What wonderful potential! I love your brick choice, BTW. My inlaws had that same brick (they lived in Seminole, OK) and I always thought it was so pretty! I think with the two seating areas, you have the best of both worlds: shade and shelter from the wind when you need it and over on the other side, a place to catch a bit of sun and/or a nice breeze. Love your idea of the twin topiaries, too. I can't use wicker out here because it blows over in our winds. From what I know of Oklahoma, you get some pretty strong winds, too. That might be something to take into consideration when choosing your furniture . . . that and fading from the sun. I have to deal with that, too! I do like the idea of using white all-weather wicker on yours if it'll work for you, though. As for a long table under the other window, why not a smaller table flanked by two (or just one) rocking chairs, also painted white? Question: are you having your flower beds built up so that there won't be a drop off from the porch or leaving them about that level? Another idea is to keep an eye out for a small hutch or credenza that you can put out on the protected part of your porch. Something from a garage sale or consignment shop that you can paint. My front porch (we call them front portals out here), spans the front west side of our boomerang shaped house. It's 65 feet long, I believe. It has four areas, so that we can always find shade to sit in, as I hate sitting in the sun now that I'm not a teenager ;^P This is the view of it from farther out on our property: The middle areas are in deep shade most of the day and with the jog for the kiva fireplace, we can usually stay out of any wind. I have chairs near the fireplace area and at the present time, we have a table and chairs to the left of the front door (where that mass of toys and pots is in the pic). We use the table for weekend breakfasts and lunches in warm weather, card games and whatever. I don't have any pics of the table yet. I can't believe I'm showing you these awful pics. Please consider them my "Before" pics, as many things have changed out here. I need to take new ones once the weather gets better! Here's a pic of the fireplace area, although I've since recovered all the furniture and restained the wood: To the far east end of the portal, past the table & chairs, I have a porch swing and a couple of chairs. We have great views from there of the valley below us. Since I took this pic, I've put our old sofa table out there under the red shelf. To the far west end of the portal, we have an adobe banco, to give us more seating when we're entertaining . . . and to keep visitors from falling off the portal and down the hill after a few margaritas! Excuse the mess in this pic, I was getting ready to restain the chairs and have my painting cloths piled up by the fireplace!

@rkb21: The piece for the dishwasher is a little different than the rest of the toe kick. Our real toe kick is 3/4" x 4", but at the bottom of the dishwasher the black cover is 3" high, and then it sort of tilts back. I happen to have extra molding from the cabinets that was 3/4" x 3", so I had it cut to fit the width, and they had to bore out the back a little where the plastic screw caps are that hold the cover in place, and then we just velcro'd it to the black cover. You can see the seams where it meets the other toe kick, but it's better than seeing black. It seemed to me that a 4" toe kick might interfere with the function of the door, but I don't know that for sure. So far, we have been very happy with the KUDE48....no issues with the side vent causing condensation on the cabinet. @island: Thank you very much....our countertops are called "waterfall". I have a thread which follows my kitchen renovation from the beginning, and there are more pics in there of the countertops....see the link Here is a link that might be useful: Kitchen Renovation

I lied (on accident). I got my kitchen glass knobs from Van Dyke's. I don't know what line they are since they didn't state. I do know they're glass. They may be Schaub since they're polished nickel. I just realized that our bathroom knobs are the Amerock since they came in the satin nickel. But we didn't order those for the kitchen since I wanted polished. The knobs look the same though, except for thr base finish. I paid more for the bathroom knobs because Van Dyke's was having a really good sale at the time.

This weekend, in southwestern Ontario was our annual air show. We had fighter jets from the world wars, and the Snowbird aerobatics, and parachuters. Here are the snowbirds......they were so fast, we hardly got any pics. And a very cool heart formation, made with 3 planes. It was disappearing before hubs could get the camera focusted.