I now have 9 boxes - with one ready to "find room for." One had to be replaced recently, because a board had started to rot, and a vole had found its way inside. Also, in my haste to erect and place it - sometime around 5 or so years ago (maybe it was 10) - I had neglected to put wire mesh on the bottom. This was a big no-no on my part. Raised bed/boxes are the only way for me. Our soil is sandy on top of clay a few feet down. We are also going into phase #2 of water rationing here in So. Cal., and the water company wants us to cut our usage even more in the months ahead. I am looking for ways to conserve moisture or recycle water all of the time now, because I would hate to give up even one of my 9 (about to be 10) planter boxes. In the new box (made of 1 ft x 6 ft. (doubled) x 8 ft. long cedar boards, I placed the hardware cloth first on the ground (a screening material), then set the new bottomless box on top. Inside, I placed cardboard on the bottom, with the hopes that it would keep water from leaching through too fast, thus conserving moisture. The depth of my soil will be 12 inches, native soil blended with fresh compost, peat and worm compostings. I'll let it set awhile until the "microherd" breaks it all down, cuz it might heat up a bit. You will enjoy gardening this way - especially if you are up there in age (I turned 88 a few days ago). It took a bit longer to empty all the dirt out of the old box, and then refill - but my other boxes are filled with lettuce, broccoli, bok choy, snow peas, garlic, onion, etc. (you get the idea), so I wasn't in too big a hurry. But I just had a "brainstorm idea" that I wanted a new box for some sweet potatoes, and hopefully, this will be the one. You might want to think about putting cages over your newly planted seedlings, if you have birds, bugs, or beasties. They will find your handywork very quickly. Welcome to the Forums. Bejay

Hi Everyone, Thanks for the suggestions on herbs - sounds good to me! The compost was delivered and put in my beds today. It is ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS stuff!! No way I could get something like this mixing up things out of bags. It's rich, dark, and has a great texture thoughout. "My guys" went to the landfill and paid for 10 cu yds and were told they got that amount. But when everything was in place, it was obvious they were short changed so I called the landfill. They doubled checked on things and said, "Oh you only got 7 cu yds, come back and we'll give you the rest." So the guys went back and they gave them an additional 7 cu yds (instead of just 3)! So I've got my beds totally filled and mounded up with more compost (which will probably settle out to level after a few months), plus a nice additional pile to use in additional beds or my salad tables. The guys said that the bulldozer driver had to drive up this mountain of muck at the base of the pile and was sliding all around. They thought they got extra just because the bulldozer driver didn't want to have to go back up the mountain if the order was still short . Anyway, I'm so pleased with the outcome and I have to give credit where credit is due - to all the people responding to my various posts here on the forum! Thanks everyone!! Anne

This topic stressed me out a bit since we are the middle of work opening our kitchen to the dining room in our 1906 house. I'm already worried about whether everything will turn out ok. We thought a lot about this, though, so I'll weigh in. I apologize for the length - brevity may be the soul of wit, but it apparently is not my strong suit. We moved to our current 1906 Arts & Crafts house from a Victorian farmhouse which had the kitchen isolated from the dining room and living room, separated by a bathroom. We found it hard when we had people over since they were either crammed in the kitchen without enough room to participate in the cooking or they were way at the other end of the house. We saw that we had a pattern of having people over in the summer when we could congregate outside by the grill, but not much in the winter. We have a very close community of friends and we enjoy sharing meals in a very casual, family sort of way with kids playing, adults talking and cooking. We also found the dining room more difficult to use for everyday meals. Additionally, it was not possible to carry on conversations when in the two spaces or moving between them for setting, clearing etc. I enjoy cooking, but also like interacting rather than being isolated. When we decided to move we were looking to resolve this split and have a more connected common space. We saw many houses (and almost bought one) with family room additions connected to the kitchen which left unused living and dining rooms. These rooms had become merely somewhere to walk through, heat and cool. Some had little or no furniture in the abandoned formal rooms. We realized that we did not really need this redundant space. There is an excellent book by Sarah Susanka (Taunton Press), The Not So Big House. It talks quite eloquently about using space in an efficient manner. I personally like having one place to eat all meals. I like eating at the dining room table for just the reasons mentioned in posts above - slowing down, sitting on a chair instead of stools, in a space designed for eating, around a table (preferably round) which facilitates a relaxed, shared experience. The truth is that since we do not have servants, we often need to go back and forth between the spaces. Houses at the turn of the last century were often built to fit a more formal way of living which placed servants (even modest homes) or the women of the house out of the way while the hosts entertained in formal rooms. They were also built prior to the use of refrigerators. When we moved into this new-to-us 1906 house it had a (tiny) butler's pantry for staging serving, while the refrigerator was crammed into the food pantry in such a way that required near-contortionist moves to get a carton of milk. The only storage was open to mice or around the corner in the butler's pantry cabinet. Counter space was limited to the two drainboards of the 1950's metal sink. This was not the room of efficient post-work cooking and cleaning, much less any pleasant shared time. One of us would quite frequently get trapped in the pantry by another trying to get something. The rest of the first floor of our beloved home showed signs of the revolutionary changes that were happening in houses at the time, shifting from formal double parlors to more flowing open rooms with wide framed openings between them. I am in Oak Park, home to Frank Lloyd Wright, though our home was part of a far more modest working class development. It is stunning to see the differences among the different houses being built during the first part of the century. As central heating and radiators allowed rooms to open up, a social shift away from formality and toward more relaxed, real connection was also under way. Now that the social and technological changes that have transpired over the last century have ushered in a time of shared cooking, I welcome kitchens and floorplans that facilitate that. There are other times in history and other cultures today in which the communal kitchen holds a significant place in a community. Our new kitchen provides inward facing space where people can prep around an island. In our open floor plan I envision friends and family cooking and talking together, either within the de-cramped kitchen or between it and the dining room next to it. We are also concerned about creating something that respects the house's history, fits in with the architecture and creates a sense of two spaces with different but related activities. The disfunctional pantries were ommitted in favor of refrigeration and dish storage near the new dishwasher (uses less water than hand washing). We removed the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and are replacing a portion of it with shallow (12 inch)cabinets that create a partial division and open to both sides. There will be a 6 foot visual opening on top,stepping in to a 3 foot walking space at the bottom in a sort of key hole shape. As much as we love the big pocket door in the large opening between the dining room and the foyer, I doubt that we will use it. I just can't see part of our family sitting in the living room smoking cigars while another part of the family or servants quietly set the table out of sight. It has been a delicate dance trying to mesh the eras. We are having a duplicate of the missing original built-in hutch along one side of the dining room built, but it will have some wood doors in place of the original glass to house some less aesthetic items that have no other storage on the first floor since the one closet was turned into a WC in the 50's. We got a picture of the original at an open house across the street and noticed gloves and scarves displayed where china and silver of another time once shone. Life is not static and it seems to me that a key component to navigating the ever-shifting impermanence is to be flexible. I cross my fingers hoping that my ideas about homes and people actually work out in this re-working of our lovely old house. I do not disagree with any of the prior posts, I just wanted to add some thoughts.

"Do you know what kind of exterior trim boards (corners, fsscia, etc) they typically use around here, particularly on the multi-unit developments?" Finger jointed white pine is the one I replace most of the time. Often with the cheapest primer and a single coat of cheap paint, sprayed and not back brushed. The lousy finishing makes it go even faster. With a good finish it would last a lot longer. I just replaced some trim on a rental in Arlington. It was the original trim from the 1950s the house was built with. The previous owner did little to no exterior maintenance, so there was some rot at the ends of the fascia, and the small pieces wrapping around to the gable. The rest of the wood remained solid enough to make cutting away just the ends and replacing only about 4 feet on each end worth the effort. I have a house from the mid 1930s that still has some original trim (where additions did not cause removal). The older stuff looks better than the newest stuff from the mid 1970s.