Thanks for the nice compliments, Snowyshasta and organic-donna. We absolutely love our bathroom, now that we've been using it for a few months. We also saw this design and "borrowed'' it. Actually we saw a bathroom in a showroom, and immediately knew it was what we wanted -- the colors, the look, the fixtures. It wasn't too feminine, or too masculine, but just right for a his and her bath. I just asked my DH what he liked best about the bath (he's sitting here watching basketball), and he said the shower. It is equipped with three heads -- a handheld, a stationary one and a rain head. "It's like being in a spa,'' he said. I love all the storage. As you can see it's not a huge room, but we created a serene space for the both of us, with every nice feature we wanted, and with enough storage for all my girlie things away from our three teenage daughters, and our collection of nice towels. My husband loves having his own space too. His, of course, is not as packed as mine, but we actually still have some half empty drawers and shelves. The tower is so handy. Our cabinet maker tried to talk me into making the glass doors on that tower a frosted glass, but I insisted on clear glass, and I'm glad. Doesn't look great in the picture, but I love that I can see everything in there. You can always hide things -- like first aid medicines -- in pretty baskets and still keep them there. We love the radiant floor heating, and we especially love the Robern medicine cabinets, which have mirrors inside the doors and even along the back of them. Love, love love our new bath. It was costly, and like you, Organic-donna, we worry about money, especially with the economy being as it is. But we think we were smart shoppers about everything we bougtht, and know that if we ever want to sell our house (but we have no such plans), we'll get our money back. We built it for us, and every single day I am grateful for this pretty bath and have no regrets that we did this. Besides, I grew up in family of nine -- and we all shared one bath! I'm done with sharing.

Keep it there. It is a noise block. If your upstairs is hot in summer, you need better insulation/circulation (heat rises) between the roof and the upstairs, not to take out the insulation between the floors. If you do that, you will have a hotter house, all around. For winter, doesn't your upstairs have heat? Keep it that way. If you are losing a lot of heat out the roof, taking out the insulation will only mean that you will lose more heat as it will travel even faster from downstairs out your roof. If it is a problem, then you need to improve your roof insulation, not worry about what is between the floors. (btw--I live in a cape too, and it was finished at two times (first floor, then second). And, we love the sound barrier the insulation provides.)

lynn2006 - The Pot and Pan pull out is by Rev-A-Shelf, and not sold by Mid Continent. It fits in a 24" wide cabinet. I think they also have a skinnier one. I love it. And the LED UC lights are 2700. I wish I would have done a few more, but they are the perfect color. The overhead recessed lights came with the house, just regular lighting. Ideally, I would have changed them, but it wasn't in the budget. They are not really in the best layout, but it was too much trouble to do anything about it. myfoursons -- If you look closely, you'll notice that our KA Mixer in the cabinet is what my kids call "Notre Dame Blue". That was the only color my husband would allow. lcskaisgir -- yes, I'm so happy to get a deeper cabinet above the refrigerator and pull that away from the corner. Makes such a difference!

hamamelis, we don't have a coffeemaker but we do have a vitamix that gets a lot of use making smoothies. As for the question about why that workplace is unused... well, here is a picture of the kitchen as it currently is, and some lengthy observations about our behavior in the kitchen... you don't need to read all this :-) The red areas are theoretically available for prep, but in practice, people tend to move to the dining room table (which is not far away) when the preferred (blue) areas are unavailable. The workspace on the short wall is the top of the ikea "varde" that has a large butcher block top. (by the way, these three large drawers are the most useful part of the whole kitchen, holding all of our frequently used plates and bowls, cups and glasses, and most of our pots and pans.) In practice, the most preferred and busiest area is the 18" bit of counter to the left of the stove. This area is so busy because it's on the direct path between sink and stove. We also use the left half of the stove... we have a cutting board that we put over the left 2 burners. And we also extend this area with a very small kitchen cart (not pictured) that we put on the other side of the 18" counter. The area to the right of the stove mostly gets used as a landing area and also is cluttered with bottles of oil, kitchen utensils, and a big knife block. The areas next to the sink also get a lot of use, however no one likes to use the area in the corner of the sink wall. It is on the other side of the dishwasher from the sink, and we are always opening the dishwasher, creating an obstacle between the sink and the corner. Also, the light isn't as good there, because the kitchen doesn't have undercounter lighting, and the electrical outlet in that corner doesn't work. So, we hoped that the area on top of the "varde" would make a nice prep space, however no one uses it either. I think there are a lot of factors...the drawers are always being opened because practically all our stuff is there, so if you try to work there, you're always being interrupted by people opening drawers, and there is nowhere else to stand there; there is no task lighting (there are no outlets on that wall at all); people don't seem to like working on top of the butcher block surface; and finally it's farther away from the fridge than any of the blue areas (except the dining room table) and in order to get to the fridge, you have to cross all the traffic between the sink and stove. Noticing that we didn't like using this area for prep, we put a small bookcase on top of it, about 10" deep, and that is where we put our most frequently used pantry items, particularly things like snacks and cereal, because no one likes to use the upper cabinets. This puts these pantry items at a level where kids can easily reach. It reduces the depth of the countertop area in front of the bookcase/pantry to about 15", but this isn't a problem because it's mostly used for snacks, and assembling food on plates when there's something to serve. But those are all just problems with the current kitchen... I am sure that the new kitchen will work much better, thanks to the lovely people here who helped with the design :)