Breathtaking! I could look at your pics for a loooong while. : ) Your shrub/perennial borders are perfection. You really have a knack for mixing textures. And the cottage garden - be still my heart! Love it! Your blank slate looks like it will be a perfect place for more trees and shrubs, and of course some bloomers. Hope the critters don't use it as a salad bar. ; ) Beautiful home, beautiful gardens! Magazine worthy! TFS! Diana

I just posted what will be the same advice to another post for hoods. Yosemite makes a pre cast hood that is pretty good looking that is somewhat similar to your picture without the corbels. They do not sell direct. My website will have it listed in a shopping cart for approx $900. A vent to go with it runs about $200 - 400 the larger fan unit costs more. If you click on the link at the end of the written text introducing Yosemite you can see pictures of it. On the 2nd page of hood pictures on Yosemite's site you will see they have extensions for different ceiling heights. Stanisci is a company that makes wood hoods with lots of curves in various heights and widths. They do not sell direct as their business model is to sell unfinished hoods to national sold cabinet companies that do not want to build them on site. Dealer costs when supplied by the cabinet company and finishded to match by them generally are $2,000 - $10,000 which is then marked up from there for profit of the local retailer. A few websites sell them to the public. You will have to finish them to match your cabinets if you go that route. I would think you could get a go painter to put a finish on it onsite that makes it look like cast stone. Here is a link that might be useful: Yosemite Hoods Link

I know this will be hard to understand... but just looking on paper at the 2 plans I think Plan B does look like it fits nicely-nice walls, openings ,flow ,etc. If I was looking at 2 plans for a NEW home, for some reason I believe I would pick plan B. Seems more 'safe' as well. But I guess Plan A is intriguing since I have been living in this house it seems like the connection to the backyard and patio will be really used frequently and fits how we use our kitchen/outdoors. Yes there are some reservations-some mentioned above in 'what I don't LOVE about it". One of them was my concern in making that back wall with doors and wet bar "wonderful and dramatic" as cilantro says. My fear is we will try this and not get there. I posted the 3d drawing we got from a kitchen /cabinet place and it was quite underwhelming.But with crown ,trim work , proper colors hopefully it could get there. I do think I need a back window in the wet bar-we would love to use this as a 'staging area' for grilling with a pass thru and this is my 'side view ' of the yard from the clean up sink. In previous posts we tried using a walk in pantry to eliminate the 'butler type pantry hallway leading to the office, but we preferred that space open (there is a window in the office and thought that may also help keep things a little 'brighter at that side sink'. If there were additional changes to be made to improve PLAN A I would love to hear more - I know Rhome and bmorepanic helped a bit with that already. I think I would consider taking some space from the laundry room and making the mudroom a bit larger. 3 growing boys that play every sport imaginable could use lots of hooks,cubbies,etc Other things we are considering is 1)either wrapping the oven counter around into the pantry space or 2) having some framing /trim work to transition into the 'butler pantry area' so it doesn't seem like one really long hallway where you are trapped between floor to ceiling pantries on each side. On the left side we may make this a counter with cabs/drawers underneath rather than a floor to ceiling 15" pantry so we have a 'landing spot ' to either load the pantry or for our cell phones or something. Just some ideas...would love to explore more of getting plan A perfected if possible. Thanks....Sorry for the length!

Thanks for the additional pictures and information. That helps. From those pictures, it is clear that stone is an important visual and physical element in the garden so it would make sense to use stone on the paths. I would guess that winter freeze-thaw cycles that might heave the stones at times is not a big concern...? (That concern plus the woodland general theme of our garden makes bark mulch the logical path material here.....) Making the garden work for dogs was a prime issue here - when we moved here in 1999 we had a Golden, followed by a Lhasa Apso, and now a miniature poodle.... Plus we dog sit a lot and have experience with a lot of breeds (e.g. Airedales, border collies, Lab and Lab x Australian Shepherd, Australian terrier, Springer Spaniel, malamute, Bouvier, Briard, Boston terrier, and others....) It's important to pay attention to the dog's needs and wants and accommodate those in the garden! All dogs want to patrol their territory, so a path that largely follows the boundary of the space is desirable - otherwise they will make their own! Most dogs will literally 'take the path of least resistance' so having planned paths through beds helps keep them from wandering through the plantings at random :-) Before we laid out most of the paths, we watched the dogs to see what their normal route was and, as much as possible, put the paths there :-) Kids also tend to like and follow paths through the garden beds :-) So, watch where your dog goes and see what that tells you about what it needs in the garden :-) If there are wet places in the garden, they need fixing - add drainage or redirect the waterflow or plant appropriate plants that will make use of the water and ideally provide support with their roots. We have several places like that here, most of which have been improved over time by various means. The picture below is from 2014 when the paths in 'the wet corner' area were in bad shape so DH and a nephew added 'crusher run' gravel that was then covered in pine bark mulch to make it disappear! The low iron fence at the edge in the picture was there to keep the Golden we had back in the early years here out of this area after she, in the first year here, regularly came back covered in mud! She could have easily stepped over the fence but it was sufficient to tell her that this was a no-go area! One important thing we did here was shape the spaces - particularly the little grass that remains! - so that it makes the space have impact regardless of the season. If that space is kept reasonably neat, the whole garden looks organized even if it is a bit messy (e.g. needs some weeding or pruning etc.!) You could consider the shape of your grass spaces plus the paths. Some people consider it a formal look but it works well with informal plantings! This pictures shows the back lawn: Have fun!