> For a 4.5" door, you might be fine without hinge dampers. Ironically, I've found the opposite to be true. When cabinet doors close, they push/compress air into the cabinet, which creates a positive pressure inside the cabinet, and a resultant back pressure on the door. The total force on the door is pressure delta * door area, and the total torque about the hinge is proportional to pressure delta * door area * door width. So the wider and larger the door, the more "air damped" it will be. I have cabinet doors in my house ranging from ~8" to 24" wide, and the smaller ones slam shut without hinge dampers, but the larger ones do not.

Oh Boxer! Those pantries are simply stunning, especially the first with the french doors. I wish I could do that. >>sighTinycastles--I had thought about the in-swing double pantry doors, but I don't have enough depth for them to fit inside the pantry. It's only 24" deep and the shelves are 12" deep. That leaves only 12" of wall space on the sides for a door to rest when pushed in. It's a great idea though! I'm not sure I can go there with the Viking for cost and their issues. Please report back on your satisfaction with it. I'm curious to see. Thanks. LL--I'm considering two brands of wall ovens. One is about 23.75" deep and the other is 24.25" deep. Whew! Glad I checked on that. I'll have to go to the house and see how the fireplace feels moved over towards the door. We've got it mocked up with ladders and old interior doors now and there's definetly not too much there now, but maybe somewhere in that area something can be fudged. Thank you. Laughable--what a great idea! If I was going with a single-door, I probably would have done solid wood. If french doors, definetly glass. The fabric attached to the back of the door idea is genius! (I don't think an actual fabric panel itself swinging loosely is a good idea in my kitchen.) My wheels are turning! Thanks!

Blood stains are removed easily via cold water to warm/hot (120F-140F)profile wash, or pre-treating the area with any good stain product and or hydrogen peroxide then washing in cool to warm water. Heat sets the protiens in blood, modern enzyme detergents/pre-treatments work quite well in removing such stains. It also helps to flush the stain while fresh with cold water. As for "boil washes", most all my vintage laundry books from about the 1940's on clearly state boiling laundry went out with modern automatic washing machines and certianly as laundry products have evoloved from soap. Boiling was done mainly as a way to loosen muck,grime and other soils from laundry without all the rubbing/scrubbing one had to do prior to automatic washing machines. Very hot water washes were also a way of combating common vermin found in laundry (lice, nits, fleas, etc), which happily are not as widespread today. Very hot water washes do offer a way of sanitising laundry, but at widely differnt temps. E coli requires only 160F at 20 minutes, but yeasts, and other types of bugs require much higher temps for longer contact times. It must also be remembered that there was much more of an emphasis on "boil washes" in eras past when there were few if any modern disenfectants and especially antibiotics. Cathing a germ until as recently could almost mean certian death, unless one was strong enough to fight off the infection, even then many still died. Therefore housewives did everything they could to keep their homes "germ free". However because of modern sanitation and health care we simply do not see the sorts of illnesses/widespread diseases housewives commonly were used to. Thyphoid fever, measles, cholera, minor strep or staph infections that rapidly turned into major systemic infections which caused everything from child birth fever to pneumonia can are are controlled. Also modern hospitals have replaced sick rooms in the home. This means less disease in homes to infect other members of the same household. The final reason for very hot water washes was that perborate/percarbonate bleaches require temps of 120F/130F and above to become really effective. The lower the water temp, the longer contact time must be for equal results. Modern chemistry as gotten around this problem by creating "activated" oxygen bleaches found in most better quality detergents/laundry products. Bleach activator chemicals when combined with oxygen bleaches in wash water,provide equal or better bleaching/stain removal action at wash temps of 100F, and even 80F. This is why repeated washing of darks even in cold or cool water using products such as Perisl or Tide will eventually "bleach" those colours. Activated bleaches also provide very effective disenfection of laundry at wash temps of 100F to 120F, with a contact time of at least 20 minutes. In fact the chemical produced by combining oxygen bleach and bleaching activators "Peracetic acid" is a very, very effective broad spectrum biocide and stain remover. Peracetic acid is such an effective biocide that brewers and other use it to clean stainless steel vats because unlike chlorine bleach it does not cause damage. Commercial and hospital laundries around the world have long switched to activated oxygen bleaches because they can obtain the same level of stain removal/disenfection at wash temps of 120F or lower, which results in a savings on energy costs. It also results in longer textile life as lower wash water temps are less harsh on textile fibers. Again, unlike chlorine bleaches (never very popular outside of the United States for laundry use), activated oxygen bleaches do not cause textile damage. For all the above reasons, the average wash temp in Europe/UK is widely documented to be 40C. The use of activated oxygen bleaches, and better detergent formulas has really removed the requirment for long boil washes. Of course if one uses lower quality detergents and mainly cool/cold water washes, that is a different matter all together. Americans have really only recently "rediscovered" front loading washing machines, and built in water heaters. Just because one can launder something at 160F to 200F, does not mean one ought to; first of all not many items produced today can withstand repeated super or even very hot water washes. Second of all many American detergents are not designed for long boiling washes. Designed with enzymes and activated bleaches, they work quite well at wash temps of 140F and below, (140F-120F the common setting of most hot water heaters in American homes, with 120F usually the factory setting). Indeed long wash times with detergents not desigened for the purpose can lead to poor results, as the componets of said detergent begin to loose their soil suspension ability, allowing removed soils to redeposit back onto laundry. Conversely many European detergents designed for long boil washes have been redesigned to work in lower wash temps and or shorter cycles. Have washed everything from badly soiled table linens to muddy gardening clothes setting my Miele to ho higher than 120F and using plain old Tide or Wisk dual action tablets, and the results have always been great. Have also "restored" vintage linens that had foxing stains (that yellowing one sees from linens lying about stored), using the same low wash temps, but quality products. My Miele goes up to 200F, and cannot remember the last time (aside from occassional "maitaining washes), ever laundering anything at that temp. Especially as I still do quite a bit of ironing, and cottons/linens laundered at very high temps emerge with lots of wrinkles. Simply do not fancy making more work for myself. C.dS

Hi, sorry I've been MIA again for awhile. Looks like you've got some great answers already. I'll try to fill in my answers as well - please forgive me Steph (and others) if I duplicate what you've said. I found the old 2009 IKEA Kitchen printed catalog, and am trying to figure what it is they mean about the things included. For the HIGH CABINETS, it says, " Prices includes frame, doors, hinges, drawers, legs, wire baskets, pull out cleaning storage and shelves where shown. Drawer and door dampers are included in all combinations except for the ARLIG series. The RATIONELL drawer and door dampers are sold separately. Toekicks and knobs/handles sold separately...." So. What sort of drawer and door dampers are included? And would it be a better idea to get the Rationell drawer and door dampers? It does not mention "full extension drawers" at all. Would that be what the Rationell drawer and door fittings do? Or are the drawers full extension anyway? No mention of needing to purchase DRAWER FRONTS for the roll out drawers behind the hinged Stat doors. Will I need to order those too? The door and drawer dampers that are included (make sure you order them - soft close dampers aren't automatically included) work exactly the same as the BLUM ones. IKEA calls them Rationell. I'm not sure why. I did read on some site somewhere (sorry, don't remember where) that they are not identical. When you order the pantry, all of the necessary hardware should come with it. Make sure you specify that you want the dampers - they don't necessarily come with, if you don't specify them. And, the doors come with the configuration I'm looking at, and I still wonder if I can order a side panel in the same look, which is the STAT in white? And will it be a single tall panel or do I get it as the doors, a high door and a short door above that which I attach as the side panel? I would suggest calling them to get the definitive answer to that exact question. We did not order sides as we are doing plain white and the sides of the cabs themselves are exactly that. We also went in person, it may be different when you order over the phone. I don't want to order the door pulls, I have a style I'm getting locally. It says LEGS are included "where shown" but nothing has a set of legs included in the drawing. No big deal, but I sure cannot put it together if I don't start with the base. My ceilings are 98 inches, and the cabinet is 88 inches, I think w/o the legs. So laying it on its side to attach legs after it's put together does not seem like an option to me. All of the base cabinets need legs. The pantry box would sit evenly with other base cabs, so it would need the same legs. They are kinda cheap plastic thingys - but very easy to adjust if your floor isn't exactly perfectly even. My order will be for the HDW2488 Stat white, which is 24w x 24d x 88h....... Double check the height - it looks like they offer a couple of diff height cabinets. It wouldn't be fun if you ended up getting the wrong one. And while I'm at it, I decided to have them ship the BDI18 which is a base cab 24d x 18w x 30h w/ pull out ironing board, with visible legs, also in the Stat door. Guess I'll need a Stat side panel for that also, unless I change it to the Rubrik stainless steel option. I am like a swimmer standing on the diving board, bouncing up/down/up/down. I don't know what else I'll need to order. How about the brackets to attach the tall cabinets and the base cabinets to the wall? Are those a separate purchase with Ikea? Just how helpful will the folks be when I place my order by phone? The brackets are separate - but when they help you put together your order, they should include all of that kind of stuff. For instance, even though we have 3 cabinet runs, we only got one bracket - my DH just cut it into the appropriate lengths. Maybe they'll send me a 2010 Kitchen catalog if I order some stuff. Did you try the link I posted above to order a catalogue online? It looked like a pretty simply process. :o) I await your advice on this latest flurry of questions. Thank all you who are talking me through this. ***** next post***** But what you are telling me, Prairie, is that you moved the garbage UP and probably cut the front door so that when you pulled out the top to wipe your trimmings/trash into the can, one single drawer was beneath it and was not opened. You could pull it out as separate drawer with a different drawer front or was it the other portion of the cabinet door? How did you arrange the door of the cabinet so it was normal looking? Do you have a photo you could upload of that? Then I would know what you mean. Nothing like a good photo to give me an AHA! moment. We are making our own drawers which means we can put the drawers wherever we want. We are not limited to the sizes of drawer faces that IKEA provides. The pics that Steph posted are great. Ikea comes with the large door that covers all three 'drawers'. All IKEA drawers are identical (in two sizes). The ones that are meant as pull-outs behind a door come with little drawer fronts. pull out drawer front If you look closely at this page, you can see the two smaller drawers come with the fronts - the taller one (with rails on the sides) would attach to the pull out door front. 5 piece 12 inch pull out I don't have my camera at the moment - my DH took it to work, but I'll try to post some pics of the garbage cabinet configuration later. Please let me know if I've missed any questions. :) ~ Missy