If you're looking for a REALLY good deal, here it is: Scotts S2048 Look closely, it's a 1st cousin of the GT235, painted reddish-orange. For that reason, it will sell for a fraction of its actual value. This tractor will take a tiller, sleeve hitch, or any other ground-engaging attachment the GT series would use. There are only two minor differences that I know of: no zerks on the spindles, a tuff-torq K-62 vice K-71 transaxle, and rumors of a sligthly lighter weight LX style frame (not confirmed). The K-62 in on the border between ground-engaging and lawn tractor service, but it does have the upgraded 1" axles of the K-71, and as you can tell by the two holes drilled at the top of the back plate, this IS a garden tractor, intended by John Deere to be used with a sleeve hitch. Not sure where upstate your are, but this is in Connecticut, worth the drive. Here are some other links: http://www.epinions.com/review/Scotts_S2048_Yard_Tractor/content_35989524100 http://www.deere.com/en_US/scotts/pdfs/010001.pdf http://www.tufftorq.com/prodcomp.asp -Chris Here is a link that might be useful: wolf in sheep's clothing

llucy - Thank you for your kind support!! I felt so much better after reading your post. You are right, having to sacrifice the nook and eat at an island is never something I wanted to do. It would feel like a sacrifice, but if I was getting something otherwise fabulous in return, I would at least consider it. If I could snap my fingers and have the perfect solution, it would be to still have a kitchen table and any island seating would just be 1 or 2 spots for perching, not for dining. So, the U shape really does start to make sense. Thank you for the link to the Houzz ideabook! That really helped me and actually got a few new ideas flowing in my mind. The pantry doors will be changed, so that section can be made to look very different. sena01 - Thank you again for more options! It is so helpful to see things in 3d. The one with the bar table actually looked good - I just can't see needing the duplication of another table. But, it visually made the most sense probably. I'm going to play around with your idea of moving the dining nook! It's something else that I never considered and at first the new kitchen looked quite small, but then I saw the section against the dining room wall, so that might give me enough storage. Thank you again! tracie.erin - Thank you for drawing out this layout idea. It's actually fairly close to an idea proposed by a KD I met with. At the time, DH was not open to losing the U shape, so he kinda nixed it, but I'm going to explore this idea further. I like that I can still keep the kitchen table as the more I think about it, the more that seems important to me. Thanks everyone for your continuing advice and ideas! I can't even tell you how much this is helping me. DH is very busy and doesn't want to be too heavily involved in the details, so it's so valuable to me to get to talk things out with all of you! I'm having a GC over on Monday to discuss. I will report back once I have a better sense of my construction limitations.

@RappArchitecture: I get what you mean now. We would like to do this too, but not sure how the roof lines would work. Right now we have a basic ranch house with plain gable roof, sloping in the front and rear. The right (bedroom) side will be extended with a gable coming out from the front of the house, similar to @lyfia 's pictures. We were planning to do something similar with a gable roof porch cover coming out from the other side of the house, and obviously it doesn't work if both roofs drain into a flat spot between them. We are all for extending the porch to the right, but without doing a new roof system (reason we are redoing our plans), I am not sure how it would work. We did let the architect know though, if it was possible, we would like to do that with the porch.

We have had two kitchens that used a 48" Bluestar rangetop. Both had the 24" grill and we love it and can't imagine going back outside on cold, wet, or very hot days to grill. It works fantastic. From experience, as some have said, you need a hood that is larger than the range/rangetop. Our first setup was a 48" hood and smoke escaped on the sides and front - 36" high and 24" deep. Not good. Our 2nd setup works perfect for ANY type of cooking - wok, grilling, etc. We have a 60" wide hood, custom 29" deep (I think a 27" would be fine but smaller than that will allow front burner wok cooking smoke to escape). For makeup air, we have a manually operated electric Broan damper connected with a single 10" duct. The vent for this is in the ceiling near the wok burner (front right) and works perfect. We have a wall switch to turn it on/off. Our hood is connected with an exhaust blower via a single 10" duct also. The first setup had a Broan 1200cfm roof mounted blower and our second setup has a Wolf 1500cfm room mounted blower. (The exhaust mounted roof blower by Broan and Wolf are actually the same - just labeled different if it hasn't changed in the last few years.) Our Bluestar rangetop has the built-in grill and not the ones with the removable/convertible devices as their platinum series. If we ever move or do another kitchen, it will be the exact same as our second kitchen setup - grill and burners work perfect and a smoke detector nearby has NEVER gone off. Set it up right and you'll love it. For griddle use - we just put a griddle pan over two of the burners and it works fine - sometimes we also put it over the grill. Also since our 24" grill has a stainless cover that came with it, our kitchen cabinets were modified to add a small shelf under the rangetop cabinet to store the cover when using the grill and the cover is not needed. Good luck!!!