves the book LOL. So everyone who signed up, once you all get your books, pop in on this post and let me know when you get your book then hopefully we will start on Friday or Saturday of this coming week. Woodpat, glad to have you join us. This will be a casual and very easy exercise, I am hoping to have lots of thoughts going back and forth between everyone participating in this.

Yes, positano, I'd put the leathered black pearl in again. I love the look and the feel. The fabricator did put a 15yr sealer on it, but I don't think things showing is a sealer issue. Most everything wipes off with water. Worst case is I have to get my Method Daily Granite Cleaner out to completely eliminate whatever didn't come off with water. I think the issue is more that the dark, matte finish shows things that would be hidden by a lighter, busier or shinier finish. My neighbor has shiny black pearl and she says greasy doesn't show but dust does and the watermark type things look duller than her finish, so they show but in a different way than they do on mine. The shiny finish also shows more color variation than the matte, so that helps to hide crumb-type mess. I do wonder though if the dark, faux stone laminates have the same issue. That would tell you whether is was totally a surface thing or something more. I haven't had good success photographing the kinds of marks I'm talking about, but here are a couple of general pictures of the stone.

OK. That makes sense. The only thing I would warn you about is how little space you'll actually have in the pull-outs/drawers for a 12" cabinet. I just measured our 15" drawers (we have no 12" drawers) and the "flat" space on the bottom of the drawer (not including the sloped drawer sides) is 10" wide. So I would think that on the 12" drawer, you'd be looking at a flat interior surface of only 7" width. Depending on what you plan to store in those cabinets, you may be better off just using shelves so you can get the whole interior width of 10-1/2". As for the area above the two 12" cabinets, you'll need some sort of a cabinet body in there, I would think. You could always get another 12" cabinet and cut the top down. We didn't have to do any hacks like that, but that way you'd have something to affix the door to and would have an enclosed cabinet rather than two walls, the top of one cabinet and the bottom of another. Also, how are you mounting those cabinets? The base cabinets aren't set up to take the wall mounting rail.