Can’t build dream plans, need big help reworking!
dalcolli
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
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Daniel OConnell
4 years agotangerinedoor
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoRelated Discussions
Big plans for this summer, and I need your help!
Comments (29)Carol, I hate to say it in the face of such a generous offer, but I am going to come down on the side of the forces of law and order, and not take cuttings with me to Italy. I certainly do most heartily appreciate your and Luanne's offer of help! Thank you both! If you could send me the names of promising roses that you and Luanne grow, that you think might do well here, that would be decidedly helpful. Niels and I are going to work together on a list of roses to order from the U.S., and with suggested names I can go looking in Europe as well. I think you and Luanne already know that you'll be welcome if you make it over to Italy and want to come to us for a visit. You'd be doing me a favor, in fact, by allowing me to share my garden. I think it's a beautiful place, and I have no one--NO ONE--to share it with. It kills me. Frustration, thy name is loneliness. I never did get answer your response to my earlier thread "Paying the price", though I had meant to, so let me do that now. I think your climate in northern California is probably similar to what I knew in Olympia, Washingon: mild, wet from fall to spring, and with dry summers. Oddly, it was in famously wet western Washington that I began to think about water thrifty gardening, on account of the dry summer weather. I found out that roses did just fine without additional summer water; I learned to use a mulch; I realized that plants have their periods of growth that coincide with the rainy season of their place of origin. I brought all these ideas with me to Italy and have been developing them ever since. I'll get in touch with you privately about your publication, and thanks for the offer! It will be interesting to see if it has any tricks that I haven't thought up yet, because when we go on drought regimen we are very conscientiously stingy. I'm wondering what plants you have that you're worried about in case of drought. Do you have acidophile plants? Offhand, those are the ones I would imagine to be thirstiest. There is a long list of noble plants that do well in dry summers, many of them classics of the English garden: many roses, viburnums, peonies, box, yew, lavender, rosemary, and other Mediterranean sub-shrubs, buddleia, barberry, clematis (are you surprised at that one? I was), spring-blooming bulbs, lilacs, privet, sarcacocca, daphne, tall bearded iris; and I could probably come up with more. I have the huge advantage of clay soil that holds water forever, and naturally some of these plants need the cooler, shadier, and moister parts of the garden, while others thrive in good drainage and a baking sun. Kaylah, I understand perfectly what you mean. You're talking about a community that has no laws because it doesn't need them: a place in which people know and trust each other to an extent that laws aren't necessary to create a healthy social environment. When I lived with my father for a while in the eighties I didn't have a key to the house, because the house was never locked. Likewise here in our little three family settlement at the end of the road, we don't need to worry if we forget and leave the car keys in the ignition or go on a walk without locking the house. By "lawlessness" I mean something different. I'm talking about a widespread contempt for the law and for the civil order and safety of individuals that laws are, theoretically at least, designed to protect. Lawlessness means people who evade taxes and yet want social services; people who drive drunk and hit other automobiles head on, murdering everyone in the other car and their own, or who don't stop at crosswalks, slaughtering the pedestrians who are trying to the other side of the street; corporate managers who embezzle and lie and drive their company bankrupt, cheating thousands of small investers out of their savings; arsonists who burn up thousands of acres of public forest to get grazing land, uncaring about the people they kill in the process; kids who vandalize schools and cemetaries; Mafia bosses sitting in their cells, plotting deals with the political parties (on both ends of the spectrum) in which they offer the votes they control in exchange for an easing of their prison regimen, which currently aims at preventing them from managing their organizations from inside jail; gang shootouts in the streets of the cities of southern Italy; mountains of garbage in Naples.... perhaps I ought to stop here. I've seen signs recently that the Italians themselves are getting sick of the situation. One symptom is a recently founded political party called something like the "Party of Italians who have Values", and their party guidelines include not running candidates who have criminal records. They increased their vote respectably in the last elections, and I hope they stick to their priciples. Perhaps I should add that life in the Bel Paese does have its charms, and its values as well; if I didn't think it was a good place to bring a child up, and to live myself, I wouldn't be here. Rosariumrob, Somehow I missed your last message. I'm a collector. The roses that I would like to get from the U.S. are roses that, as far as I know, are not available in Europe, at least not to a private gardener. Last year I bought roses from German and French nurseries, as the selection in Italy is limited, and will continue to do so. I buy rose varieties and grow them in my garden to see how well they conform to my criteria: I'm looking for roses that are beautiful in plant and flower, fragrant, healthy without spraying, able to thrive with low summer water and moderate nutrients, and propagable by cuttings. My dream is to establish a collection of roses with these characteristics that in time can be brought into circulation in Italy, to benefit the gardens of a country that's getting warmer and drier. Italians are in general ignorant of the old roses, of the Teas in particular, and they appear to be rare both in the specialized rose nurseries and as found plants. Italian gardening tradition doesn't favor the use of a great variety of plants, and its nurseries are weak from this point of view compared with countries like England and Germany. Unfortunately the countries with the good collections don't have the climate for growing Teas, Hybrid Giganteas, etc., so these roses are poorly represented there as well. The U.S. is a country with a long history of growing warm climate roses many of which have survived as passalong plants, and there are motivated collectors and curious gardeners aplenty, plus an interest in organic gardening. Naturally it helps that the U.S. is my own country and I know the language and the culture. All these are reasons why I look to the U.S. as a place to find Teas and other roses that meet my criteria. Melissa...See MoreSmall Kitchen Big Dreams - need reality guidance
Comments (41)wow - thanks for all the great responses feisty68 - does it feel dark or cramped or unfriendly in the kitchen? There is a lot of natural light in all the rooms - good point, I don't want to mess that up. chiefy76 - I read your response to DH - he was like - ya' - did I say that? Robotropolis - thanks - I printed your sketch - many thanks for your time to do that. I am trying to envision how that would look with the change in ceiling height going from 12' in the Family room to 9 ' in the nook - I guess there would just still be the 4' top of the wall there. raee - we use every inch of the dining room - often we fill it up with the Sunday lunch bunch - it could stand to be double that size. We eat on the porch as often as we can for the extra space but the dining does get used a lot. Gooster! Yes I have considered closing off the door to the porch - especially when I thought I was going to duplicate your to "die for" kitchen! That is something that will probably happen - depending on the final plan. elizardbethday - I wish, but there is no place to go with the bottom stairs - there is a half bath just behind the kitchen off the laundry room. I have an onsite meeting tomorrow at 2pm to discuss it all - keep it coming. I think I may need to post pictures of the actual rooms. THANK YOU ALL - I want to hear more of your thoughts, you are a bunch of awesomeness!...See MoreBig Family Kitchen - Help us refine our dreams!
Comments (14)Speaking to my own personal situation, now that my kids are older, they are often preparing their own meals (breakfast/lunch) when I'm in the kitchen. We have filtered water in the fridge door as well as at the sink. In the late afternoons, I might be prepping dinner and someone needs to fill a thermos of water for sports practice. Can't use the fridge for that, but then I'm in the way prepping dinner by the sink when they need to get to the sink water dispenser. Or, I'm making dinner and someone is helping. I'm a clean up as you go type, so if I'm trying to clean a bowl I just used while my daughter is trying to rinse vegetables for the salad she's making for dinner....congestion again at the sink. Or I'm in the middle of cleaning up from making morning meals while one of the kids is trying to get to the sink to dump the little bit of milk/cereal down the disposal b/f putting the bowl in the dishwasher. Just little things like that. Also, dh and I sometimes cook together - having two sinks would be a huge help there. He might be trying to cut open a package of meat to grill and I'm trying to rinse vegetables for the side dish, or dump a hot pot of water, etc. With a big family, as they get older, their presence in the kitchen is much more noticeable rather than when they were younger and I made/prepped everything myself. Honestly, having one sink was never an issue until I had four pre-teen/teens. So you may not see a need for it now, but with four kids and plans for more, I couldn't imagine having only one sink if I were planning a new kitchen and had a choice....See MoreSo you've dreamed big on a remodel and need to cut back. Now what?
Comments (22)Hello all, for some reason not all of the comments seemed to load before? Some other potentially helpful info. I have not asked our architect how he felt about sharing his work online so would like to refrain from doing so without asking. I work in a creative field and understand while we didn't sign anything that we couldn't, we also didn't ask and I feel that would be inappropriate. The overview of our thoughts are as follows: we have a 1200sqft cape on .4 acres. It is currently 3 bed (one small master) and 2.5 baths. There is no full bath on the second floor with two of the bedrooms, and the master is on the first floor. The living room and kitchen are both about 12 x 14' so small and a bit cramped for us. There is no dining room/other living spaces. We have had issues with the water table rising that we need to run our sump pump in the basement a few times and don't think finishing it would be the best idea. We have no access to the outside except from our front door. We're dog parents and thinking about having kids, but not there quite yet. We're lived a few places in the country and see this as our forever home. We have a 170k house looking to do a 200k renovation. Houses in our neighborhood typically sell for 190-250, BUT most houses in our neighborhood have zero updates and are being sold by original owners. One house in a near but different neighborhood that was flipped just sold for 425, so it's a bit difficult to tell if our neighborhood could go the same way as owners change or not. We're talked a lot and are comfortable with this budget and the potential for that loss. Our realtor that helped us purchase the house thinks with the renovations we're talking about would sell in the 320-350k range. I'm mostly interested in general ideas as we have the wants/needs list and are working to refine it but are struggling in a few areas to come up with that final determination. Are we okay without a master bath? Can we live with just a one car garage? For both of these we think so and are ready to go without. How we feel about open concept, and is it worth moving the laundry out of the basement we feel more conflicted on....See MoreBeverlyFLADeziner
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