I used to be busy every Sat morning so I didn't get to go early GSing for years. Now the trend seems to be that they're Friday/Saturday...and more and more becoming Thurs-Sat. What happened to the Sunday GS?!?! Anyway, when I can, I take off a Friday and go. Sometimes when there is one near work, several of us will go. One of the agencies in the building I work in has a monthly silent auction fund raiser for charity and I find fun things there, satisfies all us State Workers who have to be at work on a sunny Friday! But when I DO go, I like to take DH. He's a lot of fun, and he tends to charm the folks running the sales, so he gets good prices. heehee. He goes alot on his own (works from home, so he's got the flexibility) and finds me the BEST goodies. Sometimes we'll take MIL, but I don't like going with her too much. She and I have different taste and she gets mad when I don't buy something she thinks I should buy, or that I admire but don't want to buy. A dog story...once our next door n'bor had a GS and our dog went over to visit. He walked straight up to the pile of stuffed animals, rooted around, and took one home. We went back to pay for his find and the n'bors were cracking up and telling the story to other shoppers. Quite funny, actually.

Okay, I heard back from Fairchild. "Dear Lisa: Sorry but there will be no Champagne. We will never have this variety until we figure out how to grow it better in South Florida. It performs poorly in our climate and soils. The Champagne fruit that we sell at the IMF are from our relationship with Ciruli Brothers, the sole owner of the Champagne trademark. Also, I am sorry, but we cannot pre-order trees. The trees for this year's website should be on the web. I will check this later on today to be sure. Thanks and take care. Richard J. Campbell, Ph.D. Senior Curator of Tropical Fruit Center for Tropical Plant Conservation Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden" They are now accepting Brunch reservations. We had a blast last year, so am somehow going to scrape up the $$ to attend. Hope to see you all there! Lisa

I used plan3d for my kitchen design. I had previously bought a copy of 3D home Architect (version 5) and was bitterly disappointed in how truly awful it was. It would crash frequently, it would corrupt the save file necessitating starting over from scratch, and there were many things it just couldn't do. But my biggest complaint was that the entire program was driven by the overhead 2d design, and to actually see the design in 3d you had to select a menu entry after which the machine would work for about 10 seconds and then display a rendering from your selected viewpoint. Want a different view? select a different viewpoint and wait another 10 seconds. However having worked as the graphics engine programmer at a small game company, I knew that the computer could display the entire view 60 times a second. After discarding that program I tried plan3d, and at least by comparison with the previous software, its wonderful. :-) On the whole plan3d is easy to get started with and easy to get a fairly reasonable representation of your kitchen. The interface is much more geared towards working in 3d, you can do all of the placing of cabinets and items in the 3d view. Other features of Plan3d that I liked: - If the program doesn't have a texture that looks like what you want, it is easy to take any other texture and apply it to the models in the program. For instance I planned on having quarter sawn oak cabinets, but none of their wood grain patterns had the look of QS Oak. So I downloaded an image of quarter sawn oak from a website, and simply dragged it onto the cabinet models. - The layouts are precise enough that you can rely on then. My kitchen is oddly shaped, with entry to the living room at an angle. I planned on tiling the kitchen, but wanted to avoid tiny little tile pieces along the angled edge. By getting the dimensions of the room _exactly_ right and using a 12x12 tile pattern in the program I was able to figure out how exactly to lay the tile to avoid tiny pieces around the edge. (The program was worth its price just for this.) - Lastly although it was mostly gimmicky, you can click on the cabinets, or appliances or door in the view and see how the door will swing as it opens, which can help figure out things like "will the fridge door block the entryway when its open?" or "will the dishwasher block the aisle too much when it is open?" Of course that is not to say there weren't things I disliked about the program. - I wasn't thrilled about their subscription-based pricing model, but I suppose that that is a big part of what allows them to keep the price low. - Given that the program downloads models, and textures over the internet, if you have a slow internet connection (like I do) the program will be slow, and if your internet goes out (like mine often did) you can't select any new models or stock textures until the internet comes back. - They have a relatively small set of models, if ou want to see the difference between a side by side fridge vs a freezer on the bottom fridge. Fine, you can. If you want to see Bosch model X wall oven vs the GE Monogram wall oven, too bad. - For floors and countertops, you can make them in non-rectangular shapes, but the interface for doing so is hard to figure out, hard to use, and even caused the program to crash a few times. - Lastly and most annoying, often times I would click away from the item I had been editing, too see it without the large red and blue ball-shaped item adjustment handles, and would inadvertantly drag the floor or move a wall. After finishing my remodel I took a bunch of pictures and then for laughs decided to move my plan3d viewpoint to the same location and take a snapshot to compare the plan3d to the real thing:

Hi there aptos_ca, Yes, moving walls can be expensive, but if you remove HALF of that wall (leave the one part that "encloses" the fridge), three magical things happen: 1) You can make the window bigger, which gives you more options for the sink. (Yes, there is probably a load bearing stud there, but if you put in a heavy duty header over the window, it can handle it. Your architect can give you the specs for this.) 2) It eliminates the awkward shoe-box feel of the room. If you plan on living there someday, it might be worth it to you to have a little more "space" in the kitchen. 3) You gain about three feet of sorely needed countertop space and another base cabinet. --- appliance size--- One of the cardinal rules of design is SCALE. Things have to "match" the scale of the space. Bigger spaces can have bigger things. Smaller spaces need smaller things. Put bluntly, "stuff" has to fit the size of the space. For example, a big sofa in a small living room is going to make the room feel wrong and uncomfortable. Putting regular-sized appliances in that tiny kitchen will make the space feel even MORE cramped than it already is. Sorry to belabor the point, but there it is. The little kitchen has great potential to be charming, and the right sized appliances will be a MAJOR factor in the space feeling "right." (Again, sorry to belabor the point.) AJ Madison is an EXCELLENT supplier of appliances for really good prices (I've bought several things there). Here is a link that might be useful: AJ Madison