Hi, I haven't been on GW in a while, but happened by today. I got great ideas from everyone here when planning my kitchen. I never considered where all of my cookbooks would go in my initial thinking, but taking ideas from different people, I came up with a plan. My cabinets were built by a local cabinetmaker, so I was able to design some unusual storage. I have a 24" deep glass fronted cabinet next to the frig. It's 36" wide. What the cabinetmaker did was build 3 approx 11" wide boxes out of wood and put them on file drawer-type runners. The three boxes are next to each other. When you look into the cabinet, you see the three side by side, each one full of books. I have two shelves with the boxes, for a total of 6 boxes, or 12 running feet of cookbook storage. I slide them in and out to reach the books in the back. The pretty ones are in the front and can be seen when the glass doors are closed. Even after all of the instructions given, I still can't figure out how to post pictures here, or I'd take some shots to show you. Everyone who has seen the new kitchen oohs and aahs over the fact that the books are there, that there are so many of them taking up so little space. good luck with your project!

Gilmoregal-thank you for your kind words. The sofa is a Bernhardt that I originally found at Haverty's. Then I found the exact sofa at Bob Mill's (which is a really strange store, they have really low end stuff and REALLY high end stuff) for half the price they wanted at Haverty's. I'm very happy with it so far. I also bought the matching chair and 1/2 which I like, but am not thrilled with the back cushion. It's going to need restuffing already. For some reason, it's totally different than the sofa cushions. I think you can look on Bernhardt's website and find the upholstery. If you need a closer pic, let me know. But it should be pretty easy to pick it out. I can't remember what the name of it is. Hope that helps.

Sigh. Yeah. It would be great. I can get 20' in the kitchen by demoing the laundry, I suppose, but I have to wash clothes sometime :) But I'm planning to take out the walk in pantry because at 3' it's pretty useless. Okay, seriously, the most cooking I ever did was in a tiny kitchen with a tiny fridge, three small, lower cabinets, one of which was the sink, and a shelf. There was also a tiny table and a two ring gas hotplate on a cart thing. It was rural, abroad and not much prepared food (i.e., box cookies, bottled salad dressing, etc.) to be had so I made *everything* except the bread. (Yes, you can bake on a gas ring!) The cupboards mostly held the dishes. The shelf had the spices and staples. I'm stopping because it's not a very interesting story. The point is that, yes, you can survive with a really small pantry. What you have to do is adapt the way you live. Is there someone else in the house (garage, barn, wherever) where you can store bulk items? Can you live without them? Can you store papergoods in an underused vanity cabinet? Do you use a lot of canned/packaged/bottled pantry items daily? Can you make do with only having one or two of any particular item, and go shopping more often? Figure out how you use your pantry, what you want to keep there, what you've been dreaming of keeping there since you've been dreaming of cooking in the new kitchen, and you'll know whether the size will work for you. One thing you can do if you need absolute storage rather than superorganized storage is go against the fashion and get plain shelves instead of pullouts. That'll give you an extra couple inches on each shelf. If you're not good at organizing cupboards, however, so that you always know where to lay your hands on the tomato paste and the kids know exactly where to find the peanut butter, pullouts might be more useful than those extra couple inches.

Celeste - I didn't remove the first bloom either - lol. It was one of the Westbourne Good Old Days, but darn! - didn't make note at the time which one it was. It had 3 blooms in all. And this season, when everything started blooming, most of the first blooms weren't all that nice. It seemed like the plant would have a "dress rehearsal" before deciding how it was going to look, and then one morning...BOOM! Heather - all the Westbourne tets were good size - 6+ inches. Height varied but averaged at least 30". That one with the wonderful eye was the tallest of them - sorry, don't have specs at moment, but over 30 inches. I thought you'd like that odd purple Wandering Werribee - lol. Alex