I like the horizontal pulls too, centered vertically on drawers, 3" from the top/bottoms to line up with your top drawer pulls. Another option: we're going with Berenson finger pulls. They're not beefy, but GREAT minimalist pulls. [[(https://www.houzz.com/products/modern-kitchen-prvw-vr~1620949) [Modern Pulls design[(https://www.houzz.com/products/modern-cabinet-and-drawer-pulls-prbr1-br~t_689~s_2105) by Salt Lake City Windows And Doors Direct Door Hardware

I really want to adopt you so I can use either or your lovely kitchens!!! they are so unique and refreshing!!! I live in the land of white kitchens(CT),not that there is anything wrong with white,but they all are starting to look the same to me. I love the warmth of beautiful wood and I hardly get to see modern examples of new wood kitchens!!! thanks for sharing!

Thanks for all the suggestions, guys! It's so funny because in the kitchen before the fire the stove was on the right side of the window. It was our architect's idea to swap them this time around because the new window is in a slightly different spot than before and he wanted the sink centered below it. So much for that :) I see why it would work well to eliminate that right side return - in fact we didn't have that space in the old kitchen. The only problem that I have with it is that it's the only place we have for our telephone/message center. The house is small (only 1200 sq ft) so I don't have a lot of spaces to put all the functional things we need. BTW, right next to that return is a sliding glass door and next to that is our front door. There are a lot of uppers, right? It's actually funny because I didn't even want uppers at all - ha!. But I realized that after you take away the functional space in the lowers below the sink, and the DW and trash pull out space, there's not a lot of lower space left for storage. So I feel like I needed more uppers to compensate. I wanted to keep a clean horizontal line with the bottom of the uppers aligning with the bottom of the range hood - that's why they start kind of high. We have super high ceilings and in the first rendition there was only one level of uppers which looked kind of dinky for the space to my eye. I think the idea for a stainless open shelf instead of glass is a good one and I think I might ditch those shelves on the right return totally. I'm going to really think about all the ideas presented and see what I can pull off here. Thanks again!!

I think you're right about chilling them, but freezing is probably too cold for the chocolate process. Chilling doesn't really bother dates. They go back to normal on the counter. Dehydrating while chilling is another story, but they can also be rehydrated, but that would be for use in something rather than straight. Still, I'm not sure I agree with your basic premise that chocolate will unsweet them. It's it's just balancing the sweet perception on your tongue, that could work. For me, sweet isn't just the flavor, but that *pow* of all that sugar. For that, cutting them up and rolling them in chopped nuts might be more to the point, cutting down on date per bite.