I made several boxes, 5 feet by 15 inches (they looked like hobbit coffins) and lined them up in fifteen foot runs. My idea was that if I got tired of using them for veggies, I could put them here or there in the yard as planters for irises or whatever, and the weight wouldn't be too bad so one person could move them. However, having boxes like that makes it hard to run a soaker hose under the soil surface. You either have to loop the soaker hose above the end walls of the boxes, or drill holes to run the hose. If I were to do it again, I'd use 16 foot 2x10 or 2x12 so I could have an uninterrupted run of hose. I'd also securely affix a small vertical pipe to the inside of the box with a female garden hose fitting poking out above the surface, and a male garden hose fitting under the surface attaching to the completely buried soaker hose. That way if anyone pulls on the supply hose it doesn't disturb the soaker hose. Why sixteen feet? Because that's the length of the cattle panel I use for a trellis; or, as you can see in the picture, you can bend three of them into Gothic arches to make 'a cathedral of tomato worship'.

THINGS I'M GLAD WE DID We planned for the future and ran PVC pipe underneath all our concrete walks and drives so landscape lighting could be added later. Also ran pipe for electric wires out to the backyard where we would be building our barn the next year so we wouldn't have to dig up the yard again. Wired for an entertainment system in the basement (which we are finishing now -- 2 yrs. after move-in). DH insited on 400 amp service so we would have plenty of electrical for pool, barn etc. Splurged on the kitchen cabinets and appliances. It's one of our favorite rooms and is large enough for both of us to cook at the same time. Makes cooking & cleanup easy and enjoyable. Insisted on a pool bath with a separate entrance into the home. We fired our first designer when he insisted it was a waste of space in our northern home and would present a security risk because it makes another entrance to the home. It's great not to have guests walk across our wood floor when coming in from the pool to use the restroom. It's also a great changing room for the pool and hot tub and the shower is a great place to wash the doggie. Lots of very large windows to view the beautiful landscape and wildlife from everywhere in the home. What a way to increase the endorphins during an upper midwest winter. We used to live in a house where we could barely see outside. Our coffee area in the MB suite. We saw this in a parade home and had our second (and final) architect plan for this. It consists of some cabinetry, a small refrigerator and a bar sink -- perfect for making coffee in the morning or storing juice and sodas. It's located outside the bedroom, bathroom and closet area but still inside the suite area. Planned for a single, very large MB closet. It's 10 x 15 and is a perfect size for storing all our clothes and is also a roomy changing room. A covered lanai in the back of the house to escape the summer heat but enjoy the rainstorms. Our hardwood floor (Brazilian Teak) throughout the house. One of the biggest "wow" factors to people visiting. THINGS I WISH WE HAD DONE DIFFERENTLY Mostly small size changes which you wouldn't understand unless you were inside the house. A couple of feet here and there to make a room slightly larger. We actually cut those feet off the original plan to keep it just under 4000 sq.ft. Boy, I wish we had kept them. Really checked our cabinet layout. Our laundry room has a tight area when using the fold-down ironing board. It's mainly because we chose a front loading washer & dryer which are deeper than traditional machines. Try to visualize the cabinets and how they work in the room.

My opinion on pot fillers. If the pot is too heavy to carry to the stove when the water is cold, I sure don't want to carry it to the sink when the water is boiling. For the effort/cost I don't need one. YMMV, though. I wish I had run my layout by gardenweb members for feedback. I wish I would have thought about a pull out cutting board. I haven't had one for about 30 years and had adapted. Would really like to have one again. The matt white Formica shows every speck of everything! Good, because I can wipe it off right away. Bad because if I haven't wiped it off right away everyone can see it. I live on a gravel road. I rarely use my a/c. Windows are open all the time. The FX stuff I originally planned might have been a better choice. Maybe next time. I do like the look of the white, though. I really hate my upper diagonals but I also hate the blind corner cabs. The more complicated pull down/out doesn't appeal to me. Problem still not solved. I don't like what I have but I don't like the other choices. I thought and thought about this and only came up with the three "I wishes", so all in all, my kitchen turned out pretty good. I am more than delighted to have the peninsula gone and every time I think about my new kitchen I suspect my face has the orgasm expression.

Someone has probably posted this idea elsewhere, but when I was looking for a chunk of granite to set into my tile counter, I explored (at length) the remnant options. I found the chunk I wanted at WS Goodrich in Epping NH, and the price was around half what I saw elsewhere. And they had a lot of very large pieces, so if you were doing a small kitchen, it might be possible to piece together some remnants of the same kind of granite. I'm not so in love with granite that I mind having only a small piece, but some of the stuff I saw there was almost enough to make me change my mind. And they cut my piece the next day. Nice folks. So maybe checking around a little is a good idea. (I have no idea if these stone places are as common elsewhere as they are in NH.)