The usual recipe for soapy water spray is 1 tablespoon of soap in 1 gallon of water to which you may add 1 teaspoon of oil if you wish (I don't). Your mix was far, far too strong. It coated the leaves so that no transpiration could take place and it is the spray that did them in. Aphids just don't bother established tomato plants that much - they tolerate them fairly well - and just blasting them off with plain water is quite effective. Also, as others pointed out, spraying of any thing should only be done in the early morning or late evening - never in the heat of the day or in the direct sun. You also are supposed to only mist the bugs, not drench the plant. Sorry for your losses but consider it a valuable lesson learned - even if it was learned the hard way. Dave

Oh you POOR thing - Not to worry. Lower the windows to where you want them -get out the tape measure and mark on the walls where your window sill should be. Take a chair to check it and dont forget flooring. You can put the curtain rod up higher and add special trim to raise the height also. It may even look better and not be so matchy matchy to the doors. Might lend a little character to the nook area. Yep happened to me on this build the one day I didnt stay on site with the framers. My husband and I spent the weekend reframing. Why didnt we have the framers redo? Uh they got it wrong the first time!

If the only thing hitting the existing slab will be the stairwell, then i would think you could leave the existing slab. If you are running the stairs along the house wall and up to the second story,in order to keep the stairwell level, the outside stringer will be longer at the bottom with that tread being higher than the inside. I did this on a stairwell from a balcony down to an existing sloped patio. I figured it would be a little akward coming off the last step onto the patio, but ended up being no biggie. The patio had a 1" slope/8' so close to what you have. If you are running the stairwell from the outside of the existing slab on up to the second story, i dont think that 12' is going to be enough run for the height you have, so you might end up pouring a landing where your first step will be to get enough of a run where you wont have a tall riser and narrow tread.The landing would be poured level without having to worry about the existing slab.A fairly comfortable stairwell is typically a 7" riser with a 9" tread.The longer the run,the less riser height and greater tread width.

Yes, you can build a nice little working greenhouse from old windows. We did a 10x16 one about 15 years ago and I am still using it. Here it is in it's original configeration...All windows were wood framed salvage material. We cleaned them up, removed all old hardware. The roof windows are old double glazed, french doors. They were tempered glass. The side windows were old single glaze, storm windows. The north side did not have many windows and all solid walls were insulated. There is an automatic roof vent and a small exhaust fan on a thermostat. It is wired for electricity but I use a 50 gallon barrel filled from a hose as my water supply. I used to keep it modestly heated in the winter and covered it with a clear solar pool cover for those months.Because most of the windows were already 100 years old and the french doors were never meant to be roofing material, after a dozen years there began to be some rot. We did a major renovation of the south side roof and front wall. I found 2 used commercial skylights for $25 and bought some used modern vinyl windows from a salvage yard...a couple of them open and have screens. The building is still very useful as a greenhouse and also retains heat better now.