Aloha! The kitchen is mostly done and at the end of the day we ended up with Glacier White Granite! When I went to reserved my stone, all of the pieces of the honed arabescato that I liked where gone. I wasn't inclined to spend all that extra money and settle for one that had large dark spots all over it. I also wasn't thrilled with the selection of polished, for the same price. Then I found a slab of polished Super White at another stone yard that I loved and was so proud of myself for picking a stone that was a $1500 savings over the arabescato. Then the fabricator called me to let me know that the slab wasn't big enough for the whole kitchen, so I would have to pay another $1000 to finish the last 15" piece of counter. That was my final sign. I gave up on the marble and started all over. I found a slab of Glacier White that I loved, and it turns out that it was snatched up 3 days earlier. Feeling burned out, I finally found a slab of Glacier White that I didn't hate and that became our counters. At the end of the day I went from wanting my first love to settling for something I didn't hate. Sigh. The final sting was that the fabricator didn't tell me when he was templeting (I thought he was going to let me know, because he said that I could come down and help decide), so the parts that I didn't like ended up being the most prominent. Unfortunately, that has been how our entire remodel has been. Even our contractor has been shocked at how many issues we've had. I have definitely been schooled by my kitchen. :-) (The worst was having to rent a concrete grinder and personally grind down a hump in my floor that the self leveler didn't fix. Worst mess to clean up EVER!!! I actually cried that night.) Now, having said all of that, and having reached a temporary stopping point (still need to tile and deal with some minor issues), I've finally had some time to stop being mad at my kitchen and really enjoy it. And guess what - I really like my counters! I love that I don't have to worry about my husband leaving wet raspberries and other gooey things on my counters (because, yes, he still does). And, yes, they do end up having things stacked all over them all the time, so they are not a glowing and pristine focal point. They are my work horse counters. I love my deep undermount sink that these counters allow me to have. We stayed pretty close to budget. I would say that, after tiling, we'll have spent about $16K, but with that low budget came A LOT of extra work and frustration. All of our cabinets came from Ikea. We used 18" fan cabinets and stacked them to achieve our 36" uppers and then ordered Scherr's custom doors to go over them (Scherr's was fantastic to deal with). I do not, however, recommend the stacking method. It made it so hard to plumb and level with our fantastically out of square ( and sloping walls) u shaped kitchen. One thing I can't recommend enough is edgebanding our Ikea cabinets with Fast Edge wood. We painted the edges of the Gnosjo cabinets dark, so you don't see the white through the doors. Even where the white doors go. Once we trimmed out the cabinets, I used wood putty, then primed and painted the trim and cabinet edges and everything looks so cohesive. Also love our new LED pot lights! I have so much extra light in the kitchen and I love it. We did lose some natural light taking out an east facing window (that faced the neighbors window about 8 feet away,so we never pulled up the blinds), but we also gained a lot more cabinet space. Living in the gray NW, I don't get much natural light most of the year anyway, so I find that having the extra electrical light is a lot more helpful. Some things that I'm mixed on... The Ikea Gnosjo cabinets are crazy finger printy!! Someday I will find the time to clean them properly again, but they are very streaky in the meantime. My dark gray Marmoleum floors feel fantastic on my feet, but they show ever single crumb known to man. They were also very tricky for us to install. I won't go into details, but let's just say that every demonstration on the web showed them being installed in an empty square room. It was also really hard to get info online about the click together tiles (what kind of underlayment?) and the instructions were obviously translated from another language and didn't always make sense. The prior kitchen looked decent from a distance, but it was falling apart and quite dysfunctional. I love the functionality of my new kitchen and the ikea cabinets (with lots of drawers!) are fantastic. I love my sink and I love that my floors don't have missing chunks and holes all over. I do miss the over the stove microwave (now we have one in the pantry), but our gas stove was just too hot for one and our third microwave was failing. Now we have a hood that is actually vented outside. All in all the kitchen is a huge improvement. It could use a little color, so I've been tracking down some aqua accessories. We are planning to do white subway tile with light gray grout for all wall surfaces within the next few months. Sorry for writing a book to your small question! :-) DJ

Wow! Love that layout. When chosing your range, read the instalation manuals online. This will take lots of time, but is so worth it. Some ranges have 0" clearance, so you can butt the range up to your corner cabinet and put the filler to the left of your drawer bank so if the wall is not perfectly perpendicular to the drawer bank you can still open drawers fully. Also, can use a 36" sink base, and use half the base for garbage, and half for recycling, instead of the dedicated 18" recycle base. This will give you more space for a wider drawer bank between the sink and the corner cabinet. looks like you have from right to left: 24" sink base 18" recycling base 24" drawer bank corner cab. Can do: 36" sink base - carefully planned out underneath with garbage and recycling with something like this http://www.frankeconsumerproducts.com/productdetail.php?prodid=71&node=201&group=53&lvl=3 or Whitehaus WH3618 30" drawer base will save space cuz each extra box/cabinet has some loss in the side panels, and you'll get a more generous sink. A 24" next to a 12" does not have as much storage as one 36". Consider sight lines... it looks like your kitchen sink is the first thing someone will see from the front door - you can do something really interesting with this cabinet, another wood type on the inset if that's interesting to you, or, lots of people here have interesting "farmhouse style" sinks. I have seen customized clay sinks with hand painted front that is baked in.

Thanks, everyone. Some comments and answers: Re: windows. I probably should not have referred to the main window as 60", as that is the rough opening size. I think it will be more like 56". Right now, that window has a casement window with two halves (although it is a pull-in). It seems quite comfortable and looks fine from the outside. Re: microwave. My initial thought was essentially that of Marcolo, namely, a shelf unit with no doors, but closed on the side, with a dedicated MW nook. I suggested the open shelves just to open up that area near the window and block less light than the box with sides would. Maybe a dedicated MW nook with true open shelves above? Or would that be too weird... Re: the blind wall corner cabinet. Funnily enough, in my sketchup drawing, the lower wall units of the stack do contain a blind corner. (It is just visible in the top view.) My KD said to axe it, saying the space is not usable enough. I agree with florantha: I don't see what harm it is to have the space, even if you wind up not using it. Re: Marcolo's shelf idea. I am a little confused. Do you truly mean above the sink? I can barely reach that area. I suppose it could be nice for some display items (dust catchers?) Re: trash and recycling. Yeah, I am planning to put it under the sink. In my original layout, I called for a very narrow sink cabinet (24") to allow a dedicated recycling base unit (18"). Generous GW contributors pointed out that we would be better off with a wider sink base and finding a way to fit recycling under it. I have a pretty clear idea of how I want the recycling to look, but I still have to "back engineer" it. I plan to use a sink with the drain in the rear corner (Thanks, Detroit_burb!) and a base with no center stile. (A recent thread is linked below.) This should give me enough room. Thanks again for the suggestions. Even if I don't take them all, (c.f., The Thread That Shall Not Be Linked ;-), I'll gratefully use them in some manner. Here is a link that might be useful: corner-drain sink thread

Because of the service agreement warranty, we must buy the replacement fridge from Sears. They offer 14 varied models in the French door dounterdepth style, from GE and LG (which we are considering) and Kenmore (which we aren't). Today I was baffled to learn that Sears recently discontinued the GE Cafe counterdepth French door model in stainless but kept it in black and a white door style (but only with an odd gold tone handle). My question now is how to address the annoying black/dark grey sides of the new stainless door fridges: 1. apply a stick-on wrap cover to simulate the stainless look of the door OR 2. rig some kind of white side panel to simulate the look of the complete cabinet enclosures that everyone is using these days in the white kitchens with stainless appliances (which we opted not to do originally because the skylight above the fridge made an over-fridge cabinet impractical) OR 3. find some other brilliant solution from the village!