"Six more weeks of sweater weather and no extra ice in your iced tea?" "jan, sweetie, you need to put your glasses on." "You're seeing an armadillo pokin' his head out, bless your heart." Suzy and Wanda, are y'all making fun of our own General Beauregard Lee? He is not an Armadillo, he resides in his antebellum mansion in Lilburn, Georgia and he did not see his shadow today. He is quite good at predictions, however he did miss it in 1993 when we had the blizzard and 2 feet of snow. Sweater weather and extra ice in my tea, indeed. Just last Friday the schools and businesses closed early due to snow and icy roads and I had to go to the store for milk and bread. :0)

Wow, it's been such an ordeal. I hope she can start to heal now that the legal process is behind her. It's going to be hard to get back to "normalcy". I can't get over the length of the sentence (I'm not complaining). You sure don't get that kind of time for an offense like this in Canada. I have a lot of men on my caseload who are on probation for domestic abuse, and they barely get a slap on the wrist. And once again, good for you Vickey. You have been an amazing support for her, and under the most trying conditions too.

Having lived with old kitchens before this modern one, I'm so used to curling my fingers under bin pulls that I use the horizontal handles here the same way! The old plain bin pulls had the screw mounts to the sides & the fancy, heavier ones had a third screw in a design above. Children & those with arthritic hands find them easier. Short drawers had a central pull & long drawers needed two. Doors/cupboards had latches, but the doors weren't overlaid. I've seen bin pulls used sideways on modern doors with magnetic latches & think it often looks nice. Agree they keep the finish clean & with pale or painted cabinets, that's a huge plus. I'd take the brass fittings off once a year to clean & polish, but I have mariners in my heritage so a preference for shiny metals is genetic... What's up with with your cabinet KD? Who would put up with the hassle of renovating without wanting a very specific outcome?? Unless he gets those who give him a magazine picture or two & say "do this"? Used to know women who'd hire an interior designer to do the same thing with their rooms. Designers would give them 3 choices in fabric or flooring & that would determine the designer's next round of choices. And that's before CAD when designers sketched & colored their renderings! When it came to kitchens and baths, the actual work was done before move-in or during extended Summer vacation. Most of us here live in a different world than that! Your sanity is just fine in my view and your kitchen will turn out much more functional & beautiful for your thoughtfulness. I'm with you on the approach of the more you know & plan, the fewer surprises down the line and the happier the outcome.

Mama-goose, forgot about this when we returned home, finally now responding to your request for kitchen photos with our salvaged drafting-table swing stools. Apologies to all if it is bad form to resurrect this older thread to (very belatedly) answer a request from a few months ago... Here is how our salvaged/re-purposed swing stools look now: Tucked under overhang: Swung out: The original stool seats were a light wood (pictured below) which we liked, but they were also pretty small diameter seats. We used them with original seats for the first few months, then decided to replace the wood seats with something new in larger diameter. We found the above pictured stool seats with back support, and that has been ideal upgrade for us. Those poor guys whose early-1900's drafting jobs had them perched on these tiny seats for the whole day!!! We had the original iron swing arms blasted to bare metal and powder coated in a matte black. Our contractor built/welded support posts for the stools that are also the support frame for the counter overhang (painted matte black). We bolted this frame down to the sub floor (old pier & beam house), and replaced stone kitchen floor over the baseplate. The big/wide/flat steel baseplate is plenty stiff enough to support the stools. We did thicken-up the back wall and add an internal stiffener for the (built in place) lower cabs on the peninsula, as the coutertop support frame is also bolted to the back wall of the cabs, but it is not really carrying much load from the stools. Mitered edge on our countertops totally conceals the support frame (by design/plan) unless viewing from beneath (and makes the stone slab look really thick and chunky-solid) We were pretty fussy about the stool position(s) and swing, we wanted this to be very comfortable usable countertop seating... So, our contractor built this "mock up" support post that we could bolt the swing stools to, and move around to test sit/swing/swivel relative to the cabinet back-wall (knee/leg space) with different stool heights, countertop overhang lengths, and support post positions, to dial in the ideal geometry for the seat swing/support. The Mock-up "test seat": The photo I linked to in prior comment was from the ebay listing for the stools, when/as we bought them salvaged from turn of century drafting tables: