Wow, so sorry I missed your posts, Buehl and Alice462! I need to check this more often. I'm supposed to get emails when someone posts to avoid this, but that I only received them the first couple of days. Alice, the drawers around my rangetop are, from top to bottom, 6 7/8", 10 1/2", and 10 1/2" tall on the faces. Inside, the top drawer boxes are 3" tall, but have 5" of clearance because of being shorter than the space available. The 2 bottom rows are 6" deep with about 8 1/2" of clearance...So I can put pots and pans that are taller than the drawer box, but they don't scrape the drawer above. Does that make sense? My main sink counter and the breakfast area (30" wide to the left of the single fridge) are at 36" in height. I don't like to go lower around the cleanup sink, because it hurts my back to reach down that low into the sink. But where the mixer is, the island and the rangetop and counters beside are at about 34". We like the lower height for chopping, kneading, rolling, and even putting together sandwiches, etc. It's also better for looking into the mixer and into pots on the stove. I'm a bit over 5'3" and the kids are about my height or smaller (so far), so it works great for all of us. DH works in the kitchen occasionally and it doesn't seem to bother him. If he ever did something that took awhile and he wanted a higher work surface, he could do his working on a butcher block or something that would raise it. I don't have rollouts in this kitchen. I had them in my last and didn't like them. I tried to get too much in the cabinet and things would slide or fall off when I pulled it out. I also didn't like that I lost about 3" of cabinet width to the hardware and the pullout sides. I guess it's the same loss as with using drawers, but I find the higher sides of drawers to be much better, and I don't have to first open a door (or 2) to pull them out. All that said, I may add one rollout to one of the island cabinets, because my bread mixer has very grabby rubber feet and it'd be easier to get out if I could pullout it out and lift. I'm considering changing the doored cabinets in my island to drawers, so that would solve the problem, too. I'm so sorry to be so late in answering your questions. I sure hope you check back!

This is something I agonized over when we were doing our remodel last year. Our granite is Blue in the Night, which appears as black from a distance. We have four outlets that are in our granite backsplash (which is a bit higher than 4" where they are. My first thought was that I didn't want the switchplates to stand out on the granite. Since the switchplates would be near other switches that would be on cherry beadboard and tile, I decided I wanted to keep with the same style for all. In the end we went with Lutron stainless switchplates with black centers. I think they compliment our SS appliances. Under our window on either side of the sink On our peninsula

Thanks, mommy2nk! Happy Thanksgiving to you too! I'm sitting here working at the computer and I keep staring at my mosaic. It was love at first sight and still makes me swoon :-) It's Artistic Tile's Granada Smoke Glass and Stone Water Jet Mosaic. I love that it has cool greys and warm beige...pulls everything together in my house. It was really pricey, but luckily I found a perfect white undulated field tile for $3.50/sqft for the rest of the backsplash, so in the end it worked out budget-wise. Artistic Tile was great to work with. Make sure you look at the links I provide. It does not come in a 20x20 square (like I originally thought). To make the square for behind the range, I needed two and then my talented contractor pieced everything together. He laid everything out - it was like a puzzle! So I'd make sure whoever is doing the installation is especially skilled! I bought pencils in smoke from Artistic to frame the piece. The contractor put a sealer on it, and I just clean it with dish soap and water (so far so good, and I cook a lot!) Artistic posts a different kitchen with the mosaic used all over as the backsplash - check it out! Good luck - I'll be curious to see what you wind up doing. Happy kitchen planning :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Artistic Tile mosaic specs

Hello! Sorry my messaging isn't working. 3/16 should be perfect, but a lot of tile manufacturers will specify in their layout parameters what they recommend. The biggest difference between handmade tiles that are truly variable, and machine made tiles meant to look like they are variable is exactly this: the edges of machine made tile are regular and you can lay them closer together if you like the look, so you could use a 1/8" grout line possibly. Conferring with your installer is a must. He might be able to make you a little sample board that isn't mortared, but is grouted. Gorgeous tile by the way!