MaryLu I love your sink! You must have been so happy to find it in the barn when you bought the house. And that white hutch and victorian trim is sooooo pretty. You're kitchen already has a great look . . . I can't wait to see what you do next. Pllog thank you for all of your kind words. Regarding the antique hutch . . . my husband bought it when he was 18 year old 38 years ago. He moved furniture at the time. He said that this hutch was in the "maid's quarters". He also bought the matching table and chairs, which I use now in my office. The wood is walnut and I'm guessing that they are well over 100 years old. Bmorepanic I didn't even realize I was thinking of mixing deco with schoolhouse. I've never seen any of the deco fixtures in anyones house and didn't realize they were bathroomy and wouldn't go. Thanks for the heads up. I must tell you all that we built this addition September of 2007. We are now just getting around to finishing it. Last month my DH left his job at AT&T. They are laying off thousands so he took their early buy out offer. After 21 years he decided to call it quits. He'll have to find another job (he's only 56) but first he wants to take this as an opportunity to finish off all of the projects in the house. And believe me we have many. I'm not happy that DH is currently unemployed, but I am VERY excited to be working on the project again. I've been playing with my DD's cool camera and have taken a bunch of photos. I'm posting them on another thread called "Judydel's work in progress". I'll just keep updating as I go along. You may or may not be interested . . . but just so you know that is what I'm doing : ) I knew figuring out the lighting and shelves above the sink would be hard, that's why I've asked for advice. Grrrrrrrr, if I have to go with 30" above the sink then I don't think sconces will work out. If I do sconces I'm afraid that the shelves will be too high and I want to be able to use the stuff on the shelves and not just have it be display. This is my inspiration shelving photo. My DH thinks that it would be easier to just put in a couple of small spot lights over the drainboards. This is the schoolhouse light centered with the sink. Maybe he's right. Lanugget I like those fixtures that you suggested . . . just wondering if I should nix the whole sconce idea and do functional spots. Although, I also like the "olivet" on the link that you sent. I wonder if olivet would work just above the backsplash centered over the sink. It can take up to two 100 watt bulbs.

Got cats? I have open shelves above my sink now and some of my cats will climb in the sides and sashay along them. Aside from the eeew factor -where were those cute little fur-paws five minutes ago? - it also is hair-raising as they wend their way through my crockery until I can get a clean snatch on them and yank them off without pulling down a whole stack of plates! I finally got fed up and taped cardboard over the ends to see if that kept them out. It did! So my new open shelves will be closed-ended. I think the thing that makes closed-end shelves look different from cabs with doors yanked off is the absence of any of the residual face frame on intentional closed shelving.

Agreed about figuring out the use of shelves and counters first. We did 19" above the counter to clear our stand mixer with some room to spare (so I could pick it up and move it) and used the IKEA Ekby shelf brackets in the 11" size, which worked well for us (coffee supplies, mugs, etc. live up there). They also make a 7" size. I really like the Ekby brackets, too---very easy to work with. We got our own wood instead of using the IKEA shelves because we wanted it to be longer than their options allowed, and that worked out really well. Our local lumber yard found fir steps (intended to be the top part of a porch step) that were exactly the right thickness and cut the rounded edges off to make them the right depth---it worked perfectly! It's nice to know in advance where you want them so you can put the brackets in before the wall goes up, but we didn't do that and it worked out fine. You just need to know where the studs are.

Ok, so another soffit question: because if the duct and plumbing sizes and positions, we have two options 1. Drop the entire kitchen ceiling from 10 ft to 8'6" or 2. Drop the majority of the ceiling to 9' with a large soffit across the whole sink wall that drops down to 8'6" and is about 3 feet wide. I have no idea how to find or make examples of these options and can't even picture them in my head. My gc is going to try to mock it up with cardboard for me, but do you all have any opinions on which would look the least weird?