So many great ideas! Mothballs to keep raccoons out of fish food!! Putting mailbox up higher, love the swan platter! The lattice with roses is elegant & the chairs are great! Just respray & you can have any color you want. The table is lovely & the washer tub is just like 1 my friend had. She died some time ago, after '93 quake her house went off foundation(termites- she had predicted it )she moved in with DD. I drove by today as last time I had looked it was just house removed. Today it is Spanish style house with garage at back of lot & cement everywhere. All of her great GJ has been replaced with cement. She would love the house but be so sad that everything was removed. Anyway I love that old tub best!! Jan

My favorite irises seem to be the ones I "find" or "liberate" from a spot where they are not appreciated! :)) Your iris with the light blue standards and deeper blue falls COULD be Mariposa Skies. Does anyone else agree? Also, Google "Garden of Mu" - there is a man there, I believe he is "Mike", lives in Washington State, he is amazing at ID-ing irises. He helped me find the names of some really older varieties in my garden. Good luck!

I have to say that when I had a group of young (that is, younger than me) friends over and they saw our freestanding trash compactor, they laughed and said they hadn't seen one since they were kids. Thanks! In any case, we replaced it with trash cans under the sink when we did the reno. Our small kitchen didn't have space for a pullout or we might have gone that way. How many people live in your house? When all 3 kids were growing up, the trash compactor was marvelous. When it got to be just the 2 of us, it could take 3 weeks to fill. We made separate trash runs for smelly things like meat trays. If you have a houseful of people, I say replace it until you do your reno and then reevaluate. You're unlikely to be sorry you have it, and it's so much easier not trying to blend a new element into a cabinet run that you're going to replace anyway.

Sorry to bump this after so much time. Here's a picture of the trash compactor. This is the pull out trash/recycling system that I want. http://www.pullsdirect.com/rev-a-shelf-5349-2150dm-2-5349-series-double-50-quart-pull-out-waste-container-with-soft-close-slides/p1573591. It says that it fits in a 15 inch width cabinet. It took me this long to contact a few custom cabinet makers in my area. 2 of them have told me that to replace the trash compactor with the double pull out trash/recycling that I want, I would need to not only have a cabinet door/face, but also they'd need to create a cabinet box and a frame too. However, by doing this, the width of the side of the cabinet box would mean that they wouldn't be able to put in the pull-out that I want, which needs a width of 14.8 inches (the trash compactor is 15 inches), so I'd need to select a different one, which would have a much smaller bin size. The one I want has 2 50 quart bins, and I would have to go down to 2 27 quart bins, I think, to get it to fit, which is a big difference. I'm also talking to a third custom cabinet guy who said that there might be a way to be able to put in a "floor" to where the trash compactor was, so he could install the double pull out I want (which is bottom mounted, not side mounted) without any sides, and then put some type of frame at the top only, so something that the cabinet door could rest against while closed, but said he'd have to think about how to create it, and get back to me. I'm waiting to hear from him to see if he's thought of something that would work. In addition, the price estimates I've gotten so far were substantially higher than I was expecting. Alison, I'd love to know the details of how you and your dh did this. Did you add a whole cabinet box? If not, what did you mount your pullout to, and what does your door rest against? I would appreciate any ideas. Thanks! Here is a link that might be useful: rev-a-shelf double pull out