Thanks Tim. I think I will relocate this and watch it.

This is the size the nurses came up with to cover the top of incubators and then the parents can take them home when the time comes. Theresa, Yes, I planned it that way.....using up those small pieces of novelties that are left over from larger quilts. The rectangles finish at 1"X2". This is the one I saw that inspired it but don't remember where it was.

I'd explore getting the washer and dryer and water heater out of the kitchen. If you live in a mild climate, you might look into a tankless hot water heater installed outside. We did that and it's been awesome, both in terms of reclaimed space and never running out of hot water. It's not cheap, but I think it would make a big difference. There are some washer and dryer all in one machines. I don't know much about them, but I have the impression they aren't optimal. But with a smaller place, I'm guessing this isn't for a big family so maybe those trade offs would be worthwhile? We had a very small kitchen in our first house. We remodeled but kept and painted the cabinets. Everything else was new, including all new appliances (the old ones were not working well anymore and were brown, black and white). We installed glue less click cork flooring, granite tile counter tops, and new lighting. We also took down two useless upper cabinets and replaced them with open shelves and a pot rack. That was about 16 years ago. We spent somewhere around 5k and did all the work ourselves except we paid a plumber to install our dishwasher and new faucet. General space saving/storage maximizing ideas (some may be too expensive or not work in your space): pot racks, cabinets to the ceiling, as many drawers as possible for lower cabinets, smaller appliances (18 inch dishwashers and small refrigerators--LG makes a 24 X 24 model--in particular), toe kick drawers, storage space built in between studs. if you provide a drawing to scale on graph paper, the kind people here will give you all sorts of free suggestions I am constantly amazed at how generous posters here are with their time and ideas

We've had so much rain the last week instead of snow, it's been refreshing :-P Last spring was so dry (pretty much zero precipitation in February and March) that I had to bust out my hose. I left it too late and my garden had a pretty rough start. I was a lazy waterer all season, in fact (caught up inside with my succs hehe) and everything kind of just "survived" out there, nothing really thrived at all (aside from the wolf willow, sigh. That stuff is indestructible.) kd