You don't have a problem yard, you have a problem tree. The wooden porch thingy was probably perfectly well built to begin with but the tree's roots have lifted and broken it. Same with the landscape ties beside it. It's coming for your house foundation next if it isn't already doing some damage. Good thing it's your tree and your house that's closest, because if that were not the case there would be some potential liability issues here - all you've damaged of your neighbours' is the retaining wall, which will be easily rebuilt once the tree is gone. See the slope of your front yard in the second picture? That's all tree root effect. The very cute cobblestone walls are simply at the end of their lifespan, which has been shortened by trying to hold the front yard together under pressure from the tree roots. But news flash: this is not a rock wall, it's a concrete retaining wall decorated with rocks. So when you go looking for a book on how to build retaining walls, follow the directions for concrete, not dry-stack stone. A slope is not problematic in and of itself, in fact it is a huge feature if you design that way. You could, for example, make your vegetable beds there, a series of raised beds going up the hill like steps, with actual steps beside and between them for you to go up to tend them. And no, the east side of the house is no place for tomatoes, they need full sun. What you have here is a charming little house on a great lot where the landscape installation is simply at the end of its useful life. What needs to happen here is the setting of priorities and the making of decisions. If the structural integrity of your house is important, the tree should be taken down pronto, and then you have some hardscape rebuilding to do: steps, walls, vegetable beds; whatever your vision for the place dictates. If you are at a bit of a loss, some reading through the landscaping section at the library is always a good first step. KarinL

@millworkman, good to see you here my friend! :) Cement board went up in my bathroom and a hole was cut for the prefabricated niche. Went over with the niche in hand and naturally it doesn't fit. Why is everything so hard?? The niche flange is sitting at least 1/4" proud of cement board, though it should have been the right depth. Confused as to how this could be happening, I ran a straight edge across the cement board from edge to edge and can see that the center of the board (where the niche sits) dips in. Guess my contractor didn't bother to check if the board was level. So now I'm thinking ahead to the tile job (I picked 6x12" tiles) and from multiple posts, can see that what you are tiling on needs to be flat. I showed my contractor and he said that the wall does not need to be flat and that you can even all the tiles out by adding more mortar where necessary. A whole internet of posts seem to disagree with him. Ugh! So since he clearly doesn't give a crap how my apartment turns out, I'll sort it out myself even though I don't know what the hell I'm doing. Here's what I've come up with. 1) leave the niche proud and try to level around it with thinset, thereby also leveling out the wall. I'm not sure if this is beyond my technical capabilities. I was impressed will all the divets I filled in the drywall (yeah, my GC sucks), but cement might be another ballgame to drywall mud and this is a much larger area. 2) Cement board is quite flexible. Maybe I can add some shims between the board and the stud to bring it out a bit? 3) Cut the outer layer of drywall out behind the niche (it faces a closet). Then the niche flange will sit flat on the cement board and I can feather down the small lip with thinset. The wall itself will still not be flat with this option. Enter the chicken wire mentioned earlier in this post for leveling out the wall. Seems like a great idea and I can pass it on to the tiler!! Is this a common technique employed by tilers when faced with uneven walls or am I going to have to find a creative one? Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Here are some pics to illustrate the problem: At the worst point, the niche flange is probably 1/4" proud of the wall. Top seems ok'ish, but this is a LONG niche (36") Running a straight edge along the wall while holding the two side in place. The center of the board clearly dips in.

What I see is an attempt to make specific areas for specific purposes. But what you have is too much stuff taking up the extra space you had when you first moved in. Your living area is cluttered, and I'm not talking about the random trash. The mantle and every shelf has no cohesive purpose. For instance, put all your photos on the mantle. Put all your books on the step ladder shelves. Keep similar things together as collections. You can probably mix some decorative things with the books but on a different shelf. Your desk is what is taking up most of the space. Put the desk in your storage closet. Use your dining table to work at. Put your printer and work supplies on/in the cabinet the way you had it when you first moved in. Your dog is laying on your sofa; why do you have a dog bed? Get a throw for your sofa that you can remove when you expect company. Do you lock your dog in the crate at night? If you are not using the crate daily put it in the storage closet on your deck. If the dog bed and crate are used regularly put them behind the sofa. Below is how I would arrange your furniture. The TV stays next to the fireplace. The desk goes into storage and all the work items go into or on the built in cabinet between your living and dining rooms. The dog stuff goes where the desk used to be, but you have a little more space to ease your sofa back. Move the 3-light lamp next to the windows and point the lights up so you get a softer light bouncing back from the ceiling. Move the smaller spot light next to the fireplace so it overhangs your papasan chair. Move the ladder shelf bookcase into the dining area on the wall next to the deck exit.

Katelyn Newell --- I’ll add my 2 cents worth on considering your choices as being between a portable washer unit and putting an all-in-one washer-dryer front-load combo (or a compact washer alone) in the linen closet. For you and your landlord to figure out if a compact or combo unit is feasible in your space, you all will need to understand the four issues to be faced when retrofitting laundry into a small space in an old building like the one you live in. These four are: space, water supply, drainage, and power. The advantage of a portable washer is that you and your landlord don't have to address any of those issues. However, you mostly have to put up with more tradeoffs and limitations than with combo, although the Magic Chef suggested by Ci-lantro seems to have fewer of them and has goodcustomer reviews. Of course, combos have their own (different) tradeoffs and drawbacks. . If you haven’t yet explored washer dryer combos and portables, you might find it helpful to start research with the Wirecutter article “The Best Washer-Dryer Combo (But We Don’t Recommend It)” and also look at their March 2019 discussion of portables which you can find at the end of their article, "The best compact washers and dryers." Also, Consumer Reports has an article about combos with the basic conclusions being that they do a good to very good job in their rather demanding tests of washing functions but are extremely slow and score only fair to poor in CR's tests of drying functions. ETA: on portable washers and dryers, there is a company called Laundry Alternative which makes and sells portable washers and dryers of various sizes and capacities for tiny houses, small apartments, boats, and RVs. An owner of the company frequently participates in the discussions of all kinds of washers over at automaticwasher.org and had a thread last month on some new models. If that sounds interesting here is a link to that automaticwasher thread. To me, a combo unit, even with its own tradeoffs and drawbacks, would be preferable to a portable unit, especially when dealing with "pretty gross" work clothes as you mentioned. The question with a combo (or a solo compact washer with no dryer like the set-up hcbm has) will be whether you can address all four of the old-building-retrofit issues of space, water, drainage and power. Based on what I’ve seen done over the years by friends and neighbors with spaces similar to yours, I think you may be able to solve the first three issues for a compact combo without large expense other than the cost of a machine. It's the electrical that might be the intractable issue for a compact washer or combo, as I will explain below. 1. The problem of space: IOW, what you can fit in where. The linen closet looks like the more convenient location for reasons that katinparadise, Aphaea and others have already pointed out. The question is what you can put in there -- you specifically asked if you could fit a 23½” wide compact stack (as opposed to an all-in-one). The answer is you can but there are a couple of considerations to address. The first consideration with putting a washer-dryer stack in that linen closet is that the back wall would be the only place in your linen closet where there would be room for power and hose connections for a stack. That's what Scottie Mom and Ci-lantro were talking about when they mentioned access to the connections being a problem. Putting them on the back wall is undesirable because you could not reach the connections without the onerous work of pulling the whole stack completely out of the closet. No such problem with an all-in-one front-load combo unit. Those are the size of a compact washing machine, alone. Easy to mount the connections on the right-hand (bathtub side) wall and they could be placed above the washer where the connections would be easy to reach when you need to do so. FWIW, somebody here in this Forum recently discussed this aspect as a reason she chose a LG all-in-one (model WM3488, IIRC) for her similarly confined laundry space. I remember this being in rococogurl’s long thread about the Bosch 500 compact series washers and dryers, but I haven’t been able to find the thread to provide a link, yet. The other space consideration may be more apparent than real. This is the concern raised by several posters, including wdccruise, about installation instructions that prescribe an inch or two of clearance on each side for closet installations. Obviously, you don't have that space with a closet that you measured at 24½" wide. However, most compact laundry is designed to be able to go under a counter in the same 24” wide spaces as for a dishwasher, i.e., where there would be next to no side clearance. It turns out that the side clearance usually is not for ventilation but, rather, is prescribed to assure sufficient wiggle room when pushing a heavy and awkward washer-dryer stack into a narrow closet. I recently confirmed this when I called Miele tech support while helping a friend with one of the Miele washers recommended above, and Miele confirmed that one could put their 23½" washer in a 24" wide closet as long as one could mange to insert the stack without damaging the walls or the machines while doing so. Also, it may be worth noting that Electrolux’s instructions for its compact washer, EFLS210, specifically say it is designed for zero side and rear clearance. (As an aside, If you can live without a dryer and can solve the other installation requirements, the Electrolux compact might be a good choice for a "washer only" option. If interested, you can find some long and favorable discussions of the Electrolux compacts both here and at the automaticwasher.org site. IIRC the lead poster used the screenname of Practigal if you want to search for those posts. Also, IIRC, hcbm has posted --- or maybe somebody else posted in an hcbm thread? --- about ways to successfully run indoor drying when you have a small apartment and only a washing machine . Would be worth looking for hcbm's posts if you decided to go with a "washer only" set up.) 2. Water Connections: Not a problem in that linen closet. Relatively easy and therefore not very expensive to cut a hole in the closet's right-side wall (plaster?), tap into the existing hot and cold supply lines for the tub, mount a recessed box with hook-up fixtures on the closet side of the wall, and then patch and paint to cover the rest of the hole. It can be a basic handyman job unless your city’s codes require the plumbing connections to be done by a licensed plumber. With a combo unit or a washer-only set-up, it would be easy to put the hookups on that right wall slightly above the top of the combo or washer. They would be readily accessible there whenever you needed to get at them. 3. Drainage: The issue here is that old buildings usually have old plumbing and old plumbing does not drain as quickly as current washing machines require. A standard solution for this problem is to drain the washer into a large laundry sink. Basically, a laundry sink acts as a reservoir to hold wash water while it is draining through the small (and therefore slower) old drain pipes. You don't have room to add a laundry sink, but your bathtub can double as one. Indeed, you can drain a portable washer into one (and people do) so why not a compact washer or combo? BTW, portable washers don't have the same drain problem because they use smaller volumes of water and drain more slowly; the inflow and outflow are low enough that they can be run from and into kitchen sinks and sometimes even bathroom sinks. For a piped-in drain, washers now drain so quickly that “code” requires 2” as the minimum diameter for standpipe drains, as ci-lantro pointed out. Code also require a plumbing vent stack (a/k/a DWV) within 5 horizontal feet of where the drain pipe from the washer connects to the house drain pipes. . Older plumbing won’t likely have the requisite stack and will be smaller diameter pipe, 1¼” or maybe 1½” diameter. Although some compact washers' and combos' instructions do say that they can drain to 1¼" or 1½"pipes, the actual diameter of very old pipes will likely be even less because of the calcification and scale that builds up in old pipes over the decades. Basically, it probably will not be permissible to cut a laundry drain into the drain-pipe below the bathtub. But, doubling up the use of bathtub for also serving laundry duties will solve that problem and also will be much less expensive to do. A side benefit could be that the wash and rinse water flows would clean your bathtub without your having to scrub it. ;>) This is something you will want to check with a local expert as I've read a few posts reporting that there are a few cities whose code enforcers will not permit this. FWIW, I’ve seen the "double-up the use of the bathtub" solution used a couple of times in my town where we have lots of very old, very small houses. The Code enforcement folks signed off on it both times. In their view, they said they saw no direct connection to the sewer lines (there being a gap between the end of the drain hose and the water in the tub so there would be no chance of siphoning wastewater back into the tub or washer). They said no code provision otherwise prohibits doing laundry in bathtubs. (A reprise of the idea that doing this with a regular washing machine is no different than doing it with a portable washer.) Of course, you won’t want to be running a wash load while bathing, but that seems like a minor inconvenience in a one person apartment. One thing you may want is a lint trap on the end of the drain line or in the bathtub drain hole. You don’t want laundry lint snagging on and plugging up in the rough & scalely old drain pipes. You will want to frequently check and clear the lint trap. If you improvise one with pantyhose over the end of the drain hose (as you might do if you run across the many internet recommendations for doing so), you may need to clean it out with every load. May want to bear that in mind when considering portable washers, as well. 4. Power This might be the intractable issue for your getting a compact washer or compact all-in-one combo in your apartment. You need electric outlets to run your laundry machines. Your photos do not show any outlets in the linen closet. Most compact washers and most all-in-one front load combos run on standard 120v power. Practically speaking, you might be able to run an extension cord to a nearby existing outlet. Do note, however, that many appliance manuals warn against using extension cords with their washers and some cities' codes also forbid it. The big obstacle here is that codes generally require major appliance outlets to be on dedicated circuits. A "dedicated circuit" has one outlet and does not serve other lights, outlets, etc. The electrical in old buildings usually offers only a few circuits in each apartment so additional wiring would have to be run for permanently installed appliances like fridges, washing machines, dishwashsers, and etc. Your old building may or may not have the electrical capacity to add additional 120v circuits and, if it does, it may not be easy to run additional wiring to and inside your apartment with some major renovation work. Also, with regard to some of the above suggestions for stacking compact washers and their dryers in the linen closet, be aware that most ventless dryers – other than Miele’s --- need a 240v outlet. (There are numbers of "portable" 110v dryers but the y all seem to require venting, as far as I could tell from the last time I researched this). Formost ventless dryers, the obstacle to getting one is that many old urban buildings do not not have the capacity to provide a 240v circuit and, if they do, running the circuits may require tearing into walls to run a 240v circuit to a second floor apartment. A big problem in an occupied building, eh?. Something to be checked out with your building. Maybe the electrical was upgraded in the last decade or so? (Heck, maybe the plumbing was updated, too, so most of the issues might already have been solved. Something else to check out when your landlord considers looking into what might be installed and where.) As a side note, most compact all-in-one combos run from a single standard 120v outlet. The Miele compact washers and dryers (recommended above) both run on 120v power,. The Mieles, however, have their own complication because the washer and dryer have to be on separate circuits. IIRC, the manuals (and warranties) and the company's published q&a responses are pretty clear that the combined loads for for the washer and dryer will exceed the capacity of single 120v circuits. For your apartment, the difficulty of providing two circuits to the linen closet could put a Miele stack out of consideration even apart from their being so expensive and even apart from the inability to provide accessible hookups for a "stack" in that closet. Of course, the dryer does not have to be stacked, but is there anyplace else to put one in that apartment?