Yup, I never understood why gutters are considered trim. I would do my best to blend them in and make em' as invisible as possible, especially the extension. I like your idea of expanding the platform. I would do it with curved lines. You need walls, and or, terraces on both sides of the driveway or an informal rock garden that can serve as a wall. Mowing that steep sloop, even with a string trimmer, is difficult and dangerous. Since your house is at the end of a T, do headlights bother you at night? Even with the drapes drawn every night, it would drive me nuts. :-) Maybe you could consider evergreen plants tall enough to help shield your house from the lights. It would probably lessen your curb appeal quite a bit, but to me, that's only important if you're selling. Why make a view for the public when you can make it for yourself by designing your garden from the inside out rather than from the outside in? I'm a garden freak, so I'm prejudiced. You look at your house from the outside. You look at your garden from the inside. You should design each with that in mind. Pictures of my garden. .photobucket.com/user/Botann/library/?sort=3&page=1 Mike

Our first home had been a model home from the late 50's, with the latest ideas of that era. We had to remodel the kitchen because the upper cabinets on one side of the kitchen was a refrigerator that no longer worked. The story was that the motor burnt out on this concept and they no longer were used. So everyone remodeled their kitchen to provide a conventional refrigerator. I used the refrigerator in the garage until our remodel, running back and forth. I have never forgotten that refrigerator. Todays refrigerators are deep dinosaurs containing unreachable forgotten items in the back, even the counter tops stick out interfering with opening drawers and cabinets in my kitchen. I am not alone with this frustration. I am constantly trying to figure out alternative answers. Someone has to come up with a better idea. Why does the current refrigerator drawer type have loud motors. Why would their motor be any noisier or costly than the standard refrigerators. If technology can make an i-phone and battery run car it certainly can come up with a better refrigerator.

Sophie, yes, you are absolutely right, and when I get there, I probably will have to move to an OFH (old folks' home) but I'm not there yet. Right now I'm at a place where I'd like to have a few items in place, such as grab bars, a bench, a fairly open shower, but not do the whole kit and kaboodle. We bought this house last October and we still haven't moved in. :-( At this point I think I've totally given up on having any kind of a dream bathroom and am just trying to come up with something we can finish (for the most part, ourselves) and MOVE IN! The last 2 contractors we talked to wouldn't be able to start until December, for Pete's sake. The one designer we've been working since February with has not come up with a drawing to go from, nor have any of the 3 contractors she talked to called us. We do have a tile person who can come at beginning of September, so I'm trying to make sure that when he comes he's not going to say, "Hey, this plan can't be done." Sorry, but I'm feeling just the tiniest bit frustrated right now. I completely recognize the truth of what you are saying, but if true ADA compatible isn't possible without rebuilding the house from the ground up, what could we do just to have a working bathroom?

We recently finished a "fixer upper" house in Dubois, Wyoming. When we bought it there was a large 10'X28' sunroom addition with a multitude of broken single-pane windows spanning the sunny side. Now I love a good sunroom as much as anyone, but felt the house needed other things more, like a mudroom and 3rd bedroom/office. I love a good mudroom in any climate where you have to hang up bulky cold weather gear. It's important for it to dry between uses. This area of Wyoming is at the bottom of Togwotee Pass, aka the Continental Divide, which is a hugely popular area for snowmobiling. Snowmobiling means bulky clothing, helmets, boots, etc. Kinda like skiing which is also big in our area, 1 1/2 hours away in Jackson Hole, WY. About anything you do in the winter here requires bulky clothing, so you need space to hang it, or otherwise corral it. If not it will take over the whole house and/or go missing when you need it most! So we took the sunroom and cut it in half creating 2 rooms, each 10'X14'. A large mudroom and the other a 3rd bedroom/office. We took out the broken single pane windows, rebuilt the wall and used the sliding doors that were between the sunroom and dining room. They were double paned and lightly tinted. We took the sliding doors apart, turned them horizontally and made them into really lovely big windows. No they don't move, but they let in a lot of light, and are insulated, which is necessary in Wyoming. And each room has an exterior door for egress. The existing floor was concrete, and I figured that was a good idea for a mudroom anyway so we painted it a medium gray with tough porch paint. Nice, but it needed something. So I had this "brilliant" idea to do a floor stencil and make it look like tile. Not my best idea, but in my ignorance I sat down in the middle of the floor and began to stencil the 3rd bedroom/office side of the floor...10'X14'...with a 9 inch stencil. Three days, and a barely movable-body later, I looked up from the end and decided...I'm thinking the mudroom side just needs a nice skinny runner!! So I stenciled on a runner, and added some silly fringe for fun. Would you believe...I Love it!! Meanwhile Ken had found a long slab in the old barn, so he made it into a long bench for the mudroom, so you have plenty of room to sit and take off gear. Using more barnwood, and some iron hangars I found at a thrift store in Nevada, we made a couple of heavy duty coat racks. There is still an abundance of space if new owners want to add more storage, but we figure we made a good start on it. We already had the old reclaimed door from an old guest ranch in Moran WY on the other side of Togwottee Pass, so we used it for the front door, after seemingly endless hours of paint stripping. We also put in a sliding barn wood door between the mudroom and the 3rd bed/office. Naturally the walls were the beetle killed blue pine from our local forests. Like the rest of the house but we left this part natural rather than adding a whitewash. It hurts me that we are losing our once-beautiful forests, and creating disastrous wildfire scenarios. At least by harvesting these standing dead, bug-killed trees, we are taking a little of the fire-fuel out of the forests, and using it where it provides such warmth and beauty. I love it when people walk into our house and are drawn to the walls, where their eyes light up and they run their hands lovingly along the boards.