PP - your need to disagree or refute anything I offer is becoming so obviously overworked across the forums that no one should be surprised if after I suggested to someone that a 100 ft deep crack in the earth should be leaped in a single bound, you would campaign vigorously that it should only be attempted in 2. The gritty mix is so widely variable for water retention that it is difficult to make the claim it holds either too much water or too little, and at the same time suggest that you understand how to implement the concept behind the soil. They are mutually exclusive. If you don't understand that, you really shouldn't be using it because soil choice isn't going to compensate for that lack of understanding. Using the ingredients you used, it can be made very water retentive by increasing the volume of screened Turface and commensurately decreasing the volume of grit. It can be made less water retentive by increasing the amount of grit and decreasing the amount of screened Turface. If your soil had too little or too much water retention, it's not the soil's fault that you lack an understanding of how to implement the concept that inspired it. That's on the grower. If you don't want to go through the effort or expense of making it, I get that. A good grower with an understanding of how soil choice impacts what happens in the rhizosphere can grow in almost anything, with some reasonable attention to detail. You have had a great deal of trouble getting things to grow under conventional container culture - your posts are full of reports of the plant casualties in your recent past (pre gritty mix), yet you're an overnight expert on the gritty mix, pronouncing the soil a failure after a brief trial. The fact is, even if the gritty mix did happen to be a poor soil, it's still the grower who bears responsibility for the health of the plant - not the soil. It's not the recipe or even the ingredients that are important, and you missed that point by a wide margin. From your posts, it's easy to see you want something foolproof to grow in, that takes no effort to make, and doesn't require any sort of understanding of the science that governs both the successful and the failed growing experience. Those are very high expectations, but I do hope you find what you're looking for. BTW - Soil temperatures are determined by a LOT of variables. Growing in black cans in z9 is going to kill roots if you can't shade them - period. What drives soil temperatures is sun load on the container, area of container surface exposed to direct sun, the container's color/light transmittance (degree of opacity/translucence), the color of the soil at the surface (dark soils absorb more heat than light soils), and how well the soil exchanges gases. The two characteristic of the soil that actually matter most are soil color and rate of gas exchange. The lighter the soil, the less heat it absorbs at its surface. The greater its gas exchange, the greater the effect of evaporative cooling. The gritty mix is lighter in color than most other soils and has better gas exchange than anything you've grown in, so with all other things being equal, there isn't anything you're apt to grow in that wouldn't find you dealing with much warmer soil temps than the gritty mix. It runs 10-15* cooler on hot days than even the 5:1:1 mix, which is another well aerated soil. Best luck in the upcoming growth cycle. I hope you fare well. Al

I just installed an Ikea kitchen a little over a week ago (still finishing filler & trim), so I'll throw in my 2 cents. But I would second kailuamom's suggestion to check out the Ikea Fans website. It seems to get a little less traffic than here, but there are lots of professional installers and experienced folks there with Ikea-specific wisdom on those boards. As far as your questions� 1) My ceilings are nominally 8 ft, but in reality they are anywhere from 94-95 inches. We wanted to be able to put up crown molding on top with facia or face molding below, to help disguise the non-levelness of the ceiling, so that requires something in the realm of 4-6 inches. Including that plus the below-cabinet molding, there was no way the 39" upper would work. By my calculations, we could only have done the 39" with molding on top if we used very short molding. We went with a 30" instead. I felt that more molding and a bit of extra under-cabinet space would look and feel better than the larger cabinet squished in there. 3) (no #2? lol) I am positive I've seen this modification discussed on Ikea Fans. 4) My understanding is that miter joints (the diagonal seam you describe) are not a good choice for butcher block. I know people sometimes do it, but as it was explained to me, the miter approach can cause trouble down the line because of the way the wood will expand and contract with temperature and humidity. Butt joints are apparently the way to go. I have a peninsula in my kitchen, too, and at one point considered doing as you describe with the 26" wide piece along the wall and the wider counter for the rest of the peninsula. However, I decided that it was important to me to have peninsula be one seamless block, and tweaked our layout so that it worked to use the 73X39 counter. 5) I believe that as a general rule, your hood needs to be the same width or larger than your cooktop/range to be effective. So functionally, going with a 36" would not be good. In terms of appearance, personally, I am certain that I would not like it. A too-small hood just looks wrong to me. And the taller cabinets you have next to the 36" hood cabinet in your planner photos would probably be a fire hazard since you'd have some stove right below them. 6) Ikea doesn't sell specific filler pieces. You get some cover panels or toe-kick (they call it plinth) and cut that to whatever size you need. Where you need filler is wherever you have a gap between cabinets or between cabinet and wall that you want to fill in. From your pictures, it looks to me like you might need filler between the drawers to the right of the sink and the wall, and to the right of the upper above that. I don't know that you need anything between sink and dishwasher. The domsjo sink rests on the countertop, which would rest on the side edge of the sink cabinet. This is another question to search over at Ikea Fans, because there have definitely been lots of threads about this there.

Years ago at church rummage sale for 25 cents I picked up a narrow, maybe 6" wide, dish rack that suspends from the front and back of the sink. Is a few inches deep so holds things without them falling over or off. It's fabulous. I have been known to hang the dishcloth off the side, and it has little tabs that can poke out a little to hang things from. Unfortunately it's just white plastic, so is it gorgeous? No. Does it have a name so I could ever find another? No. Look for colanders, that will be your best, most useful, bet.

Re: height, I think the middle of the TV should be at eye level. That is usually above the floor if you are seated at the usual height. The issue with the piece under the TV has nothing to do with the color of the wood relative to the wood floor color. I like to think of trees like people and come in many colors, and all are good and can work well together. The issue with your piece is that it is not wide enough for the width of your TV. I like the width of the TV to be approximately 3/4 of the width of the table underneath it.