hollylh... I can't comment on brand as you want stacking and I have Bosch which does not stack (unless you go with the "smaller" European models.... but I can comment on second floor a bit... mine are one the second floor as I pointed out before, middle of the house, in a closet in a bathroom... they face each other with about 4 feet between their fronts.... basically they are surrounded by walls on all 3 sides... My house is almost 18 years old, so it's typical northeast US 2x4 construction, circa 1990.... We have negligible vibration problems. Once in a while if I really stuff the load in the machine (too many clothes!) then I will get some vibration when the washer goes into its top spin mode... otherwise, you don't know they are running... 100 year old house, I'm not sure what the construction was like.... IF you're not sure, it would most likely be best to open up the floor and look at how it is done and then decide if you need to redo the area.... or possibly go with one of the smaller machine sets... part of the vibration issue has to do with the weight and the the size of the load getting flung around... smaller machines are not quite as heavy and can't hold as much wet clothes... therefore less momentum to cause vibration... My late FIL had a one piece unit, washer (FL) on bottom and dryer on top... I think Fridgedaire??? but I don't remember any more... but he had this on the first floor of a 100+ year old house with no problems... It certainly wasn't "mega" capacity... otherwise, you may need to revisit "stacking"... stacking and pedestals both will add to the "sway" of the washer...

Sydney, Any news? Did you get a new camera? September 26 is day to mark. Why? Photokina will start that day. Photokina is a large convention in where all the camera companies show off the new lines, makes, and models. Some companies are already making announcements of what they will be showing. I see your price range and there are a lot of good cameras in that range. It seems that to meet your expectations you might look into getting a camera that allows you have manual controls over the camera. Do you want to stay with Point and Shoot or would you like to move to the DSLR range? Some things to think about: a P&S camera is compact and it easier to part from if you move on to another camera. If you go the DSLR route, you are just not buying a camera, you are buying into a system. Unless you have money to throw around you will most likely keep that camera a lot longer. You will have to buy lenses for the camera body. In most cases the lens can cost as much, or near, as the camera body. Therefore you find yourself dedicated to that company. There are some very nice entry level DSLRs out there. Nikon had the D50, I played with it for a while, but I decided to pass. I had the Canon XT Rebel, but I fell in love with the Olympus E500 so I gave the Canon to my wife. I can expand later if you want on these cameras if you want more info. Check dpreview.com you can find just about any camera there and it has customer ratings as well. Unfortunately, the best advice I can give you right now is when it comes to cameras, most salesman at retail stores donÂt have a clue, honestly, they donÂt. So donÂt listen to them. I get angered at times when I hear them make recommendations based solely on the amount of megapixels a camera has. This is just FYI but my current cameras are: P&S - Canon PowerShot 620, Olympus SP 500 UZ DSLR - Canon 300D XT/ Rebel, Olympus E500, Olympus E1 Zitro

Hi Jo, and welcome to the Decorating Forum! Three years ago we finally redid our kitchen that opens into our family room. For years before that, I was very frustrated with how the two rooms did not work well with one another. There wasn't a good flow, and I think that this is the first thing you have to think about: will the look of both rooms work well with one another? Mine didn't. Our original kitchen had white-washed pine cabinets, a too long, light maple butcher block island counter and blue stone-look (hmmm, kind of) laminate counters. On the other hand, our family room had dark cherry furniture, with a beautiful dark brown leather sofa and some very nice art work. In our eyes, the kitchen was too casual. The two rooms did NOT work well with each other, especially since the view from my lovely family room was first and foremost, our refrigerator. We eventually bought a ss fridge , but it still didn't help the flow. I called it my Darth Vader fridge and ended up giving it away when we redid the kitchen. Here are 3 pics of my Before kitchen, the first 2 taken from our family room: My point in showing these Before pics, is to remind you that kitchens open to your family room are wonderful, but you really need to plan thoughfully so that they work well with one another and the flow is easy. For example, take a look at my fist pic, The half wall had to have that chair up against it, as we needed that extra seating. Now look at the third pic. The island was so long, that when the fridge was open or someone was working there at the end, or when the dishwasher was being emptied, I had to walk around the person/chair in the family room to get to the other side of the kitchen! It didn't work well, even though it was great being able to talk with my family in the FR. So, after many years of thinking and planning how I could make this open plan work for me, not against me, we had the kitchen gutted and started over with only our adobe walls and brick floors. First, the view and flow were drastically changed. Our new view from the family room is now of a beautiful Old World hood over our cooktop, instead of a fridge. And the new dark cherry cabs work so much better with the furniture and the art ~ and the entire atmosphere~ of our family room now. This next pic was taken right after we could use the kitchen again. The lace tablecloth on the window was just to get an idea if I wanted some sort of curtains in there. I didn't. The storage and work areas were dramatically increased, too, without adding even one more sf of space, but that's another story. My point with all these pics is to stress making good decisions that let both rooms flow nicely, before you commit to ordering new cabs, knocking down walls or ordering new appliances. And think long term. Our needs and tastes evolve and redoing a kitchen is a very pricey reno! Good luck with your kitchen reno and be sure to join the Kitchen Forum here on GW. I saved a lot of money and time (and stress!!) by reading and asking questions over there before I bought anything. I also avoided making some big mistakes, by first learning from other people's mistakes there. They're a very helpful, knowledgeable bunch. Lynn

I guess I'm a sentimental old fool (at 53, LOL). Here is my experience... I have a few picture books printed online and they are great. However, IMHO, they can't compare to actual printed (or developed) pictures. I was tasked with writing a biography of my M&D's life, and believe me, it wasn't short! To do this I used verbal accounts from my M&D; a few thousand slides from my M&D, GP's and Great A&U; hundreds of photographs; my Great Aunt's daily journals; and tape recordings we sent from overseas to my GPs'. I digitized and transcribed almost all of it. Even though the slides were decades old, the digital quality was amazing. The scanned photographs, even the old, old, B&W's, were generally good quality. I only used a few pictures that were taken with a digital camera. The best part of the whole process was the obvious telling of their life story by my parents to me. As an adult you hear stories you weren't aware of as a child or wouldn't have been privileged to. The second best was handling the old photographs. Actually feeling them in my hands, turning them over to see if there was any writing on them, thinking of all those who had looked at them before me. Right up with this feeling was the handling of letters and my Aunt's journals. It's as if I could re-touch family members deceased through the pictures, letters, and journals. The nostalgia cloaked me with love when sifting through the pictures, holding each one in my hand and remembering. The biography is now complete and published. It's an amazing story and there are pictures, journal excerpts, and even conversations from the tapes that were transcribed (like when my sister was born and my Dad got the other four kids' reactions and my Mom talked to my Grandparents right after the birth). This is a long winded way to say that I prefer, much prefer, holding and looking through actual photographs to looking at the pictures printed in a book. If they are in a photo album, you can still take them out, look at the back, handle them, scan them, kiss the faces of your loved ones, hold them next to your heart. It's just not quite the same, for me, when it's a picture printed on a page of a book.