u/tilda432

My husband and I hired an experienced landscape architect for our front and back yard. We are on a slight hill (lower in the backyard) and .41 acres. It was more yard and trickier than we could figure out ourselves so we thought it was best to consult a professional. We were looking for a long term plan that we could slowly implement over the next 20 years because we don't have $300k to drop on our yard but we want to get things like trees in place now so they have time to grow and we don't have to backtrack later.

We initially met with our architect who came to our house and looked at our property. We liked him and thought he understood what we were looking for but I didn't go into a ton of detail since we hadn't hired him yet and he didn't really ask. I incorrectly assumed (my fault for not asking) that we would discuss things again before he began his design. He sent us a quote a few days later and we gave him a deposit. He came out to measure our property a few weeks later but didn't talk to us. About a week later we got his design for our yard and it's not really what we were hoping for. We are expecting our 6th child in February and wanted a kid focused yard with the front yard geared towards playing with neighbor kids. We did mention this and our kids were running around in chaos so I don't see how he could miss this. He sent us a beautiful design that we feel left kids as an afterthought and didn't incorporate stuff we need like a shed and stuff we mentioned we wanted in our first meeting. Obviously I don't expect it to be perfect on the first run but I'm concerned about the lack of communication and perhaps he's not familiar with designing for families. My husband is freaking out now that we wasted our money as the whole process is not cheap. We don't mind paying for services we are just concerned that maybe this person won't be able to understand where we are coming from.

My question for you all is, is this how the process normally works? How do I tell my landscape architect that the entire plan doesn't work and we need to start from scratch (or I do just say that?) How many redos do we get?

We are a family of 7 (soon to be 8) with kids ages 1, 3, 5, 7, 10. We homeschool and my husband works from home. ​We are doing a small kitchen refresh with an extension of our kitchen into our patio. We are also enlarging our pantry to include the space where a wet bar was on the wall behind the pantry. Since we are adjusting some of our cabinets, I have the opportunity to put in a second dishwasher either in the pantry (which already has water hookup due to the wetbar on the other side of the wall) or in my U shaped kitchen. I would be giving up storage so I wanted to find out from other large families, do you need two dishwashers? My kids are still very small but we do use a fair amount of dishes and run the machine twice daily (if we keep up). We wash pots and pans and large dishes by hand but we still have a fair amount of dishes. Would it be worth giving up the storage for a second dishwasher or would it just lead to procrastination? Does anyone have a second dishwasher not near their sink and find it still useful?

Edit: My older kids do help unload and load the dishwasher. The biggest issue isn't who loads and unloads it as much as the 4 hours it takes per load.

I currently have 6 year old 24" double KitchenAid Wall Ovens. Initially, my KitchenAids were fine but after learning how they work, it appears they lack true convection (from what I've researched). So when I switch batches of cookies, it doesn't keep the temp and I have to stop and preheat it because the temp has gone down so much. I can't preheat while anything is in there because it uses the broiler to preheat and burns the top of whatever I'm making. I've learned to work with it but I don't know if I want to go the Kitchen Aid route again. Another issue is after it's been on for a while, if I turn off the time or try and add a few minutes, it sometimes turns off the oven and then I have to either take out what's in there to turn the oven back and on it will preheat since it's dropped the temp or I deal with the preheat broiling whatever is in there. No, I've never used the self-clean.

We are doing a small kitchen refresh during our home addition of enclosing the patio on the other side of the kitchen. Part of the refresh will be to change the 24" oven cabinet to a 30" and just bite the bullet and get new ovens. I've read good and bad things about a variety of double ovens. We are a family of 8 so we definitely use both ovens as we cook multiple batches of food (yet another reason to switch to the 30"). I was initially looking at the Bosch 800 but I've read some bad things about them (and honestly every other brand). The Frigidaire Professional looks pretty decent and the GE Cafe with the French doors is also very nice but a little pricey. I'd like to stay around $4500 but can go a little higher if it gets us something better. I'd love to have a fancy Miele, Wolf, etc. but we can't afford 11k for ovens.

I realize nothing lasts forever anymore but I'd like to get a few years out of it before it dies. Other than staying away from Samsung, is there any brands I should be avoiding. Any stand outs among double ovens? Has Kitchen Aid fixed what is wrong with mine?

Hello Fellow Fresnans,

I am trying to do an addition on to my house. I plan to do this owner build and sub out the trades myself but I need a home designer to get all the drawings for the county to submit for permitting. I had two potentials but they either flaked or are no longer in business from when I initially contacted people months ago. I've called so many people but everything is commercial. Does anyone have any suggestions of someone to contact? I'm not interested in a design build firm as those tend to be more expensive and require you to go with their contractors.

Thank you!