Did the designers who came out charge you for the consultations? Did you tell them you did not want a symmetrical arrangement? If they came out for free and you picked their brains, and now plan to use their ideas and do it yourself, then you should either do it yourself, or hire one of them to spend more time on a more in-depth plan that takes into account your desire for a balanced but not mirror-image plan. If you paid a nominal fee for their time, you got what you paid for, an off-the-cuff design that is not ready to go. If you need to tweak the plant selection, you'll need to pay them extra, or use the free advice you get here, which may or may not be worth more than you're paying for it. The alternative is to study and learn on your own for a while, and then choose the plants when you know enough about them and about the principles of good design to pull it off. I'll give you a hint: you can balance the plantings from one side to the other by choosing a plant or group of plants with a similar visual weight to the ones opposite. However, the fact that some of the plants you mention will lose their foliage in winter, some won't, some will flower at certain times and others won't, will also affect the design differently at different times of the year.

Hi Roulie, I was looking at the beautiful blue kitchens in your thread about painting your cabs, and went looking for this thread for more pictures and info about your kitchen. (I would try the SW Naval from Deb's island on one of your trial boards, it just rocks!) I have an opinion about the hole in your counter. I love the idea of using stainless, and if the Jenn-aire that was removed is the griddle next to the big Garland, I would suggest that you have someone come and fabricate a stainless steel cover that simply butts up to the range and covers the whole counter top surface, front overhang and all, for the length of counter top hole in the wood. That will give you a bulletproof landing spot for messy cooking. YOU may not need it, but you have at least one young person, and a messy spill on your butcher block with a stainless steel insert in the hole in the wood will be a lot harder to clean up than on a seamless sheet of steel. Have the fabricator match the finish as much as possible to that of the Garland, and it may not seem so much like another added texture in the room. It also occurred to me, looking at the photo, that there does not seem to be a range hood. Is that a problem for you, or do you not put a lot of grease into the air when you cook? A metal fabricator could fashion one to fit below that cabinet, and you could put the guts in the cab. Just something to think about if you have someone out to see about the hole in the counter. I went looking for your thread about your butcher block counter refinishing. The problem with wood near your sink area made me think of old porcelain 1920s to 1930s sinks as a solution. In my first search result I saw the one linked below, and it fit the one in my mind's eye perfectly. Something like this will better protect that beautiful refinished counter of yours. It prevents any more deterioration where the wood meets the back splash, as well, and does not go very far up the wall. Check out the link below. I think I am interested in your project because it reminds me of my own. I refinished a used bead board kitchen almost three years ago.I have an island top that is 25 years old sitting in my garage that is very similar to your butcher block. I did not use it when I bought it with my Green Demolition kitchen. I refinished my beaded-board oak cabinets from GD by hand sanding and re-staining them with a creamy oil-based stain that my local Sherwin Williams mixed up for me. I could not get a "pickled" stain in water-base. My routed-out lines were far closer together than yours, but you have a LOT of cabs to do, too. If I had to do it again, I think I might paint. I do not have tons of wood grain around like you do, and really like the grain peeking through, so staining was a good choice for me at the time. My problem was in getting the stain to stick to end grain. All my rounded edges exposed me to end grain, but I did not realize that this was my problem at the time. Stain did not stick well on the perimeter of all of my 34 doors and 20 drawers, and I have a rubbed-through look in places. I also have a few pieces that are a different color. Don't know if it was a stirring problem, a real color difference in the first stain can, or what. By the time I was done, I just did not want to know! Part of my problem is that I have asthma and had to wear terrible face masks to keep the VOCs out of my lungs. I had to work outside because of the fumes, too. In the steamy heat of the summer of 2010, I had little patience for problems and just let the color differences get by me. I just wanted it DONE. If you can paint with latex, it is a lot less bother and mess than what I went through! Oil-based stains are still the most common with wood. Here is a picture of my doors before I refinished them. If you want to see my kitchen (minus the missing cab door that we found in the carpenter's shop 6 months after I finished staining everything else), you can go to my website and see it at www.pbase.com/nancyb/image/127230055 Here is Here is a link that might be useful:

cs929, (AMS hope I'm not taking too much space with my posts! color discussion can lead me to that), the color is actually was mixed for some unknown to me designer for her clients in Malibu or something. Our cabinetmaker prepared 4 samples for us-any colors I wanted-I chose Elephant's Breath, Revere Pewter, all the warm grays I could think of. They all looked just great when they were laying gorizontally on some surface. The moment I turned them vertically-as they'd be installed vertically, right?-they all became too cold. They became grays. And I wanted color verging on taupe, very warm color. So the cabinermaker, seeing as I desperately look at them and finding them all wrong, told me he has some other grayish samples in his store. (He holds on to every sample in his shop, in case clients want to touch up/repaint same color) I found what, another ten doors? I asked permission to take them all home to look at them more. Permission was granted. I spent ten days dragging doors around and looking at them in different lights..)) My MIL who lived at the time with us looked at me like I'm a madwoman. Anyway. Only one color worked, out of all shebang. Only one was what I envisioned. And it didn't have a name since it was custom. So I called it after myself. It's varnish of course, lacquer-they have different formulas from paint, I mean they're made differently. We color matched it in regular paint store because I loved it so much, and it's become the color of our master bedroom as well. And there it somehow gets to be warmer, more brownish. I bet because of the different light. It's more moody too because not varnish anymore..it's more matte and deep plainly because of the different nature of material it's applied to. Many months after that I ordered a mirror painted in Kingsport Gray by Benjamin Moore(paint on papier mache applied to metal). And I thought to myself: hmm..that's pretty damn close..))

PPF we did drop the garage down almost 4 ft from where it was in the original drawings. The slope would have been 20% and garage not useable (I have private thoughts about this, but this was caught before we started building at least by our contractor and apple-pie-order and you). I think I misunderstood what was meant earlier about dropping down hence my comment of 1.5 feet story. If we bump the garage out, I am worried that it will cause the grade to go over 10% because there will be less of a ‘run’. I suppose we could go even lower but that would require excavating and more steps in the garage. We will currently have almost 4 feet of steps so having more would be challenging. It becomes this constant battle of making sure there is enough space in the garage. It is current 24x24 so we will have enough room for steps that go down the side and toward the back of the garage but if we bumped out say 3 feet, then we would need to probably go 3 feet lower or some combination. At least I think I am understanding what you mean by lowering the garage. It was previously going to be even with the first floor of the house and now it is even with the ground if that makes sense.