Thanks for the info... I truly appreciate the feedback. I have decided to go with Milgard Style Line for the project and am only going to have the lower sashes tempered. The chances of anyone falling into the windows would be slim at best. The only glass that stands a higher probability is the current Arcadia (sliding glass) door in my atrium but I am replacing it and the others in the house with Anderson 400 series gliders which all have tempered glass as standard.

This is just my personal opinion but I hate the look of a huge blank piece of glass from the outside, but I love the way it looks from the inside. So if its the front of the house I would do the mulled ones. If you are going to have grids in the windows I would definitly go with a single 8' unit front yard or back. But again its just my taste.

Thank you all -- searching for "low windows" was very helpful I even read of some people who left the windows and worked the kitchen around them without replacing or covering them up, and I really am excited to see what we can come up with keeping this in mind. We had one such window in the bathroom, IN the bathtub/shower stall. The previous owners had covered the wall with a shower curtain, but the wall/window just couldn't withstand all of the moisture. So, we did remove and replace that one with a smaller one, unfortunately. If we had another bathroom, I'd have loved to have kept that big, old window there right where it was, and designated that as a "bath only" bathroom. But I did keep the pink tub that was there and am so glad that I did. ;) Thank you al for yor input. I'm very excited about embracing the windows and working with, instead of against, them.

So I just had my favorite local window supplier quote me a 3-lite slider with 1/4-1/2-1/4. (Just learned what those terms meant). So fixed in the middle and sliders on either end. I think I prefer sliders to casements, to keep the screens on the outside. 48"x96", so it would be 6" above counter and 6" below ceiling, which gives me a little wall to play with on all sides. $572 with tax. Here's the rendering (sans kitchen, of course): Thoughts?