i forgot to add info on the appliances.... the frige is a ss, side by side, not cabinet depth (so tired of not having the capacity - so made an extra deep recess for it) - kenmore. the range is a 36" pro style, stainless steel fratelli onofri - taking a chance on this one - since I have no information on this - but budget dictates something far less expensive than the 36" thermador I had originally planned. bosch dishwasher. countertop convection mw, that's the missing cabinet - the cab will be made to fit the mw so it looks built in. i'm using two silgranit sinks (found them here - thanks!) - a large single bowl for the clean up area, smaller round in the island, just bought the airswitches for the gd. the light fixtures are super budget home depot - we're on our last dime to get this done :) i found my island granite color - delicatus still have no idea on the copper looking one - anyone know what color granite that is? i'll ask the granite guy again and write it down this time.

Whoo hoo. It's really starting to grow on me. At first glance the grout color threw me off a little bit. I'm not sure this shows up in the photos, but I feel like "mist" has a bit more of a brown or taupe hue to it than I perceived in the color sample. That's not bad, however. Its a little warmer than the cabinets are, but it hooks in well with the counter colors. Overall, I think we got what we wanted - tight lines, bright tile and a clear pattern that isn't too stark. I'm really starting to enjoy it. I still can't get over how much brighter the room is with six lights rather than one bulb, and tile on the wall. Since I see this room a lot in the early morning and again after dark, that is REALLY nice.

Having had three new builds in the past, I can report that renovating my 1939 house has been expensive and slow...and still isn't complete because we've tried to keep 1939 original parts and remove the 1950s, 1990s updates that were done, handle asbestos and lead. I bought the house in February last year. I could have been finished in a few months if we had gutted the house to modernize it, and I could have saved more than $100,000 by doing so. I think that is why so many older homes are gutted and modernized. It's very expensive to restore an older home. I've put more into my renovation than the local market would indicate as wise. Houses here are priced by square foot, not the level of quality/details/fixtures. Sad. But, I bought in a highly desirable, walkable old neighborhood. My original plaster ceilings and walls were repaired, not removed. It was tedious. There is lath in the walls behind the plaster. Gutting would have been done in 1-2 days instead of a month of repairs. I had to replace electrical and plumbing, but since we didn't gut the house, this was done, one wire/pipe at a time. The electrician and plumbers didn't come in once to rough-in and come back for final. No, they've been here off and on, almost every week since May because the walls weren't opened up. The trim, such as crown moulding, isn't one piece like today's trim. It is in separate pieces, built up. My carpenter meticulously replicated that trim on-site on his machines, for my addition (where I did take liberties with my new master bath and kitchen, in terms of decor, but not trim). Any pieces we removed to widen (note, we didn't remove walls, we made wider openings) the dining room, we saved and used in other places, such as wainscot for the powder room that had been renovated in the 1950s with tile walls. I kept the tiny sink and put down marble hex floors. The kitchen cabinets (not original to the house, looked like 1990s due to hinges and shelf supports) were repurposed for the back hallway as extra pantry space, in the laundry for storage and in the basement. There were two large bookcases, but not built-in. One is now my shoe storage in my master closet and the other is in the basement for storage. I kept all internal doors and door hardware, including skeleton keys. A previous owner had messed up the fireplace, so we used black slate to cover the damaged brick that was chipped and painted. The hardwoods were refinished and I used the same size oak for the addition. The original upstairs bath -- I had the cast iron tub refinished; replaced the 1950s tile and 1990s vinyl with white subway on the walls and white hex on the floor. I tried FOUR faucets in trying to keep the 1950s shelf-back sink and none fit. I finally had to replace the sink with something that went with the look. I took liberties in the addition. My kitchen addition has white cabinets, but I went with modern bar pulls (but no knobs on cabinets) to keep it simple. My backsplash is penny round white porcelain tile--something from the era used in a different way. I couldn't use anything linear due to the floors/ceilings of the original part are no longer level after 75 years. The round tile fools the eye. On the outside, my kitchen is off the side, balancing the sunroom on the other side. There's a chippendale balustrade on the (nearly) flat top that is like those of other homes in the same style in my city. My master bath addition is more 1930s Parisian influence than American. That's my luxury escape and I make no apologies for not building it true to American styles. That said, I did buy a 1933 pedestal tub and had it refinished. The front vestibule addition took a lot of research. I needed a place to come in from the weather on the front of the house as there is no garage attached. I had to look at colonials in the northeast to find vestibules that wouldn't muck up the look. I think it worked with a real stone exterior. We couldn't replicate the wood siding from 1939. We tried all types and ended up using lapped cedar siding on the addition on the side and back. Anything left from my renovation was given to the architectural salvage warehouse, where they didn't pay me, but gave me credit ---which we used to find trim pieces and parts, here and there. Sorry to post such a long explanation, but I think it's a reality check on what goes into renovating an older home. It's a conundrum for an owner--how much to put into the house.

For 3 kids, I would eliminate one sink in their bath so you can have more storage. Storage will be used 100% of the time. Sinks are used a few minutes each day and can be shared. I agree that gray is on its way out. Wood is in. If this were my kitchen, I would do a wood island. From your drawing, your aisle widths are not visible. You will need 4' given all of the appliances you have opening into that space. So that means your width for living space & dining space is maybe 17 feet? Assuming no seats at the island. So your living + dining with clearance to the island is 14x24. A dining table needs about 10 feet, which leaves 14x14 for living room. With your current layout, I would put your TV and fireplace side by side on the far wall. The corner fireplace will just take up space and make it difficult to decorate. And, yes, definitely put furniture into this drawing and change your window placement based on that. The window locations now are kind of between "rooms", which makes them awkward. Have you considered other arrangements for these spaces? I would actually change the location of your kitchen and living room, and make your kitchen an L shape in the top of that space, which will give you more protection in the kitchen and potentially more counterspace. Dining table next to the kitchen, oriented up + down. Living room in the front. The pantry may be challenging to incorporate, but you can do a reach-in pantry which (honestly) would be my preference after having a walk-in. If you keep the kitchen where it is, put the dishwasher on the other side of the sink so it's out of the prep path. If you use a microwave, put it near the fridge. For your master bath, if you can squeeze your closet to 7' wide, you can gain space in the bath. The extra 1'-0" doesn't give you much. I'm not sure if the closet was made that wide for the attic access? Also consider a pocket door for that closet, which will make accessing clothes behind the current door much more pleasurable (we have a swing-in door on our closet and half of my clothes are behind the door which is annoying). I would also consider adding windows in the kids' bedrooms to take advantage of the corner rooms. Our kids' bedrooms only have windows on one wall and I wish we had them on two.