If I understood your description of how you will be laying out your floor plan: You will have concrete walkways, and are concerned only about gravel under the benches? If so; then why pea gravel? It looks lovely when freshly laid, but over time, leaves, soil and other debris will accumulate and be a devil to remove and eventually, mat on the surface and clog drainage and if you try to sweep or rake it, you will take out as much of the gravel as dirt. Why not river stone? It would still give you wonderful drainage and if you use large stone, you can clean it with quite a bit of force from a hose without disturbing it. In fact, you could even wait until sections are dry and vaccuum away most all of the soil and debris. The key to that, is stones too large and heavy to be picked up with the vaccuum. As for depth: that really depends on the permeability of the soil beneath your GH benches. The less permeable, the deeper you need to dig down and fill with stone to prevent standing water. Frankly, if your "construction professionals" didn't check your soil maps or do any borings before they started construction, they wern't being very professional. But it's still not too late. Contact your local Soil & Water Conservation District. They will have the soil maps, and in-house experts to help you make sure your drainage is done correctly, courtesy of your state and federal taxes; for a change- at work- for you.

My great room and dining area do connect to the kitchen. After alot of thinking and trying to picture all the types of flooring I could use I think you are right springvillegardens. I think the laminate would look best. I'm such a visual person that I stress over choices I have to make. I'll actually be glad when this build is over just because I'm doing things so different from anything I've ever done before. We have always had light and airy looks. This will be a more dramatic, colorful home. We'll see. :) Thank you all for your input.

There is a switched wiring compartment box which is 0.875" in height. The UL listed black switched wiring compartment allows direct connection of romex or fexible conduit to the eW Profile Core. There is another wiring compartment box which is 1.125" in height which you might have seen. Here is a link that might be useful: eW Profile PowerCore product guide

First rule - never assume. What seems like an "obviously" or an "of course" to me hasn't been so much for most of the people we've talked to about doing our kitchen...so, no assuming. Anyway, as for your lighitng..why would it be "too much"? First and foremost, UC lighting is a task lighting and then secondary as an ambient light (some use for this and some don't). Lighting in glass cabinets is only an ambient/accent lighting, so it has nothing to do with if you have UC lighting or not. The real question is, do you want to use your UC lighting for ambient lighting or *only* task lighting? And if you plan on it (UC) for both, you'll probably want a dimmer for it. The UC lighting and the lights in the cabinets need to be on a separate switch...and it sounds like Sparky may not recognize that if he thinks it's "too much to do both", so don't assume that he knows to do that...make it very clear that's what you want. Lastly for now...it's always better to have too much light and turn it off than too little. And it's easier to install "too much light" when doing your reno. rather than trying to add it later.