With the colder weather it's not uncommon to find that rodents and other wild animals start to look for a new home. These pests, just like us, are looking for water, food, and somewhere warm to live. Certainly if you leave food around, it can attract them but sometimes they come inside just to find a warm place to sleep. I'd suggest cleaning your room and then calling whomever is responsible for building maintenance.

Thanks for the quick replies! I am posting a new layout, much bigger, so this should be easier to see. But don't pay too much attention necessarily to the placement of the appliances, as this is what our builder drew up. We definitely don't want the wall ovens beside the fridge. Also, the SO says she really wants counter/cabinet space on either side of the fridge, though I'm wondering if it's better to have the fridge flush with the wall, and just a longer counter run on the one side of it? It's basically either 36" fridge plus 2'10" of counter/cabinet, or say +/-15" counter/cabinet, 36" fridge, +/-19" counter/cabinet. I also talked to my builder this morning, and I think we've figured it out so that we can just make it work (we're going to cheat some space from inside walls). So it is now going to be much closer to 14 feet, maybe just an inch or so less. Also, I think we are going to go with just one window on the rear wall, over the sink. My builder thought that putting the two together there would just eat up too much space on that wall, it'd be 90+" with trim and everything, on 9.5 feet of wall (to the corner, it's about 11.5 total), and I think he's correct. So we may keep a window on the wall where the stove is going, or we may just eliminate it entirely (just have some high, eyebrow-type windows, as the ceiling is actually going to be closer to 12 feet, certainly over 11). We are going to go with a counter-depth fridge (would love to do a built-in or integrated, but that's just not in the cards), so that will help. And since we're doing custom cabinets, I figured we can make the counters slightly shallower, so here's where I'm at: 168" wall to wall 23.5" sink counter (we are including a dishwasher there, but I am going to try to set that even a bit more into the wall) 28" counter-depth fridge counter 80" two aisles at a more comfortable 40" each --- 36.5" for island Now to answer your other questions - in terms of oven, we are going to go with double wall ovens (because as I think I said, the O & M oven is essentially useless), we're thinking standard size, which I guess is 30"? And the O & M is 36" wide, so a bit bigger than standard stoves today, but it's not one of those huge old ones. I do want a MW (the SO says she could live without it, but I can't imagine), so do need to figure that out. I'm thinking that if we do do the fridge flush with the wall, no counter space on the right of it, then to the left of it would be a good place for the MW. I did read these various guides before posting, I'm sorry if it did not appear so (I posted in a hurry). As for the use of the kitchen, right now it is just the two of us, though that could change in the future (or it may not). We do like to entertain, but we can also be serious about not letting everyone congregate in the kitchen. It's really a one cook kitchen, I like to dabble, but she's the trained chef. Other questions? Thanks so much again! So appreciate the feedback, and hope to hear from others.

Hi, Enza! Summer is keeping me away from GW and I'm glad you called me out so I can see what's happening with your house. I read through this thread last night and thought I'd quickly toss in an idea I got this morning. I'll preface by saying I may have missed an important piece of information, but this idea is based on the assumption that you're incorporating the enclosed front porch into your renovation. My thought is to keep the small existing front porch, but move the location of the front door so it's facing your driveway instead of the street. This *might* create space in the present vestibule area for a very small powder room. The present front-most room could become a foyer with a powder room tucked away down a short hall for privacy. The window area on your neighbors side of the porch area could be turned into something like this that you posted on a previous post. If you don't want coats hung out in the open at the front of the house, you could put lockers with doors there instead of open hooks. The benefit of turning the porch into a foyer/mudroom/powder room is getting all those activites out of the rest of the first floor, making for a much lovlier and spacious living/dining/kitchen. Also, this won't kill your dining room or any driveway side windows. Best wishes!

Update - Ironically, my kitchen refrigerator started having problems. Repairman said $875 to fix it. It's 14 years old and we are planning to get all new appliances when we remodel so not going that route. Had already been looking at refrigerators and had one in mind for kitchen remodel that only comes in full size. We decided to buy a scratch and dent counter depth one (with very minor scratch on side) and put it in the kitchen (replacing the full size refrigerator). My thinking was that this would be a great test to see if a counter depth refrigerator would meet our needs while not having to necessarily make a full commitment to it because....we can move this new counter depth refrigerator into the utility room to replace the current counter depth refrigerator there when we do remodel. Utility room refrigerator is 22 years old. We've had no problems with it so when it comes time to remodel perhaps we can bless someone with it if it's still going strong. We bought it to have a second refrigerator at an appliance auction 22 years ago for $300! What a deal! Refrigerators are expensive these days!!! I must say that I was skeptical of downsizing to counter depth but so far (had it for 2 days), I've not really noticed any difference except that the counter depth looks sooooo much nicer in my kitchen. Much less obtrusive into the kitchen space. I love that!!! Thank you to everyone for all of your comments and suggestions. I'm thinking now that I don't need to worry about it so much and I'll just get another counter depth refrigerator for the kitchen when we remodel.