5 years ago, I bought a new JD L110 with a 17.5 hp Kohler engine and a 42" mulching deck for about $1750 from a JD Dealer to cut my 1.5 acre up hill bumpy lawn with a septic field up top. I got it because Consumer Reports had said that it was the best all-around for the dollar. It worked great with a beautiful cut until the septic field and a contractors fertilizing made the grass so tough, the engine bogged down as if it was gonna stall, especially over the septic field, and really bad if I missed a week due to rain. By the way I threw away the $200 double bag grass catcher because I got tired of getting off the tractor and dumping them every 7.5 minutes. I went to a Kubota dealer to find out what a real tractor was and how I couldnÂt afford one, but some farmer had traded in his JD G110 w/ a 25 hp Kohler engine and a 54" mowing deck I bought it used, with no warranty for $2000, and at first was happier the way it had no problems with the thickness of the lawn. It also carried my over 300 lb. body uphill and cut much faster in that it turned my 1 hour and fifteen minute weekly task into about 50 minutes. The blue smoke the used G110 was blowing when I test drove it was to mean later that I had to put about 3 to 4 hundred dollars into it for repair, and apparently, I was lucky, because it could have been much worse! It seemed the farmer, believe it or not, didn't change the oil much. But the main problem was that with the 54" deck it had did not cut the grass as nice as the smaller 42" deck with the rounded mulching platform. It made "Wind Rows" that did not seem to go away even after going back over it again, because my grass grew so fast or something. A salesman told me I may have to cut it twice a week (NO WAY). So, bottom line, it was taking longer to get the grass cut with a 54" deck than with the earlier 42" deck; almost twice as long and it STILL didnÂt look as nice as before! I added a mulching kit to it, installed by the dealer, even after their warning that I may get clumping. I did get clumping, and my wife never lets me hear the end of itÂ..The tension spring on the belt/pulley system broke 2 weeks ago and I went to the dealerÂs parts dept. and bought another one for $6 because their Spring back-log for repairs was over 2 weeks wait. I spent about 3 hours getting it on the deck. This new spring worked for two mowings and broke. Now, with rain, I have monster grass and no way to mow it. My wife almost bought a $2000 Cub Cadet at a box store out of desperation yesterday just to get the grass cut. So now, 5 years into this monster lawn, and two JDÂs later, we are looking at our 3rd one, an X300 or X304, to solve my weekly woes on this lumpy lawn. Oh yeah, by the way, when it was graded, the man did not do a very smooth job and my back and I wish my tractor had shock absorbers, but we can not afford the Kubota, or a real John Deere. I will probably trade in the G110 for a X304 next weekend, and peeve that I am trading down from a 25 hp Kohler w/ 54" deck to a 22 hp Kohler w/ a 48" deck, albeit in the new "stronger" X Series, but my wife wonÂt mind, because there will be no more "Wind Rows" and clumping (HOPEFULLY!). She doesnÂt have to do itÂ.she naps on the couch while I mow! I guess sheÂll nap a little longer, because I will be out there a little longer now. I hope the clumping and rows go away then, and I really hope to have less annoying repairs. I imagine, though, that they all use the same spring. Wish me luck if you have no good advice I can use.

You need someone that really knows hydronic heat to come in and talk over the current situation and your future plans and build around that.. There is a lot of planning required to choose an appropriate boiler to match the heat capacity needed to heat the whole house while able to fire down to do a smaller zone if you need to go there. Right now, you have a mix of fin-tube convectors and hydrocoils. Typically the latter would be run at higher water temps than the former, but can be made to work together. If you add enough insulation in improve your air leak rate enough (good windows, doors and a lot of caulk) you can run your whole system at a lower water temp with a more efficient boiler. I am sure that you are aware that 6" is not much insulation for Maine. If you can't, there is no utility in investing in a higher price 90%+ efficiency. Sticking with 85% would be a better move. In order to tell, you need numbers to work with. Are there any local energy efficacy programs to take advantage of to start you off in the right direction? They might identify the low-hanging fruit for savings. http://www.efficiencymaine.com/at-home/ Darn, 1/4 mile. Lower costs are so close, but so far away. Changing to nat gas would involve the same process. You should not put in a new boiler without estimating both the heat loss and knowing the heat transfer capacity of the current water to air heat exchangers. Most older homes have boilers that are oversized, sometimes ridiculously, and very inefficiently oversized. How do you heat your domestic hot water right now?

Oswald Mosley Quotes British - Politician November 16, 1896 - December 3, 1980 There are periods in history when change is necessary, and other periods when it is better to keep everything for the time as it is. The art of life is to be in the rhythm of your age. Oswald Mosley Anyone who knows how difficult it is to keep a secret among three men - particularly if they are married - knows how absurd is the idea of a worldwide secret conspiracy consciously controlling all mankind by its financial power; in real, clear analysis. Oswald Mosley A prophet or an achiever must never mind an occasional absurdity, it is an occupational risk. Oswald Mosley Great men of action... never mind on occasion being ridiculous; in a sense it is part of their job, and at times they all are. Oswald Mosley Jesse Stone Quotes American - Musician November 16, 1901 - April 1, 1999 We need to work to keep from getting rusty. Jesse Stone Kansas City, I would say, did more for jazz music, black music, than any other influence at all. Almost all their joints that they had there, they used black bands. Most musicians who amounted to anything, they would flock to Kansas City because that's the place where jobs were plentiful. Jesse Stone Everybody knows who Gandhi is. Who knows Jesse Stone? Jesse Stone I had written a tune called 'Shake, Rattle and Roll,' but the white stations refused to play it - they thought it was low-class black music. We thought what we needed was a new name. But a white disc jockey named Alan Freed laid on it, and he thought up the name 'rock n' roll.' Jesse Stone Rhythm and blues started even before phonograph records were being produced because black people entertained themselves. It wasn't done for money. It was done for entertainment. Most white people didn't know anything about this because prejudice kept them from ever seeing what was going on. Jesse Stone The publicity and hoopla was never important to me. Jesse Stone Fame is a fickle thing that only lasts as long as you can be out there offering yourself to the public. And as soon as you relax for five minutes, they're gone, you know, and they're following somebody else. Jesse Stone I've been given my money. Nobody has ever beaten me out of one quarter. And that's all I've ever been concerned about. Jesse Stone Burgess Meredith Quotes American - Actor November 16, 1907 - September 9, 1997 I disappear from the public eye and get rediscovered quite often. Burgess Meredith Jean Fritz Quotes American - Writer Born: November 16, 1915 The first 13 years of my life, I lived in China. My parents were missionaries there, and I was an only child. Often I felt lonely and out of place. Writing for me became my private place, where no one could come. Jean Fritz The way they taught history in schools was not appealing. They stressed wars and dates. They left the people out. I was attracted to history by the need to know about the people. In China, I went to a British school, and we just learned about kings and queens. Back in America, I had the regular social studies curriculum. Jean Fritz One of the most important things in my childhood were the new books that came in. I feel sorry for kids today who have so many other options like television that they may not value books as much as they could enjoy them. Jean Fritz As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on. Jean Fritz My mother had been a Latin teacher, and she was always very fascinated with words. She and I shared books and responded to them. Jean Fritz My interest in writing about American history stemmed originally, I think, from a subconscious desire to find roots - I felt like a girl without a country. I have put down roots quite firmly by now, but in the process, I have discovered the joys of research and am probably hooked. Jean Fritz When I lived in China, there were no libraries. My mother bought books for me, and they were mostly the classics. I read 'Peter Pan,' 'The Secret Garden,' the 'Rosemary' books, and Kipling's 'Just So' Stories was one of my favorites. No, I didn't read historical fiction. It didn't exist where I was growing up in China. Jean Fritz The question I am most often asked is how do I find my ideas? The answer is I don't. Ideas find me. A character in history will suddenly step right out of the past and demand a book. Generally, people don't bother to speak to me unless there's a good chance that I'll take them on. Jean Fritz Jose Saramago Quotes Portuguese - Writer Born: November 16, 1922 Human vocabulary is still not capable, and probably never will be, of knowing, recognizing, and communicating everything that can be humanly experienced and felt. Jose Saramago What kind of world is this that can send machines to Mars and does nothing to stop the killing of a human being? Jose Saramago The world is governed by institutions that are not democratic - the World Bank, the IMF, the WTO. Jose Saramago It is economic power that determines political power, and governments become the political functionaries of economic power. Jose Saramago Inside us there is something that has no name, that something is what we are. Jose Saramago It is difficult to understand these people who democratically take part in elections and a referendum, but are then incapable of democratically accepting the will of the people. Jose Saramago A human being is a being who is constantly 'under construction,' but also, in a parallel fashion, always in a state of constant destruction. Jose Saramago Death is present every day in our lives. It's not that I take pleasure in the morbid fascination of it, but it is a fact of life. Jose Saramago As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved - it's the citizen who changes things. Jose Saramago I think we are blind. Blind people who can see, but do not see. Jose Saramago People live with the illusion that we have a democratic system, but it's only the outward form of one. In reality we live in a plutocracy, a government of the rich. Jose Saramago I never appreciated 'positive heroes' in literature. They are almost always cliches, copies of copies, until the model is exhausted. I prefer perplexity, doubt, uncertainty, not just because it provides a more 'productive' literary raw material, but because that is the way we humans really are. Jose Saramago Abstention means you stayed at home or went to the beach. By casting a blank vote, you're saying you have a political conscience but you don't agree with any of the existing parties. Jose Saramago Words were not given to man in order to conceal his thoughts. Jose Saramago Things will be very bad for Latin America. You only have to consider the ambitions and the doctrines of the empire, which regards this region as its backyard. Jose Saramago The wisest man I ever knew in my whole life could not read or write. Jose Saramago We're not short of movements proclaiming that a different world is possible, but unless we can coordinate them into an international movement, capitalism just laughs at all these little organisations. Jose Saramago There are plenty of reasons not to put up with the world as it is. Jose Saramago The novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. Jose Saramago I am the same person I was before receiving the Nobel Prize. I work with the same regularity, I have not modified my habits, I have the same friends. Jose Saramago In the end, I am quite normal. I don't have odd habits. I don't dramatize. Above all, I do not romanticize the act of writing. I don't talk about the anguish I suffer in creating. I do not have a fear of the blank page, writer's block, all those things that we hear about writers. Jose Saramago Americans have discovered the fragility of life, that ominous fragility that the rest of the world either already experienced or is experiencing now with terrible intensity. Jose Saramago The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. Jose Saramago I was a good pupil at primary school: in the second class I was writing with no spelling mistakes, and the third and fourth classes were done in a single year. Jose Saramago I believe myself to be the type of person who does not complicate his life. I have always lived my life without dramatizing things, whether the good things that have happened to me or the bad. I simply live those moments. Jose Saramago I am traveling less in order to be able to write more. I select my travel destinations according to their degree of usefulness to my work. Jose Saramago Beginning with adolescence, my political formation was oriented in the ideological direction of Marxism. It was natural, being that my thinking was influenced by an atmosphere of active critical resistance. That was the way it was during all of the dictatorship and up to the Revolution of 1974. Jose Saramago To continue living, we have to die. That's the story of humanity - generation after generation - that we are going to die. There's nothing dramatic about death except that one loses one's life. Jose Saramago I always ask two questions: How many countries have military bases in the United States? And in how many countries does the United States not have military bases? Jose Saramago The attitude of insolent haughtiness is characteristic of the relationships Americans form with what is alien to them, with others. Jose Saramago The problem is that the right doesn't need any ideas to govern, but the left can't govern without ideas. Jose Saramago I do not just write, I write what I am. If there is a secret, perhaps that is it. Jose Saramago There are times when it is best to be content with what one has, so as not to lose everything. Jose Saramago Society has to change, but the political powers we have at the moment are not enough to effect this change. The whole democratic system would have to be rethought. Jose Saramago In effect I am not a novelist, but rather a failed essayist who started to write novels because he didn't know how to write essays. Jose Saramago I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Jose Saramago I am a person with leftist convictions, and always have been. Jose Saramago In the end we discover the only condition for living is to die. Jose Saramago I presume that nobody will deny the positive aspects of the North American cultural world. These are well known to all. But these aspects do not make one forget the disastrous effects of the industrial and commercial process of 'cultural lamination' that the USA is perpetrating on the planet. Jose Saramago Being fired was the best luck of my life. It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer. Jose Saramago I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. The novel receives streams of science, philosophy, poetry and contains all of these; it's not simply telling a story. Jose Saramago The period that I could consider the most important in my literary work came about beginning with the Revolution, and in a certain way, developed as a consequence of the Revolution. But it was also a result of the counterrevolutionary coup of November 1975. Jose Saramago The world had already changed before September 11. The world has been going through a process of change over the last 20 or 30 years. A civilization ends, another one begins. Jose Saramago I am not a prophet. Jose Saramago Can you imagine what Bush would say if someone like Hugo Chavez asked him for a little piece of land to install a military base, and he only wanted to plant a Venezuelan flag there? Jose Saramago Americans have discovered fear. Jose Saramago Perhaps it is the language that chooses the writers it needs, making use of them so that each might express a tiny part of what it is. Jose Saramago Though I had come into the world on 16 November 1922, my official documents show that I was born two days later, on the 18th. It was thanks to this petty fraud that my family escaped from paying the fine for not having registered my birth at the proper legal time. Jose Saramago At the end of the 1950s, I started working at a publishing company, Estudios Cor, as production manager, so returning, but not as an author, to the world of letters I had left some years before. Jose Saramago I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement. Yes, I'm a writer, but I live in this world, and my writing doesn't exist on a separate level. And if people know who I am and read my books, well, good; that way, if I have something more to say, then everyone benefits. Jose Saramago I don't defend the idea of universal love. It has never existed and will never exist. Jose Saramago Without the faintest possibility of finding a job, I decided to devote myself to literature: it was about time to find out what I was worth as a writer. Jose Saramago The U.S. needs to control the Middle East, the gateway to Asia. It already has military installations in Uzbekistan. Jose Saramago Look what happened with the employment law in France-the law was withdrawn because the people marched in the streets. I think what we need is a global protest movement of people who won't give up. Jose Saramago I had no books at home. I started to frequent a public library in Lisbon. It was there, with no help except curiosity and the will to learn, that my taste for reading developed and was refined. Jose Saramago I am a better novelist than a poet, playwright, or essayist. Jose Saramago I was born in a family of landless peasants, in Azinhaga, a small village in the province of Ribatejo, on the right bank of the Almonda River, around a hundred kilometres north-east of Lisbon. Jose Saramago For me, writing is a job. I do not separate the work from the act of writing like two things that have nothing to do with each other. I arrange words one after another, or one in front of another, to tell a story, to say something that I consider important or useful, or at least important or useful to me. Jose Saramago When I am occupied with a work that requires continuity - a novel, for example - I write every day. Jose Saramago A writer's definitive death is when no one reads his books anymore. That's the final death. Jose Saramago

Thank you for the suggestions! I like the idea of removing the shutters to see what colors would match more appropriately. The roof has supposedly 30 years left on in but it is almost a black color. The siding is also newer. The trim is actually very dark brown at the moment. So we have black roof, off white siding, maroon shutters, orangey red door, and brown trim! I will have to play around with photoshop to try out a sage green - hadn’t thought of that color. Thanks! We’ll probably replace the door and sidelights soonwr than later. So many options though! How to choose?? We would probably have to replace the walkway at some point bc it is tilting the wrong way towards the house and the downspout does not extend beneath it. We have some temporary plastic extender tripping hazard at the moment. How much do walkways normally cost? We had some instant equity when buying (it was sold as-is at half the price of the average price of the neighborhood) but we’re looking to redo some bathrooms, do something about the kitchen eventually, fill in some voids beneath sections of the house, and install 100 ft of retaining wall too so this may have to wait. I love the idea of installing some curvy landscaping though but maybe we should wait until we replace the walkway at some point? I guess we could always just score a curvy border around it and plant some cheaper plants in the meantime. We also have a retaining wall at the side that is rotting (where there used to be a bunch of trees - they must have chopped them down prior to selling bc they are still there in these photos) and need to replace ASAP. There is one tree remaining on the “overgrown” tree side of the house that is a dogwood tree so I might see what it looks like in the spring before chopping some of it off. My husband wants to put in retaining wall at the back as well in order to bury an exposed pipe, provide a base for the AC unit, and address drainage issues. So it would be about 100 ft of retaining wall, along with regrading and pulling out leftover tree stumps. It’s likely a big expense unless anyone has any other ideas. The porch is actually sagging in the middle but are considering a polyeurethane injection to prop it back up as this seems to be much more cost effective than putting in a new one. My husband keeps going on about changing the porch floor - but what else goes with brick? The posts are gone though - they definitely need to be replaced ASAP. Any suggestions for what style and width? There are so many options!