7000ft, I am totally convinced you ought to write a book. Your family sounds very interesting and it sounds like you all work as a cooperative of sorts. How much of your food do you produce? The tomatoes that I grow are primarily for sauce, so I use Roma-type tomatoes. They are odd-looking, being long and quite large. The variety I grew this year was Super San Marzano. I've tried some others, but this one is the best. The sauce-type tomatoes are awesome for making sauce. They are very meaty with minimal juice and seeds. Making sauce is a breeze because you can skip the steps for squeezing the juice and seeds out. According to the catalogs, some varieties have pectin in them that helps to thicken the sauce. We ended up with 25 jars of sauce in the freezer. That is a record for us, so we are pleased! That's 25 dinners during ski season that I don't have to cook. :) I also grow a cherry tomato and some sandwich-type tomatoes. I've had good luck with Early Wonder, which is early yet tasty. (way better than early girl!) Inside the GH we enjoy our first tomatoes in mid-July. Without the GH we are lucky to get any red tomatoes at all. I'm sure it's the same for you. My gardening efforts are pretty much solo, but my husband was instrumental in building the GH and in helping look after things as needed. He is an expert at raising seedlings because I tend to travel a lot in the spring. He also built a root cellar and he is fully on board with our quest to grow as much food as possible. It's a bit of an oddball pursuit, so I'm happy that he's into it!

I use those 4' orange electic fence stakes from home depot (about $1 a piece)for lots of things in the yard & gardens. Pound it in the ground and then slide the PVC pipe over it and into the soil a bit. Set out several of these with holes drilled in the PVC pipe and string wire through them to make a fairly sturdy, portable & cheap trellis. I use these stakes to build easy fencing. I use plastic cable ties to secure wire or plastic mesh fencing to them. Because I dislike the orange and it stands out like a sore thumb, I paint my stakes black. Pound 2 rows of these stakes in the ground about 4' apart and slide each end of a flexible PVC pipe over them, making an arch. Cover this with garden cloth or plastic to protect plants. I "sew" the fabric to the pvc with fishing line. If you are using plastic, cut some flaps in it, to keep it from blowing away in a big wind. I use them to brace non secured retaining walls. At my old house I built a raised bed using them to hold the lumber together. I drilled holes in the timbers and slid them over the stakes, then I lined the interior side with heavy plastic.

I hate painted brick. Heres what i do to make brick a different color yet look like real brick that isnt painted..I used a color wash on mine. Buy 2 different shades of flat paint, close in color to each other. Use equal parts of each to make a 3rd shade halfway between the other 2 colors. Then dilute each by mixing 1/part water to 2/3 part paint. Using a cheap brush or rag apply either lightest or darkest color to all bricks, and wipe off immediately as you are applying. Ie do about 3 brick and blot. Do whole fireplace with one color, then use 2nd color and apply to random individual bricks and wipe each brick after applying. Then do random bricks with 3rd color. Blot each brick immediately after applying. The water in the paint will be absorbed, with the color, so your brick will still look natural and not painted, yet be a different color. It is quick to do because you don't have to be neat. Just blot as you go so you don't get runs. I can do a whole fireplace in under 2 hrs.

Sounds like you want to take your fireplace in the direction of focal point. Are you planning to put the TV over the fireplace? Are you gravitating to stone or tile? Your place looks sort of modern to me but dark also so maybe you want to do something light. I don't care for the shape of your firebox as I lean toward the more linear fireplaces. You can mask it with something like: https://www.yandex.com/images/search?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.prepostseo.com%2Ftmp_imgs%2F2911359171531452758.png&img_url=www.home-decorating-magazines.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2015%2F07%2Ffireplace-sitting-area-268x200.jpg&text=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.prepostseo.com%2Ftmp_imgs%2F2911359171531452758.png&rpt=imagelike Is your reaction to this, oh yuck, I was thinking stacked stone? Edit: Hopefully this link leads to the image I was trying to link to.