marg, please don't take my comments to be an endorsement of laser levels for the types of work needed for landscape design. Nor do I want to discourage it either. Gee, marcinde, I thought I was close to the end. Now I need to tell folks how you use the rod, why it can work with some equipment and not with other gear, and the possible impact to accuracy. I have spent some time here talking about issues of precision. Yet landscaping has few places where precision has an impact on the project. Seldom will it matter if the elevation is in error of 0.1 ft. But if you aspire to be involved with upscale projects or commercial properties, you are going to be working with engineers and architects. You might want to understand the standands of precision they use. Look at it like this ... sometimes you may be the first one the client hires. If it developes that the client wants a feature that requires an engineer or architect, and there is one you have worked well with before, that is a guy you will recommend. The same thing applies if they are the first one hired. Learn how to make your work product compatible to theirs. There are good engineers and architects and some that precision will be wasted on. The latter tend to have projects full of change orders, cost overruns, and enough blame to spread around. This is a subject that deserves its own thread. Earlier I said I was leaving some things out. The method I think marcinde uses to make high rods shots easy was one of them. Everyone has heard the old saying "Don't change horses in the middle of the stream." There is an old rule of surveying that says don't change rods in the middle of taking levels. What marcinde suggests violates that rule, but with care you can get away with doing it. It is novel that you can use a saw to cut a half foot off the bottom of a level rod and still use it. If ALL of the shots are made with the same cut off rod there will be no impact to the precision of the work. Most tall rods are made in sections that telescope into one another. As each section is raised there is a locking feature that keeps the face rule a continuation of the one below it. If all shots are taken to this face rule it will not mater if the zero point of the scale is not at the exact bottom of the rod. On the backside of the rod is another rule. It is upside down beginning at the second rod segment and is read relative to the first segment. The rule is designed to indicate the total height the rod is extended. Making some shots to the face rule and other shots using the backside is the same as using different rods. Most new rods will have a close compatabilty of the two faces causing only small errors in the work. If the plastic foot of the rod becomes worn or lost the error increases. Any error from this source is systematic and builds up with each new location of the base unit. The basic use of the bachside rule is done in the following way. The receiver is moved to the very top of the rod so that the reading point on the bracket aligns with the top surface. There are a multitude of different brackets made for receivers and rods. It may not be possible to lock the receiver at the top with some brackets. Keep in mind if the bracket comes loose and the receiver falls on to pavement you will probably be buying a new one. To make a high shot, the lock is disengaged between the first and second rod segments and the second one is allowed to telescope into the first until the the reciever is on beam. The backside rule is read and subtracted from the HI in the usual way to get the elevation. It is a fast easy way to make high rod shots. Below is a photo of the backside with the rod lowered in making a shot. The reading is 14.32 I would suggest that before using this method that one check for errors. Set the base unit up on a slope and select a downhill object to shoot where the beam will be high up on the rod. Set the receiver to fine precision. Use the backside rule proceedure first and make the backside reading. Then raise all the rod sections to a locked position and set the receiver using the face rule at the same value as the backside reading. When you stand the rod back on the mark the receiver should be on beam.

Ours shuts down too early. They could easily still be going now. The temperature got up to 70 this weekend. It was beautiful. From now on, though, odds are it will be really unpleasant. Late December through January is pretty miserable, usually a lot of rain and cold overcast days. February tends to be pretty dreary as well. Ours will open in late March or early April, but there won't be much there. Most of the people going are older traditional types of gardeners. Around here hardly anybody does an early spring or late fall garden. The idea of a late garden is throwing out a bunch of turnip seed and growing turnip greens. I am seriously thinking I will focus on bread and other bakery items this year, and some of the not so main stream produce. Our market needs more diversity.

Do you have a cellar? If so, moving a water line and maybe new electrical service for fridge is a minimal cost. No cellar, though and it wil be a bit more complicated and expensive. I don't think fridge water lines need drains or vent stacks, do they? Those are the expensive parts of plumbing-in a new point of water access - a single cold supply line is usually not a big deal, what with flexible piping like PEX, etc. I wouldn't write it off as totally out of the budget. Keep it as a floating possibility as you work out the work planning issues. Right now, though, does your food come into the kitchen via car and garage door by current fridge location? Your current drawing has your fridge and main pantry area separated by the entire distance across your kitch. I think it's easier (whenever possible) to be able to snag the ground beef and veg from the fridge at the same time you grab the pasta noodles out of the cupboard. (This is in addition to NYCblue devils very good point that having the fridge out of your main traffic area would be an improvement.) So I'd be thinking of seeing if fridge and a big share of your panrty space can get closer to each other. It also makes thinking about where the stove and prep places should be a little easier if you are thinking of only one (main) food-origin point. Also keep in mind that there are hierarchies of storage as well: there's the stuff you need most days, and the stuff you don't. There's storage of stuff that's used in a special, place or activity-directed ways: coffee stuff and a coffee machine come to mind, as do cereals and ceral bowls; or lunch bags and wax paper and snack-sized bags of chips if you use those. If you bake regularly keeping some flours and baking powder, etc. near you mixer may be a good idea. There are a whole range of ideas, but first ........ Just in case you haven't seen if before (apologies to all who have!) I'll add my customary rec. to think of your plan first as an analysis of how your food travels through the room from arrival > storage (dry and cold) > prep space (sometimes, but not always including a water tap there) > cooking > plating (directly to individual plates or to platters) > eating area > return for tableware clean-up and leftover stowage > finally to think about where the sink/DW are relative to where the kitchen stuff is stowed (best arranged either by first use and/or stowage convenience depending on criticality. Once you think of how your food (and to some degree all of your kitchen clabber, as well) moves, you're also thinking about you travel around with it, since it doesn't get there on its own! And now we're talking efficiency, the Holy Grail of a great kitchen design. No kitchen (even one created from scratch in a luxury new build) can get to perfection, but if you think about your work zones and how they can help or hinder you while you're in the kitchen, you'll be pointed in the right direction. At this early stage, I'd post,pone concerns about cost or style for the moment. Don't think, "Oh but I have a budget I can't not think of that." I'm not saying that you should pretend money doesn't matter, because it does even for the most extravagant of kitchens. Just do your thinking in layers. Work flow & process first. Then determine how you can get there with whatever your budget is. It's much easier to do the inevitable cost trade-offs if you can articulate the relative importance of an improvement in work flow efficiency for the various changes you want to make. Don't think style is left out, either; what's in your mind's eye and on your wishlist are still very important things. But, again, once you have a clear view of what it will take to arrange your kitchen effectively, the style decisions are much easier and you don't risk spending $$$ on something that doesn't work out as well as you'd hoped. You're planning to buy new cabs anyway, so it probably won't matter from an economic point of view whether you buy the same ones currently on your plan, or a different assortment designed for optimal efficiency. Think about how you cook and serve and eat now. While a new kitchen may make it more likely and fun to do that differently, there's no guaranntee that your kitchen is the only factor influencing currrent choices. Don't be downcast if you thought you were ready to place the cab order tomorrow and I (and other posters) raise questions that will require some more analysis and thinking about your choices. Some of our suggestions and ideas (some of mine, at least) will be duds for you. But you would do well (as I did once I figured it out back when I was seeking suggestions for my plan) to reject nothing out of hand as impossible. You will learn useful things about your own ideas if only in clarifying in your own mind why a particular idea won't for you. I'll get you started: Begin with the point the food arrives. I would find it more convenient to unload the grocery bags if I have a counter and it is close to a majority of all the food storage, dry and cooled. That way a bag with lemons, ice cream, crackers, snacks and dish soap wouldn't be a marathon just to get it stowed. OTOH, assuming your food comes in through the garage door, just plunking the pantry space close to it has some other consequences: it means that any food-seeker has to intrude in main cooking/prep work zone which is also not a good thing. Since you have a gas stove and a vent hood in place there may be some importance to keeping those items close to their positions for economy's sake. So how about getting that fridge over to the pantry wall and tentatively locating the storage zone on that end of the kitch? (Moving a water line for the fridge is far cheaper than moving a gas line and exhaust vent stack under almost all circs.) Don't think about specific cab arrangement at this point - just circle the area and call it the storage zone. Now there's prep. And this requires more info and thought because it begins to deal with what you cook and how. Some simple stuff first: Do you nuke a fair amount of food dishes directly from the freezer: the MW should be closer to fridge than cooking area in that case. Do you use one of those coffee machines - I think I see one: the coffee stuff and machine should be closer to storage zone (with cups or mugs stored there, too.) I see you use bottled water. For everything, even cooking water for pasta? For coffee? At what point is it used? If just for drinking then plan on moving it to the periphery, with the glasses. If you need it for all potable uses, it has to stay near-er by. If you use it for ice, then you're filling the trays by hand and then a water hook-up for the fridge doesn't matter. Do you bake from scratch regularly-enough to need a specific baking area, perhaps with a lower counter? If not, then pass this notion by. (Assuming here you don't keep Kosher, or have major allergies or food issues, as you would noted those?) Now we're getting closer to the main prep issues: what do you eat for breakfast, who preps it? Do you pack lunches? And what do you cook for dinner, and how often? (Leave special stuff like holidays, parties, canning aside for the moment.) If your fridge has been re-homed in the storage zone, then you've got some serious counterspace to the left of the stove. If your food moves from the storage to the prep on the left side of the stove it's a longish trip, but it can make a pit stop if necessary across the aisle for any needed water or later for mid-prep hand washing. Many people find it more useful to move the trash to the prep area. How about at least moving the trash to the right side and moving the DW to the left side of the sink. This might further lengthen you counter space there. You could store every day dishes to the left of the DW; prep tools and pots and pans to the left of the range; baking and bowls and the stuff you use a lot of in cooking to the right of the range making the DW easy to unload. Your fancier, or less-used dishes can be out of the way along the garage wall cabs. Or you could use part of that area storage of dry food items used in prep a lot but not replenished often, or back stock: spices, oils, flour, onion and potatoes in baskets if that's how you store them. Now, note that I've only used your existing cab foot print plan. There are probably other, most likely even better, suggestions than can be imagined by you and other posters. This is just an idea to get you thinking of food pathways before other things. Another final thing to think about: I see you've got a kitchen table now; after your reno you're thinking of havng eating positions across from the sink at a counter. You have a big dining table, as well. What are your hopes for where you're going to eat? The dining table looks to be out in a kind of open foyer? Do you think it's likely that you will find that space inviting for eating every night, or are you swapping out the cozy face-to-faceness of a kitchen table for the bleakness of lunch counter seating and a hope that the four of you will carry your food to the big table with benches in the foyer? Have you tried eating out there for a month or so, now to find if you like it? HTH L.

A 6-foot porch is not really usable. Double that and you have something you and your friends can use for visiting. Do you know anyone in Minnesota who lives in a pole barn structure? Will you be financing the project with either a construction loan and/or a permanent mortgage? If so, you'd better talk to lenders about whether or not they will finance such a structure as a permanent residence. If you have to have a building permit (or other approvals) before you can begin the project, you better talk to your local building department. I suspect both of these entities may have real reservations about building a pole barn for a residence. And you understand that the price you have been given is a dirt floor shell with no foundation, flooring, interior partitions, finishes; no fixtures, fittings or equipment; no systems for lighting, heating/cooling, plumbing, sanitary, etc.? Perhaps you need to do some more research?