This is a common mistake....we have all done it. Those with city water usually kill all their fish. But if you have no chlorine then you should be fine. the power outage was for how long? It should not have done anything to your bio filter of less then a couple hours. But even if it was longer, it will just knock it back a bit, not kill everything off....it will recycle very quickly. Maybe wait a few days to feed, then feed lightly for the next couple weeks, just to be safe. A dramatic change in temp can stress the koi. do you know what the change in temp was? More then 4 or 5 degrees? Even still if it was a trickle water change then it probably took several hours to drop the temp. Give them a few days, if they stay near the bottom and seem stressed it might be wise to add 7 pounds of salt to the pond (one pound per 100 gallons = .1%) This will help them regrow their slime coat and calm them down. After they start acting normal you can do more water changes to remove the salt.

We are buying an old house with an old one-car garage that is basically crumbling. The wood is very decayed and the whole thing is leaning. I would like to replace it with a little workshop/art studio, but the garage is in violation of the setbacks so the only way to rebuild it is to call it a "conservative restoration" and basically rebuild it from the inside out without ever tearing it completely down to the foundation. Has anyone else ever done this? If so, can you give me a sense of the major steps and expenses? Thanks! -Melissa

I had a feeling I would get comments on the shingles :) The roof is high on the list, I promise! I agree that the house would probably look best with the porch re-opened, but my house is tiny (1150 sq ft), and for now the porch serves as the cat's room (a place for her to get away from the dog.) Also, I live just off of the main street in my little town (minden, nv), which gets quite a bit of traffic, including trucks passing through. The traffic can be loud, so it's nice to have the porch windows as a buffer to the noise. Functionally speaking, I would like to have at least a couple of windows that open, but they do not all need to open. Light and the view are not really big issues. I still have the original (pink!) honeycomb shades that came with the house when I bought it. Even though they are 3/4 drawn I still have plenty of light. With the new windows I plan to replace the shades with something lighter, so I think regardless of the new window layout I'll have more light. Sorry I wasn't clear on the photos. The first two are the current windows, and the following are photoshopped ideas. And I have no idea what the style of my house is...don't know if it really has a style. It's very plain (no fancy molding details), it's shaped like a shoe box, it's pretty old for this area (1930), and I love it!

My kitchen was last remodeled 22 years ago by a group of friends from my church. (Friends of mine used to live in my house.) When my carpenter (also a friend from church) tore down some cabinets yesterday, he found a note on the sheetrock, in his handwriting, that said: "You know that nice older lady who lives at 184 Forestry Lane, across the street? Well, when she was young and supple, she helped to build this wall!" The "older lady," who's all of 55, still lives across the street, and got a big kick out of seeing this. None of us knew we'd be here when the kitchen was remodeled again!