In my estimation, the only case to be made for reusing container soils is one of economics, and you'll never find me argue against making that decision. If you can't afford, you can't afford it. That said and setting economics aside, you might decide to reuse soil for reasons other than economical. Perhaps the effort involved with acquiring (or making your own) soil is something you might not wish to go through or be bothered with. In any case, it would be difficult to show that soils in a more advanced state of structural collapse can somehow be preferred to a soil that can be counted on to maintain its structure for the entire growth cycle. So, if the economic aspect is set aside, at some point you must decide that "my used soil is good enough" and that you're willing to accept whatever the results of that decision are. All soils are not created equal. The soils I grow in are usually pine bark based & collapse structurally at a much slower rate that peat based soils, yet I usually choose to turn them into the garden or give them over to a compost pile where they serve a better purpose than as a container soil after a year of service. Some plantings (like woody materials and some perennials) do pretty well the second year in the same bark-based soil, and with careful watering, I'm usually able to get them through a third year w/o root issues. Watering habits are an extremely important part of container gardening. Well structured soils that drain well are much more forgiving and certainly favor success on the part of the more inexperienced gardeners. As soils age, water retention increases and growing becomes increasingly difficult. If your (anyone's) excellence in watering skills allows you to grow in an aging medium, or if your decision that "good enough" is good enough for you, then it's (your decision) is good enough for me, too. The phrases "it works for me" or "I've done it this way for years w/o problems" is often offered up as good reason to continue the status quo, but there's not much substance there. I'm being called away now, but I'll leave with something I offered in reply on a recent thread: "... First, plants really aren't particular about what soil is made of. As long as you're willing to stand over your plant & water every 10 minutes, you can grow most plants perfectly well in a bucket of marbles. Mix a little of the proper fertilizers in the water & you're good to go. The plant has all it needs - water, nutrients, air in the root zone, and something to hold it in place. So, if we can grow in marbles, how can a soil fail? Our growing skills fail us more often than our soils fail. We often lack the experience or knowledge to recognize the shortcomings of our soils and to adjust for them. The lower our experience/knowledge levels are, the more nearly perfect should be the soils we grow in, but this is a catch 22 situation because hidden in the inexperience is the inability to even recognize differences between good and bad soil(s). Container soils fail when their structure fails. When we select soils with components that break down quickly or that are so small they find their way into and clog macro-pores, we begin our growing attempts under a handicap. I see anecdotes about reusing soils, even recommendations to do it all over these forums. I don't argue with the practice, but I (very) rarely do it, even when growing flowery annuals, meant only for a single season. Soils don't break down at an even rate. If you assign a soil a life of two years and imagine that the soil goes from perfect to unusable in that time, it's likely it would be fine for the first year, lose about 25% of its suitability in the first half of the second year, and lose the other 75% in the last half of the second year. This is an approximation & is only meant to illustrate the exponential rate at which soils collapse. Soils that are suitable for only a growing season show a similar rate of decline, but at an accelerated rate. When a used soil is mixed with fresh soil after a growing season, the old soil particles are in or about to begin a period of accelerated decay. I choose to turn them into the garden or they find their way to a compost pile. Unless the reasons are economical, I find it difficult to imagine why anyone would add garden soils to container soils. It destroys aeration and usually causes soils to retain too much water for too long. Sand (unless approaching the size of BB's), has the same effect. I don't use compost in soils because of the negative effect on aeration/drainage. The small amount of micro-nutrients provided by compost can be more efficiently added, organically or inorganically, via other vehicles. To boil this all down, a container soil fails when the inverse relationship between aeration/drainage goes awry. When aeration is reduced, soggy soil is the result, and trouble is in the making." Al

Well, first off you need to be able to put your pictures on the world wide web. You can post them on one of the photo hosting sites, or if you have one, your own web site. If you have only a picture or two, you can upload them to the GardenWeb Gallery. Once you have pictures on the web, you can then copy the link that appears in the address box and paste it into the "Optional Link URL:" that will show up on the second page of the form that you use to start a new thread. If you are on a photo hosting site, you have to do something to make the pictures public, so we can see them without logging in. If you want to embed your link in the text, you can follow the directions linked below. Good luck, we are looking forward to seeing your pictures. Here is a link that might be useful: How to make a clickable link.

HI Roxy2007, We have the Best K42, 36" over a 30" Wolf DF range. It is 24" deep and has a 1,000 CFM internal blower, 8" duct with one 90 degree bend before it vents out the side wall. It is mounted 33" above our range top or 69" above the floor. It was not cheap. I had wanted a vent for so long that I think I went a overboard on the cfm. 500 or 600 cfm and 30" wide would have been fine. But I am glad that I went 24" deep. At the time we got it we had an old 36" Chambers range and we thought we might replace it by a 36" pro style range, possibly with a grill or griddle. (We've done all our purchasing and planning backwards!) We've had the vent up and running since mid December 2009 and so far are very happy with it. Do keep in mind that my experience is based on only three months of use. But for now I easily consider it the best investment we've made in improving our kitchen. It has performed very well through the heavy cooking and baking season. We cook several times a day (sauteeing, pan frying, bacon, onions, chicken, etc.) Stir fry is something we do only about once a month. I love having a vent. There are still plenty of yummy kitchen smells, just none of the bad, lingering ones. We originally wanted an external blower for quieter venting, (we couldn't fit an in-line blower between our ceiling joists) but for some reason (perhaps because of how it would look on the outside of our house) our HVAC installer discouraged us from an external blower. I also originally thought I wanted a chimney Prestige brand with baffle vents, but ended up for the particular aesthetics of our kitchen liking the way the Best looked better. Maybe baffles would have been better (I'll never know); but the mesh vents clean up fine and every 3 weeks or so when they feel greasy to the touch that I run them through the dishwasher. I generally use the lowest setting and only crank it up to the middle setting for a minute or two (it has 3 settings, not variable) when I am searing meat. On low you certainly know that it is on; but I find it completely tolerable and I'm still able to carry on a conversations with my DH. At the higher settings it does get pretty loud -- but not an unpleasant loud, more of an "I'm a powerful machine sucking grease and smoke out of your kitchen kind of loud." It is certainly not as loud as my son's rock band when they practice in the basement. The only draw back of the vent hood is that the sliding plastic control under the hood for the speed seems a little cheap, given the overall quality of the vent. One final note since there has been a lot of discussion on Gardenweb about "make up air" when installing vent hood, our HVAC installer said nothing about make up air; perhaps he figured with our leaky, 80 year old house with original windows and no insulation it just wasn't an issue. Or, maybe this is something I should look into? Best wishes for your vent decision. It is a challenge balancing price, visual aesthetics, sound sound aesthetics, and function. I think that is why there are so many posts on vent hoods on this forum.

Thank you, suzannesl and cloud swift. We don't have a "GC" per se... As inexperienced as we are we didn't know that kitchen removation needed a GC or what GC does and what our cabinet installer does and does not do... We just planned to get the cabinet changed with a new one along with the granite countertop. We are doing an Ikea kitchen installed by someone. And again as inexperienced as we were, we - or I just picked the granite color and got quotes from different fabricators and picked the stone store... (picked one of recommended by the stone whole seller that provides Ikea with stones - Marbles and Granite in MA) So a long story short, not knowing the whole process of "just change the cabinets" turned to be this horrific way more demanding to find out what's going on and what has to be done mess.... So it's our fault - since we decided to do this for this old house we bought - we have to figure out all these. :( I have been feeling like crying everyday and now templating is done I have to figure out what we shoud do. I don't think our fabricator does laminating. He did not mention anything about it... I am just sooo glad that I have found this forum to ask around thing s and find out that "using white silicone to fill the gap" is NOT done. I have shown cloud swift's picture with plates embedded and asked my cabinet guys if he can do it and he said yes. But he is not sure if Ikea cabinets with those plastic legs will be able to support all the plywood+steel plates + granite. I ws thinking "if it's designed to withstand a slab of granite, won't they be strong enough for additional plywood +steel plates?" But then it's me. Another suggestion they had was to make a frame of steel plates all around the cabinet with supports sticking our sort of welded together by the steel fabricator. My thinking is... won't THAT be heavier that a few steel plates + plywood? Any thoughts? THank you again for your help.