Hi Lori. I know what you mean about the sludge and sick fish. We used to have the upflow bio-filters and I couldn't believe how much sludge collected on the lava rock. We don't use the upflow filter with lava rock any more because we found a new design and now all I have to clean is the window screening at the top of the filter and the scrubbies that I use for the good bacteria to grow on never get dirty. If you like, I can send you a diagram and step by step instructions on how to build it. Your's Koily, Lorraine

R/F: I'm partial to SZ, having had great performance with multiple units (in multiple houses) over many years, & have SZ in our new kitchen. Beverage Center: have you looked at the Monogram one? Great looking & racked well. We ultimately went with Monogram refrigerator drawers because we wanted food storage capability too. Beverage centers don't get cold enough to safely store food. Range: I was impressed with Monogram, never could see a BlueStar in our area. Both the Monogram & the BlueStar have the power you need, so the slow simmer should be your main decider. If both are satisfactory to you, then it's down to your decision between electric or gas oven. (We chose a DCS all gas 36" range, all burners, because of our wiring and we also have an electric wall oven. It can do low simmer without a diffuser. The infrared broiler in our range is more important to us than the lack of self-cleaning, and the oven can switch to convection.) DW: We've had KitchenAid & it's good, much better than the JennAir it replaced. We have Miele now, which cleans better than our KA and is much quieter. Faucet: We have KWC Domo & love it. We have the side control pullout version on our main sink, and the top control pullout version on our prep sink. Microwave: I'd prefer a drawer in an island.

What this discussion is really about is not drawing by hand or using a computer, it's really about what work is being done, what sort of "service" a client is getting and, most importantly, what the final result or outcome will be. Builders and designers may often work based on existing designs that they have built and are already fully resolved and stored in the computer. When a new client comes along, one of the existing computer files is called up and "reheated" or tweaked to meet the new client's wish list. When clients go to a builder/designer who charges $1/SF for services, this may be what is happening. Plus the builder/designer simply transfers any additional costs to the construction budget, where the client never sees them. For many consumers, this approach fits them perfectly. They don't want a custom designed home. All they want is an existing home that's tweaked to include their list of features. Think about what's going on: could any adult make a living, pay business expenses and reinvest in growing their business on $1/SF (or less)? How many 3,000 SF houses would such a builder need to do for annual income sufficient to stay in business and make a living for his family? That's why construction costs, and extra costs due to low allowances, provide most of the needed business income for builders and in-house designers. In this business model, the minimal "design" fees are simply a way to get people to sign a construction contract. In other words, what's being done may by cooking a previously existing floor plan until "complete", with little or no corresponding thought or work on site planning, climate and green design, and almost no thought to exterior massing and design. When the floor plan is sufficiently baked, the rest of the project is like icing a new cake. The exterior decoration is simply applied and handed to the client. This sort of incomplete thinking about design is why we see so many postings here on this forum of "fat" house plans, and corresponding ill-proportioned, roof-heavy exteriors, with a pretty "street face" and vanilla sides and backs. It's why so many designs are a miss-mash of stacked gable roofs and patch-work quilt wall materials--all decoration and no substance! All of the effort went into tweaking a plan and little or no corresponding work took place elsewhere. Architects work differently. They organize their work and fees by phases, working from very open-ended studies and explorations for a custom design, to a highly detailed set of drawings and specifications for bidding and construction. These phases of work are clearly defined and derived from a historical understanding of how building design proceeds in a step by step process, from initial ideas to final details, where insides, outsides, site, codes, energy, etc., are all considered together throughout the design process. The five typical phases for designing a project are: schematic design, design development, construction drawings and specifications, bidding and construction. One phase does not begin until the client has approved the work from the prior phase. These phases are why many architects may start a project using pencil, pen and tracing paper as they meet and discuss ideas, explore site opportunities, develop energy and green strategies, finally pulling everything together in a holistic schematic design. Thereafter, with the design direction identified, a computer may be used effectively to refine and add greater precision and detail, until the work is complete. It's not impossible to use computers for schematic design, but it is more difficult to sit in a meeting with clients, talk about needs and opportunities while punching information into a computer. It's a lot more effective to sit with clients and "doodle" with pencil and paper where everyone can see what their ideas may actually look like. The costs for this type of work is usually set by the architect as either a fixed fee (with conditions on what the fixed fee covers so that the work doesn't ramble on endlessly) or a percentage of the construction cost, or some combination, depending on circumstances. The important point for consumers to understand is that architect's fees are based on the quality and amount of original work by an architect, while SF costs may be based on minimal changes to an existing project, with possible hidden costs rolled into the construction budget. The issue is really not about how the work is performed--by hand or computer--it's really about what work is performed (or not performed) for a client, and what will be the end result: something custom and original or something reheated. Sorry about the long message, but it's important to point out that there's nothing wrong with either custom or reheated designs as long as the consumer understands what they are getting for what they are paying.

Hi Linda, My Megan was a Lab cross. I'll put her picture below. With those prick ears and long silky hair, I always shake my head and laugh a bit how every vet who ever saw her called her a lab at first sight! Megan came to us when she was maybe a year and a half old. Her Daddy was my neighbor's son. He had just that week retired from his job on a loading dock at Ford Motor Company. He was a bit of an odd guy, I guess. Maybe he was a touch mentally ill or maybe he had Asperger's, but he did not like people too much, and he did not see his family much at all. But he must have arranged to see someone from work, and when he did not show, they came looking for him. He did not answer the door, but Megan was there, barking. The coworker knew that that he never went anywhere without his dog, so he called the police. Megan even went to work with him each day! Turns out he was dead, he had died of a heart attack four days earlier. Megan was so well trained that she had not gone to the bathroom in the house! Well, the sheriff took the dog while they tracked down family for the dead man. After the funeral, the son went to the animal shelter and claimed the dog. But when he brought his dad's dog home, his own dog, who was prone to seizures, went into seizures and they knew Megan could not stay. That is where I came in. His grandmother knew that I was wanting a good dog after an experience with a rescue dog with fear-biting problems. She pretty much insisted, and Megan was very sweet, so that is how I got the best, most well-behaved dog I ever knew. Megan was so good that we could walk away from a sandwich left on the coffee table and come back and she would not have touched it. She never considered getting on furniture. You could not entice her to get on the couch with you. She was trained to ring a bell to go out in one day. Megan died of cancer when she was nine, too. My father-in-law called me at work and told me that she had come into his room, crying, and was having trouble walking. I went home, tried to call my husband, tried to call our vet, and waited for someone to get back to me. Toby, our younger dog, was at the vet that day having surgery to make sure his fatty deposits were nothing more than fat. The vet was likely in surgery. Later, I learned that my husband was in the gym. Finally, my husband got home and we loaded Megan in the car. By then, she could not walk. She weighed almost 70 lbs, and I could not carry her myself. We used a halter and a sling to hoist her into the dog bed in the car. The vet thought that she had internal bleeding, but his blood testing machine was not working well, and we could not get a count, so we opted to take our other dog home, and take Megan to the ER. We walked into the ER and the vet saw Megan. Our vet had called ahead, so he knew what to expect. Before he even examined her, he said, "it is probably cancer. She probably has tumors, one is bleeding and when I do surgery I am going to find that it is not just one tumor, but she is full of tumors. If the primary tumor is the liver, I will anesthetize her right there during surgery." When I asked how he knew this without even examining her, he said, "she is a lab." We visited Megan in the oxygen pen before we left. I knew from the demeanor of the vet that she did not really have a chance. At 1 am we got the call. She was full of liver cancer. I drove back to sit with her still body a while. I got some clippings of her fur and took deep breaths of her distinctive scent. Looking back, we could see that she was uncomfortable. We thought it was anxiety. It looked like anxiety to us, but I am a social worker, and husband has anxiety problems. It was pain. It was discomfort. She had to have rawhide to chew every night not because of habit or anxiety, but because it distracted her from the pain. Now that I know what that looks like, no dog of mine will suffer like that again. So sorry Megan. That husky who gave you those prick ears and long fur and the love of romping and wrestling gave you some special skills. You could talk and say "no-oooo," "Mama," "right now!" but you could not say, "it hurts so bad!" Here is a link that might be useful: Megan and all the rest of our dogs