I spent years buying rugs for a very long but very narrow galley kitchen. Do I match? Do I get both the same size? Do I get rubber backing? Do I get design or solid? No matter --- I always ended up tossing them because they had to be washed so often that they would fall apart in no time. Then I found Indoor/Outdoor rugs on Overstock dot com They come in so many prints and colors now. I bought one long 3 ft. wide printed runner almost 3 years ago. When Vac'ing isn't enough I take the runner out back on the driveway, sprinkle some laundry detergent on it, hose it down, sometimes use a broom on it to loosen any ground in dirt, rinse it off and hang it on the dog-eared fence to dry. Because I have tile, my feet and legs don't ache so badly after a long day of cooking because the runner covers the triangle (stove/sink/fridg)in my kitchen. Mistakes? What I thought would be perfect but turned out more work/stress/hassle than it was worth? Oh Heck, I could write a book!

Rita / Bring Back Sophie 4 Real -- We installed the Rachiele sink in 2017. There hasn't been any cleaning issue. Far better than the "normal" sinks we had before (several sinks, several houses and apartments). Although it was the most expensive "appliance" in the remodel, it's been worth every penny. I really love that the mess stays in the sink and the counter never needs more than dusting. Remember that Rachiele sinks aren't zero radius, they are about 3mm radius. That makes a big difference.

Jen, your oven thermostat can be recalibrated or perhaps even replaced, most definitely! IIRC you live relatively close to an urban area - try calling around to appliance repair companies to ask who in your area works on old stoves and doesn't just say to throw them out. Emphasize its sentimental value - if you don't object to a "little white lie" you could say you inherited it from Grandma or something. (Well, you inherited it from someone's grandma anyway, when you bought the house! Right? :-)) You might also want to check out The Old Appliance Club, which rebuilds thermostats and locates replacement parts, although you'll still need a local person to actually put it in. I have the hots for Mary Lu's sink. Big time. When we were starving college students, DH and I once rented part of an 1800s farmhouse where the entirety of the kitchen equipment was a freestanding double-drainboard sink almost exactly like Mary Lu's, a stove that made AuntJen's look ultramodern :-) a somewhat random old refrigerator that sounded like a jet engine, and a built-in hutch about 3' wide. That was all. No cabinets, no counters. We prepared everything on the kitchen table and stored the dry groceries on bookshelves in the living room! Oh, and the bathroom consisted of a toilet in the corner of the kitchen. Just standing there in the corner of the kitchen. LOL The week before we moved in the landlord boxed it in and added an RV-sized shower, which is all that would fit. The lady who had the apartment before us had lived there for over fifty years and was perfectly content to wash with her old pitcher and bowl, so landlord wasn't going to go fooling around in there. (I think she came with the house when he bought it!) She had decorated the apartment (except for the kitchen, which was from somewhere around 1900-1910) in 1940 and it was virtually untouched when she died in 1994 and we moved in.

Beautiful rug, justgotabme! I really like that design. Pip's a big boy (around 18 lbs. worth of goober-cat), and we have enormous boxes. The one he pooped outside of today is definitely big enough to accommodate him (he DOES pee in there), and we also have a large, shallow plastic tote - the under-bed storage kind - that we've repurposed as a kitty potty. Putting a plastic runner under/in front of the box he pooped outside of today is an excellent idea. I was going to get a litter-trapping mat (have one of those upstairs and it works well), but a piece of plastic is a better idea given our special circumstances. Did I mention - Ugh, cats?