MrsPete, I'll run through the numbers again - I am not too proud to admit it if I made a mistake. I was astonished too! Here's the new layout: currently I have a desk and upper cabinets in the 32"x42" space on the bottom left; the whole room is open to the dining room. The general layout is the same, though I did move the fridge 8" to the left, and extended the range side 8" as well. That makes the fridge stick out past the end of the wall, but it is all enclosed with new built-in pantry, so it doesn't show. The pantry is shown as 10 and 11 on the drawing, and goes to the 8' ceiling. The left side is 20" deep; the right side is 12" deep. The cabinets are framed, partial overlay - with a LOT of frame showing (wasting a lot of space). Currently on the fridge side I have a stack of 4 drawers, the DW, and a 3/4 corner lazy susan (no drawer above). The sink wall is only 10' long, has two 36" lazy susan corners, and a 48" sink base! Obviously it was the cheapest and easiest solution when the house was built - certainly not the most efficient. In my calculations, I did not include that space; it holds my trash can, and I did not include my new trash drawers in the calcs of the new space (I considered it a wash). I also did not include the new sink base (which will be only 30"). In the new design, I'll have a diagonal lazy susan in the left corner (as you face the sink); a narrow base cab for cookie sheets, with a small drawer above; and a 4-stack of drawers. The corner to the right of the sink will be closed off. On the range side, I currently have one base cabinet with doors, and a 1/2 shelf. I'm moving the range a foot to the left, giving me more counter space to the left of the stove, and giving me room to add base drawers on both sides. Admittedly, I didn't give full credit to the existing upper diagonal cabinets - because I can't reach or even see most of what's in there. I know there is junk in the back of most of them, but it just sits there. I expect I'll get rid of most of it when I empty them. In my calculation I used the door width times 12" - the space I actually use. Currently the cabinets go up 7'; the new ones will go to the ceiling, 8'. Just adding that additional foot (assuming one extra shelf all the way around) adds 18 sq ft! The extra 8" on each end of the U adds 5.3 sq ft of uppers (assuming 4 shelves). Above the fridge went from a 12" deep shelf that I can't use without a stool, to a pair of fridge-depth, full extension pullouts: a gain of at least 6.5 sq ft. So I've increased upper cabinet space by 30 sq ft! That's without even skimping on the existing upper corners as comparison. By replacing the single base cab I now have with 2 sets of deep drawers, I gain 6 sq ft. Not counting the big drawers, I'm going from 6 to 10. Three of the new drawers (in a 4-stack) are deeper than what I have now, but that doesn't show up in my math. The pantry has 32 sq ft of shelf space, plus 5 sq ft of drawer space, two 20" deep file drawers, and a space behind doors on the 20" side that will serve as my "desk" - two wall outlets for phone chargers, calendar, bulletin board, place for papers that need attention (currently this all is on the top of my small desk). I do currently have some drawers in the desk, and upper cupboards above, so the pantry space isn't all gain. OK, I must have screwed up somewhere - I'm not getting to a gain of 80 sq ft. I'm still pretty happy with what I'm getting!

Sorry about the error - I'd previewed, so couldn't check back after 6, then the original skipped the 7 and 8 in the sequence, going to 9, and I assumed that the hidden number following the 9 was 8, to multiply to 72. ____________________________ Still wrong - I'd assumed that the hidden number was one above the one shown in each case ... ... but then when I got to 9, instead of considering the hidden number to be one above, which would make the answer "90" ... I assumed that the hidden number was one below the visible one, to provide 72. So ... can I change my reply? How about 90, which most folks said? And can I also, in spite of what I claimed, say, "O.L."? ole joyful ... wrong - again! Oh, well - no one wins 'em all!

Math was really good. I got to tooling around looking the others and I canNOT stop laughing at Healthy Food. I don't understand half of what the kids are saying, hey, they're kids, but the rest is hilarious! "Guess what I'm gonna sing a few words of a song... TWinkle, twinkle little star... Guess what song it was! Guess! There is only one minutes left in my brain!... Yes!!!! It's twinkle twinkle little star". And then he grins hugely. I love the way kids think and what just comes spurting out! And the adults recreating it in their own scenes. Pure joy! Just what I needed. Oops. I was glad I wasn't wearing any mascara today, but I am. Must go clean up from crying so hard.

hokie, GDD would normally only be used as a measure of growth and development of a plant or insect, So with plants you could use them to determine when a seedling will likely reach transplant size or to flower, or to ripen fruit. The best time to set out transplants (assuming they have reached that stage) is more determined by soil temps and air temp forecasts. And maybe some other things. Its easy to determine your GDDs from just high and low daily temps. And knowing your base temp, which I think is 50F for tomatoes for example. A day with a high of 90F and a low of 70F would give you a mean temp of 80F and 30GDD (80-50) for that particular day. Just keep adding those GDDs up from your day of transplanting or direct seeding. There are more complicated models out there based on hourly temps but there's really no need for our purposes. There are several free websites that will automatically calculate GDD accumulations for you. Cooling degree days are really the same as GDDs and these are used for building energy use calculations....cooling costs. Just select your nearest weather station (enter zip code), calendar dates you want and the base temp and it'll spit out a table including each day's total and the cumulative total for your date range.