Like others, I too like the latest design better than the first. You wrote that you had looked at many pictures. I wonder if you have come across a 4-volume book, published in Japan, entitled Garden Views. One of the four is subtitled Water and Stream Gardens. Ravishing photos, many design ideas. You might need to visit a university library to find these books. Another designer worth checking out is Russell Page. He does interesting things with water sometimes. As for your design, much depends on the details, as is so often true of Japanese gardens. If I were you I would make the pond maybe twice or three times as big as you have it. Your guests would admire the koi, the lotus, the water lilies... You'd have to think carefully about how the tea house relates to the pond. You might consult some Chinese garden books and look at photos of Suzhou gardens, where teahouse pavilions look out over the water.

Thank-you iris_gal. I'm glad to hear you enjoyed them and I appreciate the compliment. Usually, I can get by at doing something, jack-of-all-trades sort of thing. The trouble with that is I can't focus on any one thing long enough for my abilities with that skill to become great. Mediocrity seems to be my strong suit. The best we can do is keep trying, I suppose. Brock P.S. It's come to my attention that the last image might not be so easy to recognize. It's the head and top line of a draft horse without ears or mane. Don't ask me where the idea came from, it just made me happy to look at it, so I stopped working on it before I messed it up.

We have a lot of things that are wrong especially the kitchen cabinets and flooring both of which are a mess in colors and also 30 years ago, so we have to care of that in order to even be able to sell at a reasonable price. We will be adding granite countertops to make it nice, hence the wall removal idea too just because we are doing other things anyway. But I agree wall removal is not a fab idea. There are neighbors who have just cut it partially like 2 feet inside (to countertop height of course) and have been happy. Is that something that would be a put off to a buyer? Thank you for your inputs. Definitely not removing the wall now! But cutting it inside a little will open up the space nice. Request you to use your imagination for inputs, but I also have a picture to share from the neighbor. It was the cabinets guys idea to cut the wall altogether because the partial doesn't make sense to him. What do you all think about the 2 feet inside idea?

Thanks for the advice, Kristine! I moved some things around in the Ikea planner like you suggested. Your suggestion for the fridge location is where my fridge is currently located. I moved it in my original plan because I dislike how much it sticks out into the middle of the room. I could probably solve that issue by getting a counter-depth fridge. I need to do more research on that because I am concerned that we won't have enough fridge space with a counter depth model. I frequently put cookie sheets in the fridge and they take up the entire depth of my current fridge (a side-by-side model). I think I could fit them in a counter depth fridge if I got the kind with 2 french doors on the top and the freezer on the bottom. I moved the wall oven/micro over to the far left wall because I didn't want to make the peninsula any shorter than it already is. It is only 6 feet and any smaller seems like it won't be long enough. I would like to be able to have enough space for 6 girls to be working around it at one time and 6 feet will already be tight (3 girls on each side). I do really like moving the cooktop to the far left wall as well. It seems to give me a lot more bottom drawers for storage along the top wall which would be great. I was only able to fit an 18" cabinet between the cooktop and the wall oven. I'm not sure that is enough space on that side. I think I remember seeing that 24" of working space should be the minimum. I could get more space by using a range instead, but I don't really like that setup. I frequently use both the oven and the stovetop at the same time with 2 people cooking. So the person using the stovetop is always in the way of the person trying to open the oven. I would really like to have the 2 separated.