Suebot - don't think i'm going to tell you anything that somebody else hasn't said, but since i've had too much experience with deer & rabbits, i figured i'd concur with the remedies that worked for me. i used to live/learned to garden on nantucket and martha's vineyard, where the deer are at least as unreasonably tame and probably more abundant than they are in ct. i've heard stories of people standing 10 ft away from them yelling at them while they chomp on their hydrangea flower buds. one woman i was talking to claimed she saw the deer attacking her dalmation!! anyway, my first thought about your original message was are you sure all damage is due to deer and not rabbits? - when they stand on their hind legs, they can eat quite high - on a couple of my client's properties on the islands, i had more problems with bunnies than deer, especially with my daylilies & echinacea. so, i also found success with the deer away spray products; i can't remember which one i used, but i believe it had garlic & mint in it and i actually liked the way it smelled. the directions said to spray every couple of weeks (??), but i found that i had to spray every couple of days or so & definitely after a rain. it was pretty time consuming. unfortunately, my other success was fencing in the gardens. i just tried to be decorative about it - i used nice cedar posts with caps, bird netting @ 4' high (you can't really see it, so the garden still looks nice), i hung rope along the top of the netting (for a nautical look...). I did throw netting on top of the gardens in the spring until things grew too tall, but i have to admit, the deer hopped in a couple of times (- that would've been a mess i kind of would have liked to see). i now live in maine and have a large cutting garden in my back yard, a good distance from my house and i use the bird netting as the fencing (simply because it was the only fencing i could find that would be high enough in one piece) and it works (doesn't handle snow load, though). i see deer in the back and they walk right around the garden. chipmunks are now my problem. unfortunately, my true feeling is that if the deer want to get to something, they will. sorry to be so lengthy, good luck. just out of curiosity, do you have phlox and is it being eaten - that always gets destroyed the worst for me. -mara

I have to agree with Jessy on this, only because of past experience. It's been gnawing at me as I got to know about you and your mother. A personal story - my parents had a cottage in Maine, we went up every summer, I loved it. (My father and grandfather built about a dozen cottages on the lake and sold all but two of them.) I still go to Maine every summer. After I married, my XH and I would go up to the lake (different cottage), and when we had kids, we took them up. My parents were there and we would all do things together, we had wonderful vacations. My kids loved it, especiallly having their grandparents at the lake for swimming and fishing, etc. When my parents got too old to make the drive by themselves, I would drive them up, get them settled, and later come up with my family. At the end of the summer I would bring them home. My sister never went back, she did not like Maine or the cottage - too rustic. Apparently, this bugged my dad. I would talk about how much I loved it up there, and looked forward to having the cottage some day for my family to use. He never really commented about it. Well, when my sister took over the financial management for my parents, she reviewed the will, and found out that my father was leaving the cottage to her, and not to me. He told her that if he gave her the cottage, maybe he could somehow change her mind about coming to Maine. She had a lot of long talks with him, and he finally undestood that his reasoning was wrong, and changed the disposition of the cottage to me. Well.......... then he started worrying about lawsuits (god, I never want to get old!?), and decided to sell the cottage to my cousin, who owns the adjoining property and cottage. He sold the cottage just when I was getting a divorce - I have to say, losing the cottage hurt me more than ending the marriage, I can't afford to replace it, but husbands are a dime a dozen! LOL Your mom my have the same reasoning - my poor son, if I give him money, he'll love me, I can win him back. I've seen this happen to friends - it destroys families.

I can't thank you enough for the comments and attemepts at solving my problem. I admit, there have been laughs and a few tears. The frustration level with this project has become high, mostly because we can't get started. I chuckled when it was mentioned that we entertain a lot, therefore keeping dishes close to the dining room is a good idea. Yes, we do entertain a lot however no one who comes here ever wants to be in the dining room! The kitchen and family room windows extend nearly to the floor, looking out on woodlands and a large koi pond and waterfall. So here it's casual, mostly moving between indoors and out. The "formal" dining room has more than 12 linear feet of cabinetry, with all manner of china and serving regalia that is never used. Company has been successfully herded there for meals 2 or 3 times in 20 years. It would better serve as my new sewing room! It seems what has most people here bothered is the doorway to the mud room. Some seem to have the notion that the "rest of the house" is through that doorway. Actually the only thing in the mud room is the door to the garage, and a small powder room that hubby uses when he's working in the yard. I guess we could build a pantry cabinet in the mud room, but that's about it. The rest of the house is actually on the other side family and dining rooms. There are 2 other powder/rest rooms for guests over there. The opening to the mud room is not exactly a runway but it needs to stay. The comment about the dishwasher was an excellent catch, and the refrigerator, the one thing not yet purchased, could easily narrow to 36" wide and no more than counter depth. It could then move down to open directly facing into the aisleway and full height cabinets could be placed on both sides. That makes the sinful barrier more of an L shape. What I called a "prep" sink is probably is more aptly called an entertainment sink. Making lattes, teas and such at that counter. The main sink can and will serve many purposes, including prep work, actually both sinks will multitask. The design generously created by bmorepanic, which so many of you favor, has it's own challenges. We have looked it over, and plotted it into the program to look at it in 3D. We also pushed the wall into the living room back a little further. Even with the pantry being a smaller version, it feels like the main sink is in a hallway and it is so far from everything. I'm not convinced that the12-inch available space behind the sink turns into cabinetry large enough to house dishes or flatware. The big thing for me though; have you noticed how few cabinets remain? The refrigerator drawers aren't placed and still have to go in, leaving only one useable base cabinet in the prep wall and two in the island that face the work area, one small one facing the family room. Buehl, I've seen your awesome cabinet layout with base cabinets numbering into the teens, so could you honestly organize yourself into: ...

Oh my gosh, it's gorgeous! I love the linen texture shown upthread. I had chosen a green tile and then chickened out and so like kksmama, I have way more than a touch of green jealousy! This tile just looks so right in your kitchen.