Thank you, I'm so flattered! Our kitchen is roughtly 17'x17'10". The room with the fireplace is the family room and a separate room. I am happy with the lighting plan, there will be two pendants above the island, and everything will be on dimmers. Cat_mom, your kitchen is gorgeous and appears to be larger than 13x13. Your kitchen no doubt inspires a lot of envy. ;-) Here's our aerial plan, with the family room appearing off the page to the left. We'll put a round kitchen table to the left of the island (empty space on drawing, bottom left corner) in front of the large window. The column will stand on its lonesome which we considered getting rid of but it was too pricey. Maybe in the future. As you can see in this old photo, our kitchen island used to end into the column to "ground" it, but it limited our island size. The old kitchen didn't make use of all the available walls so I'm happy with the new layout. A few more of our old kitchen. You can see that we put a temporary desk in the wasted space here: This blank wall will house the new desk and pantry area. A good shot of the column here.

Gardenburgher - thanks. Glad things have gone well for you so far with BC Stone. I think you will be pleased - I know we were. Kompy - thank you. Its really nice to hear good comments like this from someone in the business - I really appreciate it. And yes, too bad the BS tile is not Dal-Tile (it would have been a whole lot cheaper - LOL). I really like Dal-Tile products alas, they didn't have anything we strongly liked for the BS. And given the size, it was the one area of tile I wasn't afraid to pay a higher per sq ft cost pluckymama, yvette and maydl - thanks for your kind comments

red eared-You did the right thing w/the turtle! That blind turtle of my mom's is going to outlive her, that is too much of a commitment for me, without any payoff, as far as I am concerned! I would love to see pics of your house. Post them here if you want! hoosier-Thanks! I guess since this is going to be our home for a loooong time, I feel I want everything perfect. Also, this is the first(and maybe the last) house that is not only a home, but a way of expressing ourselves. I never used to be "into" interior decorating, landscaping, etc. I mean, I could appreciate a beautifully appointed room or a pretty plant, but now I am actually interested in learning more about them both. While I just said I feel more comfortable in a slighly messy (lived in) house, I also appreciate going to someone's house and seeing that a "mood" has been created and effort has been put into bringing it all together. I am worried about having my beautiful spanish dining set handed down from my parents, gorgeous art on the walls, well thought out window treatments and then have something simple and basic as baseboards detract. But yes, yes, I know...no one is noticing! Except maybe a Gardenwebber. Not sure I would let any of you in my home! Haha, I kid, I kid!

oh I'm just dizzy. So much beauty! I stopped over here hoping for this exact thread. I am currently shopping and struggling for a chandelier for our "formal" dining room/space. It is meant to be the formal dining, but it is litterally eight feet from the front door. There is no real foyer. It also has a 15 ceiling and only a wall and a half seperating it from everything else. The fixture in there is very wrong and light just seems to disapear. Everything is so expensive out there, its very frustrating. Thanks Sumnerfan for starting this thread. It helps so much to be able to see the rooms with the fixtures instead of a store full of fixtures.