Thanks to all for the responses. kimberly623: Something to think about. I liked the idea of the "L" shape creating partial separation from the Family Room but you have given me "food" for thought (a little kitchen humor). GreenDesigns and arocbuild: Great points. We are working with a very experienced contractor and a kitchen designer. We used an architect in the beginning to see if we could find a design for the existing location that met our needs. That was not useful - except to get us to this point! Plan will definitely need a structural review before we get too much further. Because the "new" kitchen area currently houses a laundry room, some of the plumbing is in place. bmorepanic: The space beside the old kitchen is currently a long powder room and a closet. I share your concerns about the pantry size. We plan to use a pocket door to gain a little space. That window may need to shrink... or go! The primary reason to move the kitchen is because everyone is always in the Family Room and I am always in the kitchen. Want to make that connection. We grill outside but don't eat out there a lot. The back of the house exits on the second floor (walk-out basement). I can sympathize with your climate. We're outside of Boston and freezing! There is a fairly large coat closet at the side entrance (that rectangle). Vacuum lives there now. Other things will probably be relegated to the laundry room, although that seems far away for things like the DustBuster. Finally, the front hallway is SOO cramped we thought we should take this opportunity to open up that wall a bit. I see your point about making a spectacle of ourselves though!

My absolute favorite thread. Great introductory thread - Thank you buehl! I don't think you can post pictures directly from your computer; you need to have your pictures somewhere on the web (a web-hosting site such as photobucket makes it pretty easy to follow the instructions). The directions are all in that thread; you have to scroll down just a bit, not too far. Once you've read it, you can join in bumping it up to keep it on page 1. HTH!

@raee - We removed all of the drawers first and put them in another room. It helps to number these, if you have a lot of them, so you can later figure out what cabinet they go to. Then we cut pieces of drop cloth and taped them over the drawer glide rails inside of the cabinets. After the granite was installed, we removed the plastic but still made sure to vacuum the glide rails and the insides of the cabinet before putting the drawers back in. If your sink cabinet has doors on it, you might want to remove them so they don't get granite dust inside of them when the installers drill holes for your faucet, air switch, soap dispenser, etc. Sorry, but no on auto racing. The name comes from Awana Grand Prix races (like Cub Scout Pinewood Derbies). The kids called me that, since I was the "Grand Prix Race Man". The guy who ran the races and build workshops. I've been helping out with Awana and Cub Scout races for over 15 years now. This post was edited by gpraceman on Sat, Nov 16, 13 at 18:36

@Sea Sea thank you and yes it was a crazy process. No one prepares you for how difficult it is to find slabs - the warehouses are poorly lit, they all tell you something different regarding material (quartzite vs marble) and you can’t ever see them on a horizontal plane which is very different than looking at them vertically in the warehouse. Then you pick your favorite and there is a list of people who have spoken for it and have it on hold before you. But what we found out was if you are ready to purchase immediately, have the fabricator call and offer immediate payment and you suddenly jump ahead of everyone who has it on “hold”. Many of those people hold things but find something different and never release the hold.