Well what a fabu-fabu day weve had! Doug and I finished getting the fountain in its permanent location and everything works. Now we just need a finial for it and it will be done. Woohoo! Jerri was here to share in starting up the pump for the first time. What fun. After the fountain start up (and watering the pots of course) we mounted the Suburban and headed over to the coast for some lunch, and a fabulous lunch it was! A lovely, delectable lobster stew served in a crusty, warm French bread boule. Then we almost declined dessert until the waitress suggested fresh strawberry shortcake served with ice cream along with a generous dollop of whipped cream. Yum! After lunch we drove down the coast a few miles to the Fuller Rose Gardens in North Hampton, NH. OMG! Ive not been there for years and the place was amazing. They have 1,700 rose bushes and not a pick of black spot on a one. Nor did we see but two or three bug holes and one Japanese Beetle in the whole garden. Everything was PRISTINE! It made my gardens look messy by comparison. The growth on the shrubs was amazing. I want to know what they use to treat for insects and disease as well as what on earth do they feed them! Seriously wonderful. Ill have to post a link to the gallery that is currently uploading as soon as its done. Anyone in this neck of the woods really needs to get over there and see the gardens. OK Im going to sign off for now and be back later when the photos are ready. Nite all, Deanne

Dusty, what you are missing is that the aerial photo doesn’t give us details that would help us help YOU with the layout. Is it dead flat? Does water puddle anywhere? Do you need minimum clearances between buildings? Setbacks on front, rear, and side? Keeping some tree buffer is a good idea, but you didn’t really draw that in on your pictures either. If you go to your local GIS page you can get contours of the property. Here are some of mine: Now, if I just showed you the aerial picture you’d see this: And then you’d have no clue that it’s on a decent hillside, and over two acres. Asking where to put a house on the aerial picture is stupid, because you can’t tell what you’re looking at. It looks like there might be a slight hill along the top rectangle and off the driveway leg of it, not a substantial climb and only really one spot to put the bulk of of house. It doesn’t give you a sense of how water flows or where a common sense location for an outbuilding or pool would be, either. None of these things could someone on the Internet glean from the one middle picture. Even one basic elevation shot would help: That itty bitty van behind the bush at the cul de sac is my enormous Nissan van. At least with this picture you can tell the basic elevations, view, and even sun exposure. And ALL of those should impact how you position your home and any accessory buildings. We want to help, but we need more and better data. Make sense?

I'm going to respond a little out of order, sorry! @Christopher CNC, it's not so much that it HAS to be removed first, it's more that I'm hoping to do as much of it as I can during the summer so that by time I can cut the trees, I won't be overwhelmed with so much more work that I won't get to plant the trees. Outdoor projects like this is my stress relief from work, so if I can spend an hour or two every day doing something that would make my life easier later then it's a good way to spend my time :-) And, of course, if I remove it all now then when animals (snakes, mice, bugs, etc) are looking for a place to hibernate, they'll move on out instead of being in the way when I'll be working. Copperheads are relatively common in my area, so I'd like to avoid them if I can! LOL I had cleared out a smaller section last year for light gardening this year (peppers, tomatoes, spinach, etc), and while I was hauling thatch to dump in the woods (not in the area I'm clearing!) over the weekend I found that the leaves were about up to my knees. It's a culmination, though, of 15+ years of leaves falling from the trees in the woods plus the leaves being blown in to it. I didn't go super deep in to the woods, but I'm hoping that it won't be as deep once I get in there a little. This smaller section had 8 saplings that I cut down last year, then dug up the stumps this year. That was some work, but greenbrier and poison ivy were the bigger problems... especially since, as I've gotten older, I can look at poison ivy and get a rash! Which is very weird because it never affected me at all as a kid. But anyway, I know that they'll both be a problem for awhile, so my thought process is: 1. get rid of the trees I don't want; 2 dig up the stumps that are immediately in the way; 3. plant new trees; and 4. spend the rest of my days dealing with greenbrier, poison ivy, and digging up the other stumps @frankielynnsie, in an ideal world I much prefer to spend time digging up the roots rather than using chemicals, especially if it's near an area that I'm planning to grow food! So far, all of the briers I've chased down have been fairly easy to dig up because the ground stays wet and loose, but I'll keep that in mind if it gets out of hand :-) With all of that said, though... @Embothrium, now THAT was scary!! LOL My cleared land is relatively small. I mentioned before that I have 5 acres, and they cleared 1 acre in the middle to build the house. So that 1 acre is the back yard, the house itself, garage, driveway, and front yard. So the front MIGHT be 1/2 of an acre, but it's probably closer to 1/3. Plus, the front yard has 5 large trees in it now (I cut down 1 red oak in March, now it has 3 oak, 1 beech, and 1 birch), so I'll be near a stump no matter what. Worse, it's definitely not 100' from one section of heavy woods to the other, so if there's fungus in there then it could reach my new trees no matter where I put them! As I'm reading about Armillaria root rot, though, I think that I would see symptoms of it while cutting down trees. And it appears to require consistently wet soil, so maybe clearing out the leaves and smaller trees would dry out and kill any fungus? I hate to keep pushing things off, but maybe I should clear off the trees and leaves, then let it sit and dry for a year? Or, I could always rent a tractor, push off the top layer of soil, then import a few truckloads of healthy top soil? That would be a lot more money than intended, but it would have the added benefit of me not having to deal with stumps and other debris (at least, mostly). I know that I'm not going to get any fruit or anything for 7-10 years... I turn 46 this year, and I want to get all of the hard work done while I'm physically able! Both of my parents were disabled and unable to work by 50, and while I'm much healthier than either of them were at my age, I still know that my clock is ticking. I hate that I pushed this off from last year, and I'm not thrilled about pushing it off for another year... but if I rush it and none of the trees survive then it will be even worse to try to start over in 2-3 years :-/

Try google "wood stove feature wall site:houzz.com" for a lot of images. It looks like the most common feature wall is brick. If you prefer not to use brick, you could use a white tile that coordinates with your choice of paint. It's a lot easier to pick the tile first and the paint to match than the other way around. Other options are to use a ledger stone in colors that coordinate with the tile flooring or to pick a different tile that coordinates with your floor tile. Use a different size and shape than the floor tile.