Thanks dej142, you make some great points! I agree, the dining room table area looks cramped. I'm thinking I can bump up the clearance on either side of the table to about 5.5 feet (does that sound like enough?). Which means I'd need to steal 3 feet from somewhere else on that floor. I don't think I can shrink the ADA bathroom, and making the master bedroom smaller would extend the hallway into bedroom #2 even more (and make it awkwardly shaped). I think I may have to resort to shortening the cabinet run and island. I'm already concerned about having enough cabinet space, so I'm not looking forward to that. :-/ In the kitchen I'd like someone to be able to walk by comfortably when the dishwasher is open, but I don't want the aisle to be so wide that it's uncomfortable working in the space. Is there a dishwasher opening into your 48" aisle? How much wider do you wish your aisle were? Great point about easy access to linens. I was planning on storing all of that in the laundry room, but the top floor doesn't have any linen storage and it might be easier if the bottom floor had a dedicated closet too. Looks like I could fit a linen closet to the left of the pantry on the top floor, and to the left of the laundry room on the bottom floor (stacked on top of each other). The other idea I'm toying with is shuffling the bottom floor layout to put the theater in the current office location, while putting the bedrooms and office in the four corners. That way the bedrooms/office are better shielded from noise and get more light, and it's easier to keep the theater dark. Easier said than done, but I'm hoping it might work!

That's been a problem with opera for some time. Other browsers, if something new is posted to a thread the color changes back to blue. Opera doesn't anymore and that's why I quit using it. I want to know when there is something new in a thread I've visited before.

Annie and Elery were the perfect hosts - much better than my own family (except for Kevin). Annie and I did have endless talks every evening, and we got along famously. I really feel a deep and close connection to her, as if we actually were related. Anyway, I think of her as the sister I always wanted - maybe if my brother Mike had been born a girl. Mike is just one or two days older than Annie. We saw great sights in Michigan, and yes there are lots of photos - I took about 600 while I was in Michigan, and so it going to take a while for me to sort through them. From Michigan we went to Philadelphia so that Kevin could attend a World Ostomy Convention, which I think was very helpful for him. I did make a day trip to northern NJ to visit one of my members from the Del Shannon fan club. She had saved letters I had written to her when I was 15 plus bulletins that I published for the fan club. We had never met in person, but she found me on a Del Shannon web site and contacted me a few years ago - 50 years after we had been pen pals. It was very interesting meeting her, but that is another story altogether. After Philadelphia, we went straight back to Los Angeles (plenty of non-stop flights for that!) last Sunday, and the vacation ended immediately because I had a ton of things to do in California regarding the house we just bought in Cathedral City that we are renovating and an interview I had for a new furniture design project. Therefore I have had very little spare time or time to fully write about my trip to Michigan. I finally got around to sending Annie a thank you email, and I just got around to writing and mailing her a thank you note a couple of days ago - so sorry for the delay! We're in Cathedral City right now (Kevin plus sister and BIL), and so I am having to use my laptop, which is a bit awkward for me, but not as bad as a phone or even a tablet. I don't have the photos with me, and I won't have access to them until middle of next week. The trip to Traverse City was especially nice, and I wish I had taken Elery's advice and had dinner there, as it is an extremely charming little city. We especially liked climbing the small lighthouse at the end of the peninsula, and we got good photos there, as well as in town. I took an accidental selfie while photographing a store window that I liked. St. Ignace was very interesting as well, and we enjoyed our day on Mackinac Island. I'll write more about that later - we took some great photos there. From St. Ignace we went to Sault Ste. Marie, and that town was also extremely charming and picturesque. I think we took most of our photos at the locks, and we should have photographed the town more. It's extremely old - I think it was founded in 1672. We did not cross the bridge to the Canadian side because Kevin did not bring his passport. I always have mine with me, and so I could have gone. Annie fed us very well - mostly with food that she had grown or raised, and we also got fresh cherries from a roadside stand, as she mentioned. All of the meals were special, and every morning Annie made me a scrambled egg, using her own eggs, of course, which were extremely tasty. I ate them plain with no salt or pepper (except for an occasional addition of some hot sauce), and I found that they did not need salt or any other flavorings. Definitely the best eggs I have had since my childhood when I collected eggs on my parents' farm. Next week you can expect a barrage of photos and more stories. I am so glad we did not overstay our welcome with Annie - we were there nine days, I think, but that includes the two days we went to St. Ignace. All in all, it was a great trip, and I would love to go back some day, especially now that I know more of what to expect. And we would not be following GPS through seasonal roads requiring four wheel drive.

And I don't think the post was actually "deleted", but rather was edited to remove all the content and replace it with the words "delete post." Perhaps this is another one of the "upgrades" being foisted upon us by Houzz IT, much like Schroedinger's comment order - you never know whether newest or oldest will be at the top, nor whether you'll be able to change the display until you open the thread. As to notifications, I suspect those continue as well. And the OP has either stopped logging in or is twitching slightly every time someone adds yet another comment to this now "deleted" thread.