My citrus have started the party out doors. Nagami kumquat in very bad shape but I believe it will live.. It is marked with the flying baseball cap. the crown marks my sweet lee tangerine tree. It was on its death bed then and is doing very well since planting there. The large tree below is my seed grown meiwa kumquat tree. In the process of moving it in and out I dropped it once and forgot to put in the spacer and burned the trunk with the light bulb. It has lost 1/3 of its leaves and shows no sign s of growth the smaller tree is a seed grown nagami kumquat. It is doing very well. 3 happy sweet lee tangerine trees from seed in bottomless gallon food tins. I had placed 3 sweetlee trees and a nagami kumquat tree in the community garden. Squirrels dug 3 sweetlee trees and the nagami up, one was replantable but died. the seed grown nagami was in critical damaged and was moved on to the roof as seen in the flying baseball cap. All four trees were very un happy not because the were grown from seed Here is a link that might be useful: http://s1094.photobucket.com/user/wreristhechimney/slideshow/Seed%20grown%20Meiwa%20kumquat%20tree

We have a horizontal Andersen casement window over our jetted tub that is approximately two by six feet. It sits up high enough so that when you stand in the tub you can see out, but no one can see in. When we were building, our contractor suggested this because he said most times people put in big windows and then immediately cover them up. While it seemed an odd suggestion at first, it's one of the best things we did. The window lets in a great deal of light and I've never had to worry about window treatments.

Hi jeri, I have not talked with the installer yet on my decision in no longer gluing the floor but floating it. My neighbor has a floated 5"" wide Merbau hardwood floor and I like the way it feels when I walk on it. It has no hollow sound and feels solid but has a tiny bit if cushion so it does not feel like I am walking on my hard tiles in my two foyer areas. My other neighbor's very dark 5" wide plank floor feels very hard to walk on since it was glued. I am hoping my installer agrees with me and feels it is OK to float the 5" wide Triangulo Engineered 1/2" thick with a 3 MM sawn cut veneer of Brazilian Cherry on top floor ( have a concrete floor and installing a sub-floor would cause problems in my door ways and raise my floor much higher than my Porcelain Tile foyers so I decided to go with an engineered wood floor that has a sawn cut veneer). I just hope I can refinish it if I ever need to since BR-111 says you can refinish the floor a few times and I am hoping the floating installation does not affect this.

Thanks again to everyone for responding. We had not considered a white island, but that is something to thinks about. Wow, kalapointer, thanks for posting the pics of your cabinetry. The colors are very close to what we were thinking of. We're beginning to back off the dark cherry, though, because of worries about its darkening further -- with only one window (and a large skylight), our kitchen might not be as bright as yours. We're not sure. Cabinet buy says cherry darkens, but maple yellows ... editionk, you're right, kpasso's kitchen looks very similar to ours, it's about the same size, and it's laid out almost exactly the same with a similar size island! It's very helpful to see those pics. And in answer to your questions: (1) Do you have a pantry / larger food storage somewhere that I don't see in your layouts? Yep -- in the second picture you can see a door beyond the fridge. That's the door to the utility/laundry room. The pantry is to your left as you go through the door :-) (2) Have you considered changing the door/drawer on the left of the stove to a bank of drawers? Ditto on the one on the left of the sink. Hadn't thought about that. I think the only three-drawer stacks now are next to the dishwasher (for utensils) and across from the sink on the island. (3) You mentioned dark areas/shadowy areas in your house. A dark red cherry finish in a kitchen with just one window might feel too dark. A few glass uppers can lighten the look a lot along with the right paint and backsplash. What are you thinking so far for those elements? We are planning glass uppers on all the upper cabinets around the sink (two to the right, one to the left) and there are 1-foot cabinets on the wall across from the sink that don't show up in these renderings but that also have glass uppers. We were going to do glass uppers around the range as well, but decided that was too much. (4) Will you have a microwave? I think I see a TV in the layout, but no micro (unless it's in the island). Yes. The microwave will sit on the counter in the corner under the TV. My husband doesn't think it's safe to lift possibly heavy hot dishes from a raised area, and I see his point. (5) I expected your door style would be Craftsman considering the renderings and your description, but the Merillat door style is quite traditional. The cherry Paprika color is nice, is that what you're considering? I think that is the name of the color. It does seem to be pretty dark when you look on their website. I am not sure what a Craftsman door style is, but the cabinet design guy has mentioned Shaker style a few times. It's a bit too plain for our tastes, though. We are also considering Kraftmaid cabinets. The frameless drawers are appealing because they have several inches more width for the same cabinet size. But the design we like would be about 35% more (!) than the Merillat Classic because not only is Kraftmaid more to start with, the design is much fancier, including curved wood on the face of the cabinet door. I can't remember the style name and it doesn't look easy to find on the Kraftmaid website. I wonder if those fancy doors would overwhelm our smallish kitchen anyway.