Thank you again for all of the responses. I am glad this has generated some honest discussion and that people have been willing to share their experiences. Palimpset, thank you for your input. I know I haven't decided how much I want to spend and that's a problem. It would not be totally unreasonable to spend a lot on this kitchen, especially if I went with the 10-20% of home value 'guideline'. I can swing spending that much if I chose. The kitchen is old and ready to be torn out, and I have very specific tastes so I am ready to do it and not unwilling to spend the money. I do not want to 'waste' money on something either, so I struggle with spending the money on cabs, mostly because the countertops and range are the things that I really care about. :) I already chose a yellow berta. How sharp would that be against a lovely misty grey? I have to decide if I think it's worth another __k to get the pale grey that I :really: want or would I be just as happy to have gloss white and roll that money into the divine glass tiles in the bathroom. I am also going to look into getting custom doors for Ikea cabs, although from the sounds of it, a lot of the cost was in the hand painted laquer. I fully appreciate the work involved, and have no problem paying for work where it's deserved.....I guess I just have to decide if I think it's worth it for this project. . Oh, and as an aside, I have been very specific when I have gone to the shops. Exactly how many ft of cabinets, lowers only, all drawers, gloss finish, flat front doors, metal drawer boxes.... I haven't just said I have a kitchen that might be 10ft of cabinets and I'm not sure what type of finish I want. I am going to keep looking for local shops, unfortunately I live in a place that has had a VERY good economy until very recently, so most kitchens around here were 100k plus jobs that no one batted an eye at. I think everyone's a little slow to catch up that things aren't quite what they were. I am encouraged to beat the bushes. Thank you!! It seems like there are plenty of places that will do wood cabs, I wish I wanted those and not gloss!!!

Well, I'm finally checking back on this thread. We just moved back into the house after having the new wood floors installed and then having the old and new floors all finished at the same time. DH would not budge on the finish, so we ended up with the Swedish Oil Finish. I mentioned to DH that some states have made Swedish Oil Finish illegal, but he still wanted that finish for our floors because that's what we had before (or so the guy who bid the job thought). Want to know something funny? The day before they started finishing the floors the guys working in our home stated that we had WATER based finish. So who knows? On the plus side, I'm very happy with the looks of our floors. They did an excellent job threading in new boards with the old to combine the new wood floors with the ones that were installed twenty years ago. You can't tell which is old and which is new---it all just looks like a beautiful new floor. We decided to go with the natural finish, and I couldn't be happier. We stayed in a hotel one day longer than the floor guys suggested, and I'm glad we did. Yesterday I spent much of the time parked in the car in front of our house, after DH had gone in (with a respirator on) and opened windows everywhere to start airing the house out. Later, we added fans and then the started the furnace on fan only. As I write this, I'm sitting in my house with fans running everywhere and almost every window open (on three floors). My eyes sting a little and my throat hurts; I have a nagging headache. I also have noticed some impact on my breathing. However, I'm hanging in there and haven't had a full-blown major asthma attack so far. Upstairs is definitely better than downstairs. I'm disappointed to have to deal with this, but it does seem to be getting better. I'm hoping to be able to sleep upstairs tonight, but if I can't, I'm going to ask my sister if I can sleep on her sofa tonight. Does anyone have information on the time it takes for the floor to fully cure (and, thus, for the off-gassing to end)? Also, I'm wondering about moving furniture back in. I've heard everything from two weeks to sixty days, so I'm not sure what to expect. The foor guys seem to only state that the vast majority of the chemicals are off-gassed in the first forty-eight hourss. That's all well and good, but with something this strong, the few remaining can be pretty significant. If I can get through this without a trip to the doctor/hospital, it will be worth it. I'm so excited to finally have this done.

lisa_a... I am flabbergast! The ideas originating from this forum never cease to amaze me. That folks are able to take layouts and turn it around in a matter of hours, or less, and churn out something completely different simply amazes and delights me. Alright, DH loves your layout. He likes having a dedicated area for our kids near us, and especially one that is directly across and in line of sight of kitchen. We will likely still make our guest bedroom upstairs our office so kids aren't mucking in our stuff (missed bills are not a good thing!). While we'll keep the main floor office for our kids. It just makes sense to give them a space for arts & crafting/reading/playing while we cook. It'll also be easier to help them with homework later on, and yes, definitely easier to keep an eye on them surfing the internet. Concerns... We do entertain and have BBQs often in our backyard during the summer months. The most used path to our backyard is via the kitchen. Will the 42" entryway be sufficient space for people to go in and out of? Also, I'm not sure about putting a down-to-counter dish hutch by that backdoor. Post-BBQ, it's often a steady stream of dishes back into the kitchen for clean up. Would maximizing counter space here be more practical for post-party clean up? Did you perhaps mean an upper cabinetry-only dish hutch? That would afford me both cabinets and counter space. I really like the fridge location in your layout. Makes for an easy path to unload and store groceries when we get home from shopping. Should prep sink be relocated to fridge end of island instead? The current layout has both sinks so close to each other that I wonder if it's worth the extra money to put in two sinks. Also, assuming my dishes are stored in cabinets/drawers near the sink. Is that too far from the dining area? If I store them in buffet counter area, then I'd be carrying them across the kitchen from dishwasher to dining area. No matter what, a trek seems unavoidable. Any tips on how to get around/minimize this? Note, one of my kids' task when they feel up to helping is to put away dishes in dishwasher. So I've spent the past few hours trying to rework the layout to see if I can keep the existing wall between dining room and kitchen. This would save us a good chunk of money since that is a load bearing wall, whose removal would require us to put in a recessed steel beam. I've tried making our current dining room into kids' office/play area with pocket doors (we're loving the pocket doors!) and our office the dining area with perimeter counter space, but just haven't been able to make it work. Sigh! So it looks like the money will have to be spent. One improvement though (I think). I loathe the narrow hallway we currently have. It just seems like dead space to me. So rather than keep it, I've modified your layout to put our coat closet and duct work in the existing hallway space instead. This allows for a wider entry to the dining/kitchen area. This new closet would also be deeper that what we currently have, so I'd be willing to forgo the closet nook as I can stuff things into the deeper closet and also in the main floor office. I'm also tempted to extend the powderoom to 72" so the sink can go across the toilet, thus making the powder room foot print narrower and opening up the entry to the dining room even more. If I do this, I can then reposition the door as debrak2008 suggested to prevent toilet views.

I don't think it is that crazy to refer to toilets as appliances. It fits better in that category than in many others. Having said that, I unfortunately don't have any opinion on this particular model. It's been 10+ years since I went toilet shopping, and I am still super happy with our Toto Drake. I don't think I'll need to replace it for many years to come.