This is a very educational topic and is really eyeopening. Amy that entrance area and then the kitchen do flow beautifully. I haven't seen one kitchen that doesn't "look" like it belongs ! Great fun. amanda: it is a Tabco work table which is way way less expensive than the John Boos tables but has a wonderful maple top. They are commercial tables. I wanted a work table made from reclaimed heart pine, which I already owned. I couldn't get anyone local to make me one. I posted on the Kitchen forum trying to find one already made and locally I asked everyone I knew. The already made ones were way too expensive and someone to use my wood ended up being impossible. I didn't want anything that couldn't be moved, just in case I had need to open the area again for whatever reason or in the case of a special table I would want to take it with me if I moved ( god forbid !) I love having the shelf as that is where I keep some cookbooks and also my cutting boards and salad spinner and a couple large cast iron pots. We do have 2 stools that we pull up to it for conversation and also eating. They do not go under an overhang but still they are not really in the way. I can also move them and put them at the coffee counter and they go completely under it. We are just us 2 most days so it isn't a problem. You need to probably look at your traffic flow as well as clearance for walking and see what you decide. If this was a more modern setting and I had wider clearances I probably would have a fixed island...there was one in the kitchen when we bought the house. But when I opened the fireplace and added the gas stove it made it closer and I think if I were selling the house I would remove the island work table. Hope this helps your decision. c

There is probably a certain amount of engineering that takes place for water management with drains and internal gutters and scuppers and such. The series of four attached houses, one of which I live in, have roofs like this and the houses have large drains that run through the house, gutters and scuppers, and we've had problems twice: once when there was an ice dam that caused water to back up and it leaked around another roof penetration, and once when renters had been drinking on the roof >:-(, and left a beer cup up there that basically suction cupped over one of the drains causing a water backup. (Maybe a foot of water trapped in the valley) Most of the time it works really well and this is an older roof that should probably be replaced soon. With newer roofing membranes and such it should be even better. If you notice his houses tend to have no visible gutters or soffits or anything, so all of the functions related to that stuff must be heavily designed to be nearly invisible.

Upgrades without context, which is often how they are applied. is not necessarily the right thing to do. And many buyers will respond to it because they are attracted to shiny new objects. A house I made an offer in in 2011 recently came on the market. One of the previous owners had owned it from 1810 until the 1920s. One from 1931 until 2011. Unchanged floorplan, many original details, changes that were made tread lightly on the original house. Yes, the bathroom and kitchen which had been added on to the original house at the back were awkward. But the most recent owners essentially gutted it, and aside from some original floors and a mantlepiece, it is chock full of 5 inch crown molding, chair rail, marble in the bathrooms, and all sorts of things it never ever had. Ruined, completely ruined. It could have been much worse, yes. Buyers will love it because it looks just like Houzz and Pinterest inside.

Some of the costs of the collapsing housing bubble in the Toronto area have now been quantified: an average of C$157,000 for each of the 866 homes that were "sold" but didn't close in 2017 and then were relisted by the same owners and sold this year. Toronto suburban home "sold" for C$2.25m in 2017. Next year, not so much. Photo: Toronto Sun And for some of the "buyers" who walked away from closings last year, the total can be much higher. Like the couple who "won" a bidding war for a C$2 million home by bidding C$2.225 million. Then as market values dropped, financing became unavailable. The seller "mitigated" damages by selling into the new market, sued the defaulting "buyers" for the shortfall and recently won a judgment for C$470,000