Okay, I had to chuckle over the "10'ceilings". Most people I know only have 10' ceilings. It's the newer builds that have these high cathedral ceilings. Just think of the money you'll save with heating and cooling because you won't have that extra space to take care of :) 10' isn't really all that short, unless you're like an 8' or 9' person... We live in a mobile home and have for the last 8 years and will until the time comes that I get out, go to the two year business school and get a job (I've been a SAHM for 9 years tomorrow, exactly) because we need the second income. Our trailer is twenty years old but it doesn't look it because we have replaced and repaired and painted nearly everything. It's a 16X70, which means we have a little over 1100 sq ft, three bedroom, one and a half bath, 8ft ceilings in every room but the living room and kitchen. We have two kids, so lots of toys and 'junk' that comes along with them . :) Sometimes I wish we had a bit more room, like we only have the closets in the bedrooms and that's it for storage (we have an Amish shed outside for the seasonal things and whatever else we need to "store" but I have also learned to make use out of every avaliable space like under the beds) but we've made it work. We're not on top of one another. There aren't little walkways through the rooms. And even with the 8' ceilings and ceiling fans that hang lower, nobody has hit their head on anything (DH is 5' 10" and I'm 5' 5", so we're not anywhere near hitting our heads...but DH's cousin is 6' something and they bought an older house with low archways and he's still able to walk through and skim right under them with no problems. He's not complainging) I often think the problem is that people think they need more "junk" than they really do to make a house a home. You really just need the basics. I will admit that the reason I wish I had more room was really just to have more cupboards and shelving and more space to display my Primitive antiques, not because we're lacking space to move around and properly function. Just look back at the houses from the previous generations. Some really tiny homes were big enough for families of 5, 6, 7....I know people that lived in smaller mobile homes than we're in and raised 4 or 5 kids! My grandparents first house was about the size of our trailer. It was a Cape Cod style so they had the slanted roof in the bedrooms upstairs....they had 5 kids in that house. It can be done! One tip will be to definitely measure spaces and the furniture you plan to fill it with. A lot of furniture today are these massive, overstuffed pieces that may not work so well in the smaller spaces. However, you will be able to find things that work! Enjoy your new home!

This is stage 2 of an extensive reno. For this stage we're pushing out 2 kitchen walls 6' each and turning the existing breakfast area into a mudroom with a new entrance off the driveway. The laundry/pantry is space we took from a landing to the left of the stairs going down into the family room surprisingly the family room looks larger after the reno :) I got the idea for the dishwasher in the hutch from http://consciouskitchenremodel.blogspot.ca/ I don't think I'll be painting mine red, but I love the idea of having the dishwasher up 6" higher so I don't have to bend so far down (we're a family of tall people). All the dishes are them stored in the hutch. I do have room to make it wider, but the symmetry seems okay in the inspiration pics. The wall oven is out of the way, but the M/W is also a convection so unless I'm cooking a turkey I'll be using the small oven on the south wall. I'm not exactly sure what you mean by zones? The far right of the south wall has a small pantry (laundry room/panty is for overflow and large items), then the fridge followed by the cooking/prep areas and prep sink (in the 4x7 foot island), and last is the main sink and dishwasher hutch on the east wall. The space to the right of the oven on the north wall is being left open for a free standing piece of furniture. As for the laundry: I can't decide what would work best - stack laundry with shallow shelves around or side by side with deep shelves above and shallow shelves around the remaining walls. Here's the pics of the hutch: Thanks

This past summer I got a white hardy waterlily at Home Depot at the end of July for $2.50. The other colors were all dead but this one still had hope. The package said just put it in water so I did and it started growing right away but then I took apart the package because it seemed to slow down. It was getting strangled by all this plastic netting and stuff. I repotted it correctly and it really took off but it was so late in the season by then I did not get blooms. The man at a water garden place said to cut off the foliage and sink it in the deepest place in the pond so ai did and am waiting for spring to see if it survived the winter. Pond is 116 gal., small, and the deepest part is just shy of 3' deep. Bottom feed everywhere for affordable stuff. I am in z6, NYS. If you can find a water garden place you can usually get water Lettuce and Water Hyacinth for not too much. Here, 3 plants for $15. They spread rapidly and the hyacinth blooms. You can keep them alive through winter under very close fluorescent lights in those black plastic things that you mix concrete in that cost about $5 in Home Depot.

Do take it to the home decorating forum. We can't tell much from just these photos but it does look livable except for the purple paint and wallpaper. :) Those can go, and fast. It looks like inexpensive updating will take you a long way while you plan the real remodel. The honey oak isn't bad here! If the budget is really tight, don't do anything major until it grows a bit. Small projects tend up escalate and then something unrelated like the furnace might go out. http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/decor