wow, your TW is so different than mine. Weird. Oh, well, I'm happy so that's what matters. :)

gb, sorry to hijack, but... Allison, that pantry is awesome! Love the light fixture -- I've never seen anything like it -- and the birdhouses. No wonder your DH wants to keep the doors open. (Puts the pressure on to keep it neat.) There's something about st@ples in glass jars that speaks to the gut -- very homey. gb, as you enter the k;tchen on that side of the U, what is on that arm of the U as you make your way to the pantry? Since it's inside the k;tchen and kids will be using it and there are appliances close by, I'd be afraid of the traffic getting in the way of your movements. You're trying to prepare dinner, they want a pre-dinner snack, they dart thru and open the pantry door and you have to wait or shut them up in there. It sounds like, if you have a place for it, it would be better to put it on the outside, at the tip of one of the arms.

Dh and I have lived in our current house for our entire marriage, 17 years. Truthfully, it was being built when we got married, so we lived in an apt for 2 months, then my parents for a month then it was ready. We live on the outskirts of a waterfront tourist town. We were supposed to be here for 3 years. Dh was in the Navy and this was not supposed to be our forever home as we anticipated being transferred by the Navy. However, dh realized the Navy was not meant to be his career as he didn't want to constantly move once we had kids. We wanted to live close to one of our families, but unfortunately, they live on opposite coasts. He is from the San Francisco Bay Area, and I am from the Wash DC area. Since it was the height of the tech boom at the time dh was getting out of the Navy, and we simply could not afford a home in the Silicon Valley, he got a job here, which fortunately is only 25 minutes from my parents. And here we've stayed. It is NOT my dream home. I don't even really like it. It was small when we moved in, and even smaller after having four kids! We looked around at moving to a different home, but absolutely love our neighbors and our community so finding a home that fit our needs was very difficult. We live in a high COL so home prices made it hard to find something that fit our desires while still being affordable. 10 years ago, we added on and while the space has helped, it hasn't changed the fact that our floorplan isn't desirable to us. We live in a waterfront community with very strict building codes, so we worked within that and have maxed out what we can do w/o completely gutting the house and starting over. With four kids in private school and one off to college in four years, I've pretty much resigned myself that we won't be moving anytime soon, nor can we really afford at this point to do any major changes that would help. I am constantly looking at houses for sale in the area, but the only affordable ones are in tract home subdivisions and that's not type of community we desire. So we make do with what we have. And it's not that my house is bad, but it's not set up well for entertaining, something I'd love to do more often, we had to give up our fabulous screened porch when we added on and cannot add another due to space constraints. I miss that terribly. On the bright side, we have wonderful neighbors, live in a waterfront neighborhood so the kids can fish, swim, kayak, ride their bikes freely (community is a peninsula w/no through traffic), etc. My dream is to move into the historic district in our tourist town where we can walk and bike everywhere. We live 5 miles from there now, but not on bike-friendly roads (though dh is an avid biker and rides them, no way my kids can). There are some really fabulous Arts & Crafts cottages, as well as many other architecturally interesting homes that date back to the 1700s. My hope is to move into one of them some day and have that be our forever home, with a second home in another climate. I wish I could love this home and think of it as my forever home, but it is not ideal for aging. We have three floors, with bedrooms all on the third floor as the garage/rec room are "under" the main living level. My parents still live in the house I grew up - they are going on 50 years there. They will stay until it's too much for them as it's perfect for aging, a rancher. All that said, as much as I want to move, the idea of moving is dreadful to me, which is probably one of the reasons I haven't really pushed for it. The thought of trying to keep my home in "show" condition with four kids, a huge dog that sheds, well, not fun. So perhaps a small part of me continues to find something undesirable about any of the houses I'm always looking at. I figure if I'm going to go through the hassle, the house has to be pretty close to what I want! Love all the interesting stories!

Unfortunately, I do not have any from when our kitchen was all put together. It's pretty trashed at the moment. I did look at the space and the re is a small filler piece. I held up a business card and the space from the edge of the stove to the edge of the side counter was less than the business card. The more important filler is on the blind cabinet since the stove sticks out further than a normal cabinet. Therefore you have to shift the drawers over further. I have to caution though, the corner area is not that usable. I kept a jar with wooden spoons, etc in there and might set a pan down, but for the most part, you don't want to be reaching over a hot stove.