Great feedback from you, weirdtrev. Very direct. I have to disagree with your view that gardeners don't have excess. I have never had excess (yes I am a newbie, but I can grow spinach and lettuce very very well.) Every single home gardener in my town is swimming in excess. I was talking to a friend last week who said she was up to her ears in bok choy. She felt like she was pushing it on friends. Farmers markets are fairly inaccessible for the home gardener. How can their booths compete with real farmers? Most people pass by the gardener's booths, because they appear puny. You have to be the first gardener I have talked with that thinks this is a bad idea. DO OTHER GARDENERS ON THIS FORUM HAVE EXCESS THEY WOULD BE PLEASED TO SELL, OR NOT?? As for your second thought: building community is crucial for success. That is obviously the hard part. I have put much thought into this. It IS possible - look at the success of so many other online and mobile apps that require community to function. Now, I did not know about "The Farmer's Garden." I searched fairly extensively before launching. Now that I know about it, I will look at it carefully and consider why it does not get much use. You are right, $10k does not go far in terms of the number of hours it will take to build community. Maybe these guys failed to build community.

Thank you for the info about the Ace electric stapler ($31.99). I have an Ace Hardware store nearby so that is convenient. The Arrow Fastener ET155 ProShot 3 at Amazon ($220 new, $74.46 used) as well as the Maestri ($167.14) are also good options to know about. Some of the posters who have access to an air compressor and a pneumatic (air tool) staple gun say that they would not want to go back to using an electric staple gun. I've never used either electric or pneumatic, so would not know the difference. I'll need to weigh the pros & cons including prices. I also have limited storage space in my home & garage, so will need to look into how bulky an air compressor is for storage. I glanced at Home Depot's site for "portable air compressors" and linked it below. Anyone who has one of these compressors?...which one? Items I need upholstered: 2 full size sofas, 1 small sofa, a wing back chair, and another chair that's not wing back but has a fabric seat & back. Do you think I could get by with an electric staple gun as opposed to a pneumatic staple gun and air compressor? Laurie Here is a link that might be useful: Home Depot Portable Compressors

Other than the annoying nested tool palette, scattered menus and company logo, the most serious limitation of SketchUp Free is that it can only export a 2D floor plan in .png format (a bitmap format like .gif) so the file doesn't retain the scale of the original drawing. In other words, if you send it to a designer/draftsman, a print of it will not be to scale and only the written dimensions will be known. That forces the designer/draftsman to waste time redrawing the plan to scale which is expensive unless they work for free. This should not be surprising. SketchUp makes it clear from the beginning that the Free app is for personal visualization rather than professional communication. In Shop or Pro a plan can be exported in .pdf, .dwg & .dxf formats that retain the scale of the original drawing. Those files can also be imported and used as the base of a 3D model. When you select one of those export file options in Free, you are asked if you want to upgrade. It would be great if the designer could open a Free file in Pro but it cannot. So, if you intend to communicate with design professionals, $119 is a bargain for Shop since you are unlikely to need it for more than a year. It might be possible to export a Free model and open it in Pro and then work on the plan in scale but it apparently requires the 2017 or 2018 version of SketchUp Pro so I haven't tried it, but if it works, it reduces the number of designers you could use.

Houzz is actually a great place to organize a project by room using ideabooks. MasterSpec (MasterFormat) is the lingua franca of construction. It follows the general sequence of construction by material and trade starting with 01. General Requirements and ending with 48. Electrical Power Generation. Though, oddly earthwork is category 31 which happens first and last in a project. If you want to track the construction in a format your contractor is likely using. MasterFormat is excellent.