Great thread. I've made many mistakes over the years. When I needed drapes for 5 very tall and wide windows, I thought I would save money by making them myself. I ended up buying 30+ yards of a synthetic moire on sale at a chain fabric store, along with drapery lining, and after making up one panel, found that even with lining, the light coming through the fabric made the color brighter and kind of gaudy. The bolt is still in an upstairs closet, and I found 96" crushed voile panels online that I like very much for about $20 each. Lesson: keep it simple. A couple of years ago, I hired a local designer mainly to help me choose paint colors and advise on accessories/tweaking. In the master bedroom, I had some custom green silk drapes that I never liked that much, and she talked me into spending the money to have them interlined and a printed fabric border added, along with custom shams with the same fabric. I had already spent $2000 on the drapes, and now I spent another $1000, and I still didn't like them. I took them down, and they and the matching euro shams are in the closet in the guest room. I put up natural linen-look semi sheers from target, and I like them better. Lesson: keep it simple, and don't throw good money after bad. We weren't using our formal dining room much, and the same designer suggested moving the dining furniture into one end of our large living room, and making the old dining room into a den and the old den into a home office, which was really needed. Since I wanted to replace the old LR sofa anyway, I moved the den furniture into the living room and had a custom ($$$)sofa made for the new den. It was not a huge space, and we tried to keep the sofa scaled down. When it arrived, the fabric was gorgeous, the style just what I wanted, but the seat depth was so shallow that it was not very comfortable. I had also slipcovered the old den chairs to go with the new sofa ($$). I ended up moving the new sofa to the living room, where it was more appropriate for perching ladies than lounging TV viewers, and now none of the colors I had chosen (with help paid for by the hour) for the LR and new den would work. Plus, the newly slipcovered den chairs (on swivel rocker bases, I love them) don't work that well with the old sofa color. Fortunately, I hadn't painted yet. Lessons: Don't buy furniture without sitting on it. Choose paint colors after you are certain of your fabrics. Don't let your designer talk you into stuff you don't really need. Keep your major pieces fairly neutral. The worst was the master bath update. I had chosen tile for the walls and floor, and the tile vendor gave me a couple of names for the installation. The guy with the higher quote was very highly recommended but I went with the other guy because he said he could also do some other work I needed done. Even though I had a gut feeling I was making a mistake. He did a horrible job on the tile, broke my toilet, and disappeared. I had to buy more wall tile and pay another contractor to replace it, and I'm still stuck with a bad job on the floor. Between the cost of doing the job, redoing the job, and buying a new toilet, I could have had the better contractor do the job, and replaced the vanity and sink as well, and upgraded to a better tile. Lessons: A jack of all trades might be a master of none. Go with your gut. Ask contractors for their license numbers and CHECK IT online with your state to see if it's in effect. I've made more, but these are the recent highlights, LOL. I feel better having confessed them here.

ash5181 - We bought several different slides and tested them on drawers. These were the best of what we could find (either online or in big box stores). They were a bit stiff at first, but repeated use has mellowed the resistance from the soft-close mechanism. I'm really glad we installed soft close, but I wish we had researched more before building the drawers. Turns out, undermount slides require a higher mount for the drawer base (to provide room/mounting surface for the Blum slides) - and DH was NOT going to rebuild or start again. A few slides are giving us trouble, but that could be installation error, as they are tricky to shim/balance. We learned a lot, and will be uber-prepared for the next kitchen :)

I get the feeling from reading quite a few of these granite threads that these companies all do it slightly different. My fabricators had the holes drilled at their shop, and had me keep my drawers in place when they installed. It would have been a fairly clean installation except for the fact that they had to router the sides of my sink base to accomodate my large sink. Sawdust got all over the contents of the immediate drawers (thankfully the drawers were in place so that the glides didn't see any of that). This doesn't answer your question about how to tape the glides, but is just an observation... Good luck!!

Drawer Essentials, that second pic makes my heart pitter-patter with organizing love! I've measured what I have available, but need to look at those odd tools like ladles. A fair number of my kitchen things are in storage but I do have my most, and moderate, use items. OK, I'm armed with a list of things to stuff into the display drawers! They're 36" wide drawer stacks on that wall so there should be plenty of room...I hope. I've been saving a lot of vertical storage pics these last few weeks, so that's definitely on my mind. As far as what and where, it's a work in progress. I forget what I have because so much is packed away. Pantry - canned and dried goods, quick breakfast and lunch foods, items waiting to go into point of use rotation, basic food storage needs, ziplock bags, DH will have a junk bin somewhere in this area unless I can figure out an option in the laundry room. Bulk flours/sugars/etc. Baking area - Measuring tools, scoops/spoons, mixer accessories, sifter, wax paper, cling-wrap (may be in secondary prep), pie plates, baking tins. Sink - colanders Trash/recycling. We compost but I've realized that it needs to be taken out after prep or they let it sit. Prep - knives, can opener, graters, other prep utensils, towels, bowls, mortars and pestles, food processor, blender, casserole dishes stored vertically (or big pots) depending on room. Cook - spatulas, spoons, ladles, etc., saucepans, skillets and sauté pans, vertically if possible. Secondary prep/oven area - towels, oven mitts, foil, parchment paper, accessories for oven and TO on counter, thermometers, tupperware type containers. Deep drawer will be for large pots (or casserole dishes). I'll have to work in there before I know how I really want the large drawers arranged. Above oven - sheets pans, cooling racks, oven racks Below oven - other bakeware or grilling items Pullout for broom, mop, Swiffer, paper towels, cleansers. I'm still pondering how to utilize it well. I need something there for my side-opening oven clearance. Cleanup zone is opposite and there are drawers and cabinets for silverware, dishes, glasses. Fridge wall is ~60" and perpendicular to the work zones. Between the dining room and next to the fridge I have an 18" drawer stack for coffee/tea items, cups, travel mugs (tall!), shelves for cookbooks, above, and a squat upper cab for vertical platter storage. Cabinet above fridge - infrequent use items I'm remembering more tall things during this exercise. And, I'm feeling overwhelmed and have to take a break! I'll read about someone else's indecisiveness/conundrums for a while, LOL.