The rangetop is 48". That's 6 burners and a griddle. I was planning on a 36", which would have been more than enough, but DH saw that griddle and it was love at first sight, LOL. As I mentioned above, it turned out to be cheaper to buy the bigger rangetop anyway because we got the whole kitchen plus the buffet and hutch out of two slabs of granite rather than three. The hood is Ventahood. In some respects it would have been nice to have a larger one (hood was purchased before rangetop) but most of my cooking is "slow" with the occasional stir-fry or canning session, so I just position pans accordingly to keep steam and grease off the sides of the cabinets. I'm probably over-compensating anyway. I think that hood would suck all the air out of the kitchen if I let it. Carol

My cat is trained not to go on the counters. It takes some real patience on your part, though. A real "cat person" loaned me a book called "how to make your cat do what you want" when I got my cat, since I had never had one before. I learned a few critical things from that book: 1. Cats do not respond well to negative reinforcement from you. If you yell or chastise them when they do something, they will do it because it gets your attention, and sometimes out of anger or spite or just to demonstrate that you are NOT the boss of THEM. 2.Positive reinforcement SHOULD come from you so the cat associates you with the positive rather than the negative. 3. Negative reinforcement should NOT be associated with you and should happen both when you are there and when you are not. 4. If you punish a cat every time they do something, they only learn not to do it when you are around. Several methods were suggested, but what worked for me was the marbles. Cats hate loud noises. You put a handful of marbles in cleaned out tin cans and line the counter with them. Leave them there all the time that you are not working at the counter. Space them so the cat can not jump up onto the counter between them without knocking them over. If the cat jumps on the counter he/she will knock over the can of marbles onto the floor which will cause a loud noise as the marbles fall and startle the cat. The scat mats would also work, but you would need to cover the counters with them and that would be rather expensive. I would not want to spray stuff on my counters that is not food worthy, so check out what is in those sprays and how they smell and make sure they will not be absorbed into the stone or damage the resin or discolor the stone. I lived with those cans of marbles for about 6 months, but my cat is now 9 yrs old and never goes on the counters. I confess to having knocked them over more than she did. I found the easiest way to live with them is to just push the cans to the back of the counter while you are working in the kitchen so you are less likely to knock them over yourself, and then just slide them forward again when you are done. When she did jump up on the kitchen table a few times after I stopped using the cans, I would laugh, pick her up off the table and put her on the floor, and tell her "that's not for kitties". If she jumped up again, I laughed, held her up so I was looking at her on "eye level" and said the same thing, then kissed her on the head and placed her back on the floor. If I had to I would have put the cans back rather than yell at her, a good decision as I learned later with my couch. She doesn't go on the table now 9 years later, either. However, I wasn't so smart with the couch and yelled at her and shooed her away from it. To this day, if I am ignoring her and she wants to get my attention, she will go over to the couch and start to run her claws over it! I am not sure if it is out of print now or not, but even if it is, if you can get a used copy off eBay or somewhere, it is worth the price. It is esp useful if you are starting with a kitten, because the learned behaviors will be with that cat (and YOU) for many years. It might take longer for cats that are older and were used to getting up there, but a new kitchen and a new countertop are a great time to alter the behavior. The cat is aware that things have changed and this is new stuff. He/She might as well learn that the new counters just aren't as friendly as the old ones. :) Sue

SO much better than the first. :) I'm worried about the human dynamics of the shoe thing, though. This isn't a closet, it's a mudroom. That means wet, possibly muddy shoes, right? Shoes above message center doesn't sound practical. I think if you fitted the bottom of each locker area with a tray for shoes and maybe a little shelf or pouch or basket above it for houseshoes, you have half a chance of them not ending up in a pile on the floor (projecting ahead to the possible larger family). Re the sink: Once it's installed can't you tile the outside side of the grooming tub? Especially if the sink is going to be smaller. Or if the tile won't work, surely you could do metal mirror, or cabinetry, or something else pretty. FRIDGE tub sink really would look best, assuming that the fridge surround gives it enough spacing away from the wall to open fully. If the door swing and other issues keep it at tub FRIDGE sink, you could minimize the impact by putting cabinetry all the way up around each section, instead of just around the fridge. Then they'd echo the look of the lockers on the other side. That would make sense of the arrangement, and, even though it might look a little more closed in, it wouldn't actually be any different, and would look a lot better.

Have you considered doors for at least some of the cabinets? I worry about the visual clutter of having everything sitting out there, especially when kids are doing much of the putting-away. I'm less worried about the crowded feeling by the door than many of the others, but I also live in a smallish house where space by the doors is at a premium. I thought you might find these photos helpful. They're of a small cabinet by our back door. The door is hemmed in by a wall on one side and this cabinet to the other. The cabinet is about 7.25 inches deep from the front of the doors to the back of the cabinet that runs into the dishwasher, providing an interior space that's about 5.25 inches deep. We live not far from you and share your weather, and this tiny cupboard is a lifesaver because it provides a space for wet shoes, bird seed, and assorted other things we use outside.You have a significantly deeper space, so it will be even more functional. It also doesn't feel claustrophobic or too tight to us, and the small loss of space by the door is far outweighed by not having things pile up on the counter and floor there! Here's the doorway with cabinet: Here's the interior, showing how shallow it is, but how much stuff we store there. It regularly gets crammed with much more stuff (all the more reason to have doors!), but I'd just cleaned it out when I snapped this photo. Please ignore the cardboard dividers in the cabinet--I didn't want to have permanent dividers put in, and I've been playing around with spacing before buying or making something for the space. As for the bench issue, I think that its utility may somewhat depend on if you're shoes-off or shoes-on people. If you leave shoes by the door, then it's helpful to have a place for the kids to sit down to put them on. I think you'll love having some sort of built-in cabinet there. It will make that space much more functional.