Milehigh, Quite in to the figs with 70 or so varieties but it is a relatively new obsession for me and while I am reading and learning as much as possible I can make a mistake BUT from the way I understand it..... Some figs do have a big breba crop but need the wasp for the main crop, they are called San Pedro types and Desert King is one of them. On most common figs the breba fruit is bigger but inferior to the main crop figs in quality and that is why most people if they can only get one crop due to the length of their growing season shoot for the main crop figs and forgo the brebas. In really really short season areas the breba fig is about all they can get to mature. BUT it still needs protection because the embryo figs for the breba crop will be damaged at like 15-20 degrees. In zone 5 you should be able to ripen main crop figs if the plant is in a favorable south facing location, ideally against a wall. Probably easier for you to have it in a pot though. Pots offer the advantage of being able to move it out on warm days and the pot heats up and the fig grows earlier. Yes that means if cold weather is predicted you would have to move it back inside where it would not freeze. Breba figs grow on last years wood so it would be lignified (brown).....main crop figs grow on wood that grew in the current year and would still be green...well should still be green when the tiny fig first forms. Later in the summer that wood will turn brown. There are a ton of growers in the north east part of the country and up in to Canada that grow the figs in pots and successfully ripen the figs. It does take some dedication. There are some very hardy types that will grow planted in the ground and survive though in zone 5....they may need protection. I'm in Florida so that part of the hobby I am not well versed in:) Part of the process that helps is the pinching out of the apical tip every 6 leaves. If you don't do that the fig wants to just keep making green growth and by the time it decides to make figs it is way too late to be able to ripen them. If you pinch the plant it will produce the figs much earlier in the growing season so they will ripen before your first frost. This post was edited by bamboo_rabbit on Mon, Sep 30, 13 at 11:48

We are combining all those functions in the house we are building. Between the house and the garage is a generous, triangular room that is roughly 400 square feet. Cabinets are going in this week, so I should know shortly if what we planned works as intended. When you exit the kitchen/living area, you go through the mudroom to the garage. From the kitchen to the garage is a little less than 6' on the short wall (between the doors to those parts of the house). The short wall has a window, and the wall opposite it is much longer and has two double-wide windows and a door to the patio. This door is the shortest path between the house and our barn (horse farm). Along this wall will be desks and filing cabinets. It will be a drop zone for mail and bills and paperwork, and our printer will be located here. We use laptops and the printer will be on an airport station so we can work from any room of the house and keep the mess and noise of the printer in the office area of our mudroom. This wall is about 14' long (not counting the door, which is at an angle). Along the wall between garage and mudroom are the washer, dryer, sink, cat genie, and cabinets and countertop space. We don't have a linen closet in the master, so we will store linens here in the laundry area. This wall is about 28' long. The wall between the kitchen/living area and the mudroom has the "mudroom" function with cubbyholes, hooks, and bench. Also in this wall is a large closet for coats and boots, opening into the mudroom. A generous pantry is located behind the bench and cubbyholes and opens into the kitchen. And a small broom closet at then end of the wall opens into the space facing the short wall, where you travel from kitchen to garage. There is a generous amount of space in the middle of the floor, which may be left open, may eventually have a table or a church pew. I need to spend some time with the space once we move in to be sure. Our house is about 1800 square feet on the main footprint, not counting this mudroom or the garage. We hope that this area keeps all the mess of living out of the main house and is a very utilitarian room. We went with the new, large pattern Formica and solid oak (non-custom) cabinets in this area, saving the $$$ over higher-end materials to put into less utilitarian parts of the house. (Formica here let me have built-ins in the study.) Hope this helps.

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?

@clueless, there is actually 42" between the counter and the pantry wall. And we're doing bypass doors, specifically so I don't have to move people sitting there to open the pantry. The hall alongside the bathroom is 40". There are an additional 6" between the wall and appliances once you get past the bathroom. So with a 10" deep shelf, it would still leave plenty of room to pass. It's not a through way, just in and out for primarily me. However, we do plan to live here forever, so storage here will be modular or freestanding so we can change it easily as our requirements change. Like finally having both girls grown out of Girl Scouts so I can retire from my post as "assistant troop leader in charge of pretty much everything creative" and get rid of troop craft supplies. This is the only really usable storage we have on the ground floor other than kitchen cabinets and the bathroom vanity. We do have a closet under the stairs, but the configuration of the walls in there makes it unbelievably bad. That's a project for another time. Not using it is not an option