sleepless, Thanks for the exchange. Quote; "Just how dirty is the 5 gallons of stone you remove each year and how do you remove it? I assume you put it back under the water falls" I put on my pond shoes and get in with a bucket and a plastic one quart mug. Then scoop up the gravel and transfer it to the bucket. I redistribute the gravel to the other two levels of the pond. The lowest spot is not very dirty. No muck, just small bits of hard black stuff (leaf stems and parts left over from winter maybe?). They are light enough that they suspend when stirred up and get pulled into the skimmer. "Does it develop the typical packing that settling filters develop? What is the slope of the liner? Is there a bottom drain?" No packing. No slope to speak of. It has three stepped depths, 6" then 18" then 24". Under the falls is about 18". There is no bottom drain. The gravel migrates from water turbulence under the falls and my fish always poking around in the gravel and pushing it from the upper to lower levels. "How often do you clean the filter? What type of filter?" I guess its the typical Aquascape setup. A skimmer with basket, filter pad and submersible pump. A 2" line goes to an off the shelf Bio falls with 2 filter pads and bio balls. I empty the skimmer basket as needed to keep the water flowing through it and wash the filter pad only once or twice per season. I don't clean the filter pads in the falls until I shut down my pump for winter. This may be shocking to some people but I let the good bacteria do the work. I also never drain the pond and clean it. Most of my maintenance time is spent tending to the plants (cutting out the ugly stuff ) netting out every leaf that I can find till shutdown in the fall and rearranging rocks. Mike K

Marcy--I didn't see you there! Wow, you read this whole thing and didn't pass out from confusion or boredom?! I didn't think about the hair issue. DS is 5 and should always have short hair. DD is only 18 months old. It's hard to think of them as big people with different features. Maybe that one-time hair swing into the prep sink behind will be enough of a deterrent. ;) And the cooktop in the photo of that kitchen would scare me regardless even if there wasn't a bench there as the counterspace around it is minimal at best. I do love the cushion fabric! Sherriz--I meant to thank you for showing me your gorgeous kitchen again. I love your space! The B.A., the floors, the ceilings, the banquette, the cabs, everything. Your photo actually helped convince me that white island cabs were the way to go for me in my house. If I had a kitchen your size, I would have done a dark island.

Well, Sherry, we'll disagree on how nice those lower branches on the tree are. When the leaves come out, they're going to obscure a fair amount of the first floor of the house, so visually -- artistically -- it's crowding the house. Knowing that every year branches and limbs grow lower as they extend and weigh more, there's going to be quite a few of them in danger of touching or hanging on the house. To me, it sounds like the love for the tree-as-it-is is in spite of house. Some people periodically voice the sentiment that they crave and miss discussions of landscape design academia. This would be a perfect subject for just such a thread.

Here is a link to an article about mixing hardware styles and finishes https://theinspiredroom.net/2017/04/12/how-to-mix-and-match-variety-kitchen-hardware-finishes-styles/ Mimou is correct that Igloochic had different knobs in her Alaska kitchen. Quite a few pictures are missing but below is a link to her kitchen. She stated she used over 25 different knobs in her kitchen. https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/2503850/the-oldest-kitchen-remodel-on-gwfinally-finished-cherry-kitche