Thank you so much for your help on my previous post, "Fried Brain... Ultracraft/Barker."

A bit more about me to aid with understanding:

Family of 6, 4 kids (7-14). Cook and bake from scratch nearly daily. Family meals still a huge priority. I have posted and lurked on garden web since we moved to this house nearly 6 yrs. ago. The kitchen needed help then. It's screaming for it now. Cabinets are falling apart. Unfortunately, it is in the heart of the house with 6 entry points, flooring goes from the front door to the garage... It's also the darkest room in the house in desperate need of a huge window to view the woods and wildlife behind us. (yes, even in the suburbs of DC/Baltimore I manage to see that!) The remodel will change the flooring and give us a new, much larger window. I'm still on the fence of whether or not to use a bay window or not. I WANT it, but it's not a need. I had thought to give it up and just have a huge window... but now dh, who hasn't said anything but "yes dear" says he'd like to bump it out too.

Last spring, we started the process of the remodel. I had decided I wanted to a 2 tier island, but I knew many people were tearing them out. I decided to "test drive" the idea by construction my own "Cardboard Island." Well, apparently I am a master engineer. The "Cardboard Island" is STILL UP AND BEING USED!!! I put it up the first week of June. (& Yes, it works very well for us. I appreciate the boundary it creates for the island and the clutter that accumulates in family life.)

For reasons unknown, the planning stage was drawn out longer than I'd like and then we hit a huge road bump in the fall. Without being overly dramatic, I'll put a public health warning out there... it is possible to nearly die from a kidney stone. I had never had one before. The day started out great with attending a kid's soccer game. In between games, the pain began and I knew something was wrong. I went to the ER and they held me for awhile, giving pain medication. They nearly sent me home, but noticed I had a fever. While in observation that night, I crashed/septic shock. According to my dr, if I had gone home, I would have died. They nearly lost me in the hospital. I was in the ICU for several days and finished the week in the hospital. All from a kidney stone which got stuck and then an infection took over. :-(. Thankfully all is well now, but it was a long recovery. Back off the public service announcement and the passage of time that derailed our kitchen....

During that length of time, we changed contractors/designers. Not for any bad reason -- we loved our previous people too... but my brother asked me if he could do the job for us. I have 150% faith in him and wanted to help him start his new business here. (He has been a custom builder for years in a different state, moved here and worked for a large custom home building company in a management capacity... but has decided to go in a different direction. There are ZERO worries about competence or industry knowledge... and he already has a huge network of subcontractors he knows etc.)

Over the years while waiting, we've done a few things that I picked up from garden web. LOVE my single basin silgranit sink! Dh built me a banquette and table which works perfectly for us. Before he did that, there was a half wall in the kitchen which did not leave enough room for a table for 6. We were able to push into the family room just a bit to make room for our table. :-). 2 years ago, I painted my uppers on the "L" part of the kitchen cream to see how I would like it. I love it. It still gives us the warmth of the dark wood we love, but the cream uppers open and light up the space for us.

I have decided to splurge on appliances. When we moved here, we had to buy all new appliances. I quickly picked up everything whirlpool in the moving confusion. 6 years later the only one I'm still happy with is the fridge -- which got moved back to the mudroom. OTR micro died a looong time ago. Stacking W/D - the washer DIED 1 week out of warranty. Oven still works, but it's wonky with temperature. Dh keeps threatening to take the DW to the target range for shooting practice when we remodel. It doesn't clean well and has broken too many times to count. It's a piece of junk currently held together with zip ties that I replace monthly so the racks still work. Lovely. So yes, I'm splurging with appliances. (bosch DW, induction - probably flex induction, wall ovens for my bad back... -- keeping the samsung CD fridge we currently have, getting a good hood)

Now that I've written a book - Dk cherry lowers/island/talls... creamy white uppers on the "L" part of the kitchen.

A few years ago, I had help from the board coming up with this design -- I definitely want to keep it relatively intact, but perhaps there are minor changes that could be made to save costs?

Here is my kitchen plan with a few things changed already from the advice in the previous thread.

1. Switched appliance garages to "hutch style" with the idea of beadboard (or some style panel that fits the house) with corbels on either side.

2. With that change, I was able to decrease depth of the upper cabs. I still want my "dish cab" a bit deeper at 15", but surely that's better than 18." The other uppers all reverted to the standard 12".

3. That 6" base cab -- I don't know what to do with it. I don't really need a spice pull out and they are more cost anyway. I thought just a standard door with full depth shelves inside. I can store cutting boards... etc. "Vertical storage" style.

4. I used standard sizes for the cooktop wall. I had added a bit more to the cabs just to utilize space. Not worth a large price increase.

Areas I'm not sure about:

1. Open cabs -

Upper corner. It looks good :-) and I don't know how helpful a cab would be there anyway. I guess if having a door on that cab is significant savings I might use it for not often accessed storage. Would you put a single 24" door there? 2 12" that open normal? that hinge open for better corner access?

End of island. I don't know how to handle this one. I was looking for a place for the microwave. Not used a ton, but it still needs to hang around. I didn't want to see it. Just wanted easy access. We currently have a TINY one that would fit on the upper shelf in that cab with plenty of room to spare. The other shelves would have baskets with sandwich bread, snacks, lunch bags etc... KID CENTRAL. Those could be behind doors, I suppose... but that brings me back to what to do with the microwave.

2. Dining Room Wall - (oops, didn't label it in pic...)

This entire wall was going to be the dk. cherry cabs. It is mainly for the fridge and wall ovens... and finding storage. I wasn't thinking of having any countertop on this side, but if uppers/lowers combined are still less $$ than talls

?? I don't want the cabs deep... As strange as this sounds, the goal is to get as much stuff in there... but still look rather open/roomy. I hate feeling closed in. I thought shallow pantries would fit the bill. Maybe a shallow base (bar height to mirror island) with a wall cab sitting on top of it?