Oh can I relate to your last statement, Marian. I have no dillusions of life in the nursery biz being easy and I'm not afraid of hard work or failure. Everything worth having takes risk, hard work and a lot of faith... but the idea of getting out of my air-conditioned, artificial light, not a second of privacy cubicle farm, making $Ms for corp. exec's who only cut my benefits & pay while raising their own, to be out digging in the dirt with the sun on my back is my idea of heaven on earth! Good luck with your gardens. I know a farm can be a lifelong art project- I used to have some acreage and never left it alone for a season w/o putting a new bed in somewhere. It can be a long labor of love. Hopefully you are able to pass the legacy on to someone who will carry on the efforts so you can smile at it from heaven. Thank you for your well wishes on my dreams. I've wanted to run my own business for better than 25 yrs but trying to settle on one thing and having the confidence for business management held me back. I have chosen the garden industry because a)every personality/career test I've ever taken says I should be in high-tech or plants b)I've managed to keep my interest in gardening for my entire life c)I've started a business within the safety of a corporation so I know I can do it on my own now d)I've researched the industry enough to know that it is possible to double my income as a small biz owner if I use my business knowledge wisely- not everyone can do that but it is possible. Ellen, is the Lily chatroom you are talking about affiliated with the AHS e:mail robin? I just asked to sign up for the robin.

It depends on your particular microwave and cabinet brands. You'll want to look at the spects for your microwave and see what the side, back and top clearances it requires are. Once you have that info, you need to make sure the cabinet walls and slid-in doors are at least this difference away from the microwave. Where the cabinet brand comes into play is how much room the slid in doors take up, and whether you want/can get doors that slide-in on the sides or on the top. We wanted a door that would slide in the top, but our cabinet company only offered doors that slid-in on the sides. Our cabinet is a 27" base cabinet, excluding the width of the cabinet walls and slide in assembly, there is 22" of usable space (according to the cabinet company). The ventilation room is slightly bigger b/c the doors really only occupy part of the asslembly space. This means that our 20.5" microvave fits in there with 2" of clearance space between its sides and the doors when they are slid in, which complies with the microwave's specs.

Yes. There is plenty of room there usually in the case of a wood window where the plantation shutters are mounted to the interior stop. It will be a bit cumbersome, but can work.

IMO remove that and do anything but that lighting. Where is this space ? You can run a bunch of LED pot light from that wiring no problem I agree get some matching texture ceiling tiles and do proper lighting you can always paint the tiles to match colorwise but you do need the same texture