Thanks for all the great comments and questions. It's a little intimidating to open your home to such design heavy-hitters. It's fun when the people whose opinions you've come to respect like your project! :) Let me see if I can answer some of the questions. cal_quail: how nice that you noticed our mixer cabinet before and liked it. I love the configuration and the ease of use. Gemcap: ugly duckling would have been kind. It was pretty bad. We do love our gorgeous swan. Tinker1121 and beautybutdebtfree: the backsplash tile wall was our big splurge. I tried to take some close-up pix tonight to post but the lighting just does not do it justice. I'll try to do that tomorrow. Since it is handmade, it is quirky. The colors vary in depth and the iridescence in intensity. It is both subtle and striking in real life. I am generally not one to like the traditional style mosaic layout, but with these tiles it was just different. gr8day: in the before pix, yes, it was a tile mosaic backsplash made of broken tile pieces. Pretty cool artistically, but not so great to live with every day in your kitchen, especially when it was not your choice for design. And it is really rewarding to do as much of the hands on work as possible. beauty: love your questions. *Yes, we lived in. We are empty nesters so it was easy. If we had littles at home it would have been quite the ride. We were without a kitchen for 6 months. We had quite a few delays--initially with the city approving our plans for permits, then my cabinet maker was sick quite a bit in the fall and our install kept getting pushed back. I learned to roll with just about anything that came our way. *We did reuse 80-90% of the old flooring. We took it to my parents in NC and they installed it all in their house. *Bamboo flooring--no problems with expanding so far. I have just in the past week noticed a few new squeaks and thought it might be from the humidity. Will be interesting to see how it all settles in as the summer continues. I have to say, that wood was all in our house for months before install and was exposed to humidity, etc. I think it was more acclimated than might have been otherwise. That may be our saving grace in this. Also, I LOVE not worrying about the floor with 2 grandsons. The bamboo is so tough and the hand scraped treatment means the dings of everyday life just blend in. So freeing. *The grey Moen box is the control unit for the MotionSense faucet. It is plugged in (we purchased the AC adaptor for the unit) under the sink. Love the touchless feature. Finally, the windows are so amazing. It often takes my breath away that I have the privilege of enjoying this view, in this kitchen. Blessed indeed. wilson853: you are too kind to compare our reno to those on HGTV. The big difference? HGTV would have been done in 4-6 weeks vs 10 months! :) Re the double pull-out. It is actually a 12'' wide cabinet. The front spice rack pull-out my dad made for me is only about 3'' deep. The remaining space is for the clearance and the back shelves. I can fit those jumbo spice bottles from Costco sideways in the back rack, the big square spice bottles from Costco face forward. My dad's spice rack fits the standard glass spice bottles. Hope that helps. juddgirl2: I am very happy with the deep drawers near the opens and cooktop. If you did not check out the Photobucket pix (or make it through ALL of them) you may have missed my OCD drawers. The 4 top drawers in the dark blue island are all for utensils, cutlery, etc. It is literally 2 steps from the cooktop to the drawers. I have crocks on the counter next to the cooktop with my spoons, etc. I am one of those gadget-people, and my divided drawers in the island make me sooooo happy. Thanks again everyone!

Oh, if I could do a wider opening and pocket doors between my kitchen and DR, I would. But I'm losing mine when we remodel. Like heidihausfrau, our pocket door between kitchen and DR is narrow; even narrower than hers, mine is only 27"! It's ridiculous. We're widening the doorway to 31" or 32" (can't go wider than that). We had initially planned on installing another pocket door but since the wall that currently houses the pocket door can't accommodate a door any wider than we currently have (runs into exterior wall), we would have to switch the pocket door housing to the other side of the doorway, which meant changing the location of the light switches, tearing into the stairway support wall, changing the shelving in the pantry so that it wouldn't interfere with the pocket door ... in the end, we decided to nix adding a pocket door. We're also widening the doorway between kitchen and hallway, from 29" (swing French door) to 47" (no door). We can't install double pocket doors, either one on each side or double-upped with bottom rail nor do we have room for swing doors (would block light switches, etc). At first we weren't sure about going sans doors for both entries. We used the doors between kitchen and hallway and kitchen and DR when our kids were little but we hardly ever close them now. In fact, we took the hallway/kitchen doorway off its hinges months ago to see if we would miss it and we don't. judeny: thanks for the great idea to do a hinged swing door! I had nixed going with a swing door because my DR is narrow enough as it is; I don't want a swing door eating up space (it would also have to swap sides so it would run along the wall between wall and table). But if I can do a hinged door like you did and keep it folded up against itself along the same wall the pocket door occupies now, I just might be able to install a door between kitchen and DR after all. (I wish you had pics to share with us.) Do you remember how far from the wall the door extends when it's folded against itself? TIA! AujS, don't forget to plan for where your light switches will go on the pocket door wall. I'm sure you want them close to the opening so make sure your contractor knows so that he makes sure there's room for an electrical box to house the switches.

Truly I think your kitchen eating area should be a bridge between the great room and the kitchen and all work as one space; so you cabinet choice will probably direct the table design, but the dining room is off to itself and is seem as the first room you see when you walk in? It should provide the feel of the house with colors and modern, country french, MCM, etc. but the execution should stand alone and be a WOW factor design wise. Just my opinion.

Our house plan shows the layout of that side of the house. The wall between the stairs and living room is currently engineered to be a shear wall, and that is what we are unsure about. The alternative would be a beam and post, opening the stairs to the living room. The reason we opted for 14’ ceiling there was more for balancing the exterior appearance of the front of the house, as there is no upper floor room above the living room. There will be an expansive window on the front (North) wall of the room, a fireplace with some sort of decorative wall on the western wall, and it’s really a question about what to do with the southern wall (leave it closed or re-engineer it to be open but then have a post coming down roughly in line with the step second from the top of the stairs).