bmh- I think the (no) door decision would depend on whether or not you liked to see that much of your servingware on display at all times. Some people have colorful majolica or Fiestaware that becomes part of their decor, and is used on a regular, if not daily basis. As to your question about the glass cabs... I personally would carry the glass up to the top for visual continuity if you were going to do glass in the midlevel cabs. Our kitchen has regular doors at shoulder level, with seeded glass top cabs- I chose that configuration because I've had clear glass cabs before that ended up not being very useful to me because of our lifestyle at the time. I used more tupperware and Tervis with teenagers than I used my pretty pewter trays and Mexican pottery, so I put all glass up high in "dead" space in this house... because, I still think it's beautiful and wanted a little touch of it.

ok i am not sure what to do here. i have a 3 bdr duplex that has stairs to a loft room which is open to the downstairs although not as MUCH as modern homes. there is a big cutout open to downstairs. the only vent located up here is near the top of the stairs, in the wall (closer to where your feet walk rather than up by your head). the vent was CLOSED when we moved in, but we moved in in january. now that it's super crazy hot, should i open this vent and allow cool air to come up here (even though the only place i feel it is on the stairs when i pass by it!) or close it and will it help the downstairs? i don't care if this upstairs gets cooler. it's not enough to be appreciable i just have a big fan up here. there is no dual zone system or anything just one thermostat. i think that since i have opened this upstairs vent it seems like the AC unit cannot get the house down to the thermostat temp i set which is 77 degrees. its sitting at 80. i guess fast answer is i should try closing it up again and see what happens huh :) steph

I think that small houses can benefit from boundary definition to a greater extent than larger houses can, sometimes. (think of Sarah Susanka) Many people here take out the small vestibules here in their 12-15 foot wide houses, for example, thinking it will make the front room larger. It doesn't, because with a wall there you can back any sort of furniture right up to the wall, where it is technically inches away from the front door, but with the wall gone, people will not put something that close to the front door, and Never something large that would seem to block or crowd it. In a large house it doesn't matter as much. You can leave a 3 foot gap for visual separation and float pieces away from the walls. In this situation I would easily place an end table or the arm of a sofa close to a small wall there, because the wall would indicate that it was "in another room/space". Without the wall there, I would not put it so close because it might visually look like it is straddling between rooms.

To be honest, neither cabbage nor cauli need a cloche. To protect against bugs you can just use row cover which doesn’t get hot underneath. You could use the cloche for crops which need winter protection, not so much against cold as against damaging wind and rain. Lettuces, spinach and parsley for example.