brandy, I have not been there, but I do know that 'wonbyherwits' has. If you do a search for her on GW, she also has her own website where there are links to photos she posted when she came back and you can probably contact her to ask her about it. :-)

Use this winter to read up on hardy palms. Lots of information on this site and others. Plan on starting with an affordable needle palm as they are the cold hardiest. Just realize in your zone that any palm will have to be winter protected indefinitely. Also this winter, study you garden spaces and try to locate the best micro climate. Usually the south facing wall is optimal. Will other plants need to be moved? Will the soil need to be improved? Better drainage? You can get started on that stuff before planting season. While some people caution against buying blue pot palms at Home Depot or Lowes, I've had great success with them, with few exceptions. I'm also in a much milder coastal location, so I have a slight advantage on the basic cold hardy palms. Just realize they are notoriously less hardy the first year or two. The real advantage is price. You can afford to lose a $40 palm, but not a $400 one. Plus get one that is large enough to sustain winters (with protection), but manageable enough to figure out how to protect it. You might do some research as to where needle palms are being sold next spring. After a successful first palm, you can think about more needles or experimenting with the next step on the hardy palm scale (sabal minors/dwarf palmetto). Again, Jim Hardy does amazing things with winter life support in his Iowa location.

That's happening to a lot of people. I see the strange characters. They're also showing up in recipes. So frustrating that we're 11 years into the 21st Century and this site is the same as it was when the internet was born.

My husband was thinking of using the old refrigerator space as a real closed off closet. I wanted to use it as a mail sorting counter/desk. How you use the old fridge space will depend on your needs. Do you need more closet space for coats more than a mail sorting/desk area? Is there somewhere else that coats can go? Ditto for the mail sorting/desk area. If you go with Plan B, perhaps the latter can go in the peninsula area. Maybe you can re-purpose the existing hutch. You can cover any interior mess with fabric or decorative paper on the glass cab doors (corn starch should work and won't harm the piece). I like that option B has a place for non-cooking people to be in the kitchen... Can you think of a way to add feature to option A? What would you think of a small, moveable (maybe on wheels) island? I think the peninsula seating and salvaging the DR hutch are a big plus of Plan B. I'll keep working on a way to add counter seating to Plan A. No, a small movable island is not the solution for Plan A. You do not have enough room between perimeter runs. A movable island would *always* be in the way. The only way I can see adding island seating of any sort is to go with a U lay-out with an 18" wide island that is nothing more than counter with seating. IOW, no storage. It would be similar in size to the long, narrow island in the kitchen pic that I posted on Saturday. Or something like this (but possibly even narrower, I think). How many counter seats do you hope to get? What is the minimum number? I'm open to moving the dining room/living room wall, but I'm thinking of planning that for "phase 2." Thoughts or considerations if moving that wall is to be done at a later date? Moving or removing the wall can be part of "phase 2." I would definitely add the window seat now, though, so that your narrow study/DR will be comfortable. I estimate that the room currently is about 8.5' wide, which is quite narrow for a dining room. A window seat will help ease the space crunch around the table. I'm estimating that your table is 42" round. If it hangs over the window seat by 4", that would leave 66" of aisle between table and LR wall, which allows some room for the table to be extended. FYI, 44" is NKBA's recommended minimum aisle width behind seating to allow people to walk past seated diners. 36" is enough room for people to slide past. We have 28" between kitchen table and couch but DH is the only one who sits on that side of the table; we only need enough room to pull the chair out, not an aisle between table and couch. I'm estimating that the bay is about 2' deep at its deepest. If you don't add a window seat but use that additional depth for a chair, you'd have 50" between table and LR wall and 36" between table and window. Or center it in the room and have 43" at the left and right end. This works as long as it's just a round table. You lose the additional 2' depth from the bay when you extend the table so you'd end up with 31" to the left and right of the table, which is very tight. That's why I suggest that you remove or move the existing wall between study and LR. It would seem out of scale to have a large LR, FR and kitchen and a dinky little DR. Moving the wall will require drywall/plaster repair and floor repair. Depending on what's inside the wall (plumbing, HVAC), you may have to relocate things to other walls. I think it would be a good idea to determine what's inside this wall when you do Phase 1 so that you can plan ahead and avoid having to redo work done in Phase 1 when you do Phase 2. A competent GC should be able to help you with this. How many adults do you think could comfortably be seated in the new living room? I estimate that the new LR will be 13' x 13.5' (guessing on the first since you didn't provide measurement for space, top to bottom). Smaller than you currently have but still doable, IMO. You should be able to get a full size couch and 2 chairs or 2 full size couches or some other configuration of seating. How many do you need to accommodate? What LR furniture do you already own? This seems like a detail, but it would be nice to have a spot to store brooms and mops with a shelf for cleaning supplies and an outlet for charging the handheld vacuum. Where would you put that? You can add a broom closet pull-out in the mudroom area or in a cab next to the pantry cabs. Or in your existing pantry area by the back stairs. Pics of the existing pantry area would be helpful to see how they could be reworked to suit your needs. Lastly, I can't thank you enough. This is all super helpful! I love your suggestions and your photos. Your kitchen is lovely. Are you a professional? Thanks again! You're welcome! And thank you! And nope, just a TKO floorplanaholic (Totally Kitchen Obsessed). =) What would be helpful for you and DH, and for me would be for you to determine what things you want/need to store in the drop zones, how much room these items need and what type of storage is most useful for them. Coat hooks? Cubbies for sports gear? Shoe storage? Drawers for school papers? Charging station? How much mail sorting area do you need?