Hey all...sorry for abandoning this thread! Busy week... Your pics are just gorgeous. I've decided I'm becoming obsessed with conifers:) We pulled all the rocks from the left side...sooo much better! My dad is coming today and we are going to move the maple out a bit. It's about three feet away from the porch...not quite enough room... Haven't pulled the strip of grass from the garage area. The more I look at it, I think ya'll are correct there...it's kinda like a landing strip and looks a bit odd.. I'm hoping to head over to Gee farms...didn't even know about it until now. Looks like a Mecca for conifers...nice!! Thanks again...super helpful all!

Nasus, I'm so sorry to hear about the passing of your cousin. This really is a hard situation but for one you heard about his passing from other relatives, you really never know under what circumstances he might have said that. Sometimes things get misunderstood when passed around. Whatever the case is, I think that as his brother, whether they had a strained relationship or not, he has a right to know. I would put myself in his shoes. You know their relationship better than any of us here do, so ultimately the decision is yours. Have you decided?

"Short term (savings) rates (eg 5+% available at many online banks) and long-term rates (eg mortgages) are very close together right now, a phenomenon known as an inverted yield curve (or approaching it). Tax effects are approximately the same in both cases (cancel each other out) so they can more or less be ignored." Not really. The mortgage rate is locked in. The short-term savings rate is not. As I said, you should easily be able to beat the current interest rate on a 15-year mortgage with even a conservative long-term investment approach. If I understand you correctly, if you go the HELOC route, that menas you're going to buy the new house with cash. If you take a mortgage, you're not. In the first instance, you're going to have to liquidate some of your investments. In the second, case you're not. You're most likely to wind up further ahead if you keep more of your money invested, and that's true even taking the closing cost of the mortgage into account. Of course, it could be that the security you feel from not having to pay a mortgage is worth a financial sacrifice to you. You'll have to decide what that's worth to you. But since you want to know what I'd do, I'll tell you -- I'd go for the mortgage.

A 3-seat sofa, coffee table and two armchairs in a "U" at the fireplace end. Art above the mantel, console tables with lamps flanking the FP. A drop leaf game table behind the sofa with straight chairs that match your dining set in the adjoining room. It can be expanded for additional dining or larger groups of gamers. Piano where benjesbride shows it with a couple of chairs angled either side of a round table and lamp in front of the window opposite. Window treatments, area rugs to ground both ends of the room. You can go larger than this one, but just for concept as a sofa table/game table.