Awwww, thanks for all your sweet wishes, they are MUCH appreciated! Yesterday was a tough day, but I took your advice and brewed myself a pot of tea, read lots of posts, saw many great decs here and then took a long nap. DH got back here early and we drove down to pick up my car. The new battery was a no-charge, but the brake job ~just on the front end~ was over $400! Living here in the mountains, I can't scrimp on good brakes, but good grief, that's a ridiculous amount! (Sigh) what's done is done and my car (actually, minivan) is in great shape once again. Afterwards, DH & I had dinner at a favorite restaurant in town to avoid the rush hour traffic and relax a bit. We had a glass of wine and played Gin Rummy for an hour when we got home, too. That was a lovely way to end a crummy day! With the rest, I'm doing as you advised and taking it one day at a time. All this will pass . . . eventually! Thanks! Yachter: I'm keeping you and your family in my prayers. Please know how much you're liked and appreciated here on this forum! We miss you when you're not around here with us! Lynn

Mmm. Hate photobucket. Okay, so clicking, you do eventually get to a larger picture. And, my comments: You have at least 2 toilet rooms with inswing doors. For safety, those need to be modified. In both cases, the layout is not conducive to simply changing them to outswing or pocket doors, but it is necessary (the J&J, you might be able to put in a pocket door easily enough, depending on where you put your water lines for the tub). The master bath WC--you might look into something like an ergon door, or rearrange that space to get a pocket. The reason NOT to have an inswing is... if someone collapses/has a medical emergency in the WC room, and there is an inswing door, the person usually falls against the door/on the floor in front of the door preventing EMS from accessing them. The hinges to an inswing door are also on the inside of the WC, so EMS cannot simply remove the door... SWIM? It is rare that this sort of thing happens, but I'd hate for it to happen in my house (or a house I reviewed on GW) when planning for that sort of thing could literally save a life. Where is your upstairs in relation to your down? Can you get a laundry chute in one of the bedroom baths? Do you like having windows in your closet? It is odd that you've decided to put your closet on a corner of the house--usually prime real estate within a house footprint for light--where you don't need (or necessarily want) light there. Maybe, to solve your WC issue, you can think about changing the location of your master bath/closet (swapping them). In either case, your WC will probably be the same (far) distance from your bedroom. Will that be okay with you in the middle of the night? Any reason NOT to have windows on 2 sides of your master bedroom? (for example, is there a house right there)? I would take your kitchen layout to the kitchen's forum. I like that you don't HAVE to walk through the kitchen from the garage entrance, but I don't like that if you do, you are walking past the stovetop to get to the great room. And, I think it looks like you have a HUGE aisle between the sink and the island. How will you use your island? For prep? Normally, your ideal prep space is between stovetop and sink. But, here, you have no real prep space for that. If you think you will use the island for prep, it is essential it have a prep sink, since it is so far away from your main sink. Where will your MW be? I like the location of the fridge fine. But, I am concerned you may have your MW located over by the sink. This will put main kid traffic (between fridge and MW) right through your cooking zone (stovetop). Again, not a good spot for your cooktop. The kitchen forum can help you optimize all of this. Otherwise, without seeing dimensions, knowing where you live, or what orientation for the house, I think it looks pretty good. I like that your J&J bath only has 1 door to the toilet and only the sinks are true J&J. If you do J&J, that is the way to do it, imo. Also, I didn't really look at the elevation/exterior (not really where I excel...I'm more a floorplan junky). Enjoy!

we aren't living in the house yet and the kitchen has been taken down to the studs. the cabinet plan is being redrawn for changes, and i left the last drawing on accident at the architects house : / you'll notice two little penciled in stools in the sketch - that's the peninsula. it would help if my picture weren't sideways. i had to turn my laptop around above the dishwasher will be the cabinet with glass doors. next to that cabinet where the kitchen ends and the breakfast room begins, I don't know what to put. I've seen pics with nothing and it looks unfinished or like something was forgotten, and there has to be backsplash there. maybe the open shelves will be fussy. the spot is about 2' wide. i like open shelves, but I've never seen them in a kitchen in this particular scenario - where a peninsula starts

Well, now I don't know where to start! First - does anyone think that having the shower on the outside wall would be too low for comfort? That is one of the reasons we wanted it on the inside wall. We are not tall, but any future buyer might be... Next, there is no way that I could even conceive of moving a spouse into the kid's rooms!!!! If they still need to live with us a that point, I would reconfigure the basement as a suite. I want to give them a decent sized room with the potential to put in a double bed, I can't plan that far ahead! Yes, I do think that our own bathroom is a bit too small - I would like a bit more storage, so I think that we will steal from the closet which I do think is too large for us. Mrs Pete - "I'm surprised no one's mentioned walking through the closet to reach the bathroom." I too am surprised that no one has raked me over the coals for this! lol...! It might have been your set-up that gave me a bit of this idea... And point noted about getting things right on the actual drawing. I am going to get that double sink changed to a single and fix some of the doors on the closets etc. Our designer is on holiday right now, so I am not getting any instant responses. you guys are WAY faster...