We live in the country, too. There is a weekly trash pick up service in our area, but we don't use it. It takes us a month or two to fill a single 30 gallon trash bag. When one is full, I take it to the trash & recycling drop off and pay a by-the-bag fee that is probably one tenth the cost of the pickup service. I have made a concerted effort to stay off mailing lists, and we still get plenty of junk mail, which we shred. We have poor soil, so the shreds get sprinkled wherever we need the organic matter the most. I'd rather compost than burn. Yeah, I admit, sometimes it looks like confetti on our lawn, but the lawn is getting thicker! We compost vegetable scraps from the kitchen, autumn leaves, etc. As for cans and bottles, we recycle everything possible. Only non-recyclable plastic and meat bones find their way into our trash can, even with all the decluttering I'm doing with the help of FlyLady. Household items that are useful to someone else go to the Re-Use It Center, or I Freecycle them on the front porch. At first, I used a couple of cardboard boxes for the recyclable materials. But leaking liquids made them messy. So I replaced them with clear plastic bins that could be washed. I measured the shelf in the garage where we keep the recycle bins. I went to two or three stores that had a good selection of plastic storage containers. I used my measuring tape to be sure that whatever I got would fit into my space. I only need two boxes. One is for styrofoam, which shares space with a bundle of #2 & #4 plastic bags. (The bags are easy to pull out at the recycle place.) The other box holds cans, recyclable plastic & glass, which is how my local recycle place wants everything sorted. I also got a smaller box with a snap-tight lid. The mice chew aluminum foil and make a mess, but with the lid, I can keep foil out in the garage with the rest of the recycle stuff. When I have trash and/or recycling, I drive it over to the place which is also conveniently near some of the stores I need to visit anyway. I can combine my errands and save gas. It works out well for me. MaryLiz

I have your floors also. I think they are stunning and I have cats. But I wouldn't complain because it is easy enuf to clean them - easier than keeping wall to wall carpet clean when you have pets. The beautifu floor makse me want to do something really pretty for the curtains. I havn't played with new curtains in years. I don't have your high ceilings and windows. They are outstanding. I hope you keep this look for a long time. You nailed it.

I knew of one guy who had done work before for me. He was not interested in the job. I did not know anyone who had used a GC before, so I started looking at cabinets at cab shops (have their own crews), big box stores, and hardware/lumberyard stores. I was at a lumberyard that sold Merillat Cabinets and they really were cheaply made cabs with those drawers with short little sides on them. I have a problem with blatant honesty. Can't help but say what comes to mind. So I said something about why do real estate ads put "Merillat Cabinets" as a bragging point? The salesman explained about the different grades of their cabinetry and we got into a conversation. I asked him if he had anybody he could recommend for installing cabinets and remodeling and he showed me pictures of a beautiful deck he had made by one carpenter. He said the guy did general carpentry and remodeling. When I met with him, Jim showed me his book of photos and gave me some phone numbers of customers to call. He also had his GC license displayed in the book, along with insurance certificates. Best of all, he was INTERESTED in my job. He asked questions, got out his measuring tape and checked to see if what I was thinking was possible to do. He made suggestions to do it better or easier than I had been thinking of. We meshed and it was clear we would make a good working team. Guy #2 I got in a similar way, he was someone who one of the cabinet sellers sometimes used to install. He came out to look, showed little interest, and never gave a bid on the work. Guy #3 was from another recommendation from a lumber yard. He came out and listened to my ideas without getting very engaged, gave me a bid on doing the work and talked about how to cut back to save money. He did not understand from my conversation with him that I was after a good-looking area first, within a reasonable cost, but that I was willing to pay what was needed to get what I wanted. It was a complicated job. The kitchen was like a 16 ft long galley kitchen. A room off of the back half of the kitchen used to be a porch and was now sort of a sun room. There were only three steps for the 31" drop down from the kitchen, and that was what got us needing the remodel. But adding more steps took away floorspace in the 10 x 10 room, making it unusable as a dining room. (Because of stupid remodeling done to the other end of the kitchen before I bought the house, this stairway was the only entrance to the kitchen and basement for any large items like new fridges and furnaces, so the staircase could not be less than about three and a half feet to four feet wide.) The back door being smack dab in the center of the wall opposite the kitchen did not help. Because of the shed-style roof and the placement of the other back door, we could not move that back door left or right along that wall, either! We had dogs going in and out of that room, so a dining set was an impediment to herd movement! On top of that, our small back yard had a black walnut tree. Tree + 3 dogs + squirrels taunting dogs = mud. We needed a paw-washing station at the back door. We had tried damp towels, buckets of water, a coiled hose that attached to the kitchen sink and stretched to the back door and we could use to spray muddy feet in a basin. Nothing worked. You should have seen what happened when you lost your grip on that coiled hose when the spray was on and it slammed its way back against the kitchen cabinets! Jim was the only one who was enthusiastic about my assertion that the plumbing in the basement was not that far away and could possibly be used. He was willing to figure out if we had enough slope for a return plumbing run for waste water. He was willing to go into the auxiliary basement under the back half of the kitchen and insulate it properly, then do the plumbing to get the water and waste pipes to the old back porch. He was a real joy to work with. Jim took the drawings the cabinet guy and I had made and planned out the kitchen remodel. He faced each new challenge with a few choice words, a swipe at his brow, and a, "Nancy, can you come here, I need to show you something," followed by options for remediation and cost estimates (no support post on the right side of the "header" a previous owner had made going between kitchen and old back porch, three live electrical wires found with wirenuts on them left hanging in the walls, moldy drywall and rotted out rafters in that shed roof...) Pretty soon, Jim was checking EVERYTHING before closing up a wall, given that doodlehead's idiocy. I am sure Jim saved us a lot of trouble and heartache, if not our lives. He has done every job on both of my houses ever since, too.

If youre on pc, there should a window to the left called " your topics" , click edit, and select(check mark), if there is such a thing of course. If youre on phone, there should be a similar menu. Just check, there isnt. Though, you seem to already be there(check the tags), so i dont really see why there is an issue>