Lauren -- thanks much, we are trying to get our DIY/pro mix to "take" in our 6 x 10.5ish room! Agree we may end up with 1 fixed if budget constraints get in the way, but seems like it'd be a shame. 1) Window credit goes to tiler, though we made his job harder by forcing him to design from the full run of 6 x 6 tiles between the window. All cuts relate to that, for better or worse. 2) Yep, leaded glass -- I found/fell in love with the salvage doors years back (not in my house, alas) and basically designed the bathroom around 'em. Fell a little less in love with them after spending hours using progressively more toxic cleaners on the decades of mineral etc deposits before sending them off to the cabinetmaker. And of course after priming and painting (and painting) the cab boxes. But I'm feeling the love return, ha. 3) Oh, glass tile would have been too easy, ha. You know I love my aqua iridescent glass mosaic backsplash, but Mr Vix and I both feel in love with a ceramic liner topped with oyster shell slivers. Luckily the bath is small and our field tile was rock bottom in price, sigh. HEY MARISA -- No need to worry about being lonely while all others finish -- we just went to install our sink and the GC's plumber didn't seem to take our vanity shelf configuration into account, so we'll probably have to call (another!) pro for help. No running water for meeeeeeee though it's nice to have it out of the den (though its mirror needs to join it!):

Hey Kirkhall, glad to see you're still moving forward! But, I thought there was a vent stack just about exactly where the hinges on the door into the NW bedroom are shown. Have you decided to go ahead and move that vent stack or am I just misremembering exactly where it was? Could you show exactly where the vent stack will be on the drawing above? I don't want to spend too much time playing with your sketch only to find out that that danged vent stack is in the way of every idea. But, I do agree that the sketch your GC's designer provided looks awkward. I'm comfortable with angled walls but they do need to look PLANNED! Where two walls meet at 135 degrees (90 + 45) they usually look planned. And, if you have two matching sets of angled walls that meet at 120 degrees (90 + 30) or at 150 degrees (90 + 60) they also usually look planned. But,where (as here) walls meet at some other odd angle, they often look like a mistake was made in the building process and the angled wall was just stuck in willy-nilly to make all the walls connect up. I'm wondering if something like this would work. (Probably depends on where that danged vent stack is!) The hallway to your bedroom would be made about a bit wider and the laundry closet a bit shallower than on your GC's design...but the laundry closet still should be plenty wide for the washer and dryer to sit at the ends as shown on the GC's design. The dotted red line is just to show how I envision the wall beside the NW bedroom would line up with the outer wall of the laundry closet. The only angled walls would be one at the top of the stairs and one in your bedroom and both would meet other walls at 135 degrees instead of some odd angle. If you put a small triangular table or some nick-knack shelves in the corner across from the hallway angled wall, you would create an angled hallway effect that would look planned rather than haphazard. I know one issue you're dealing with with the girls bedroom closets is that you have a kneewall at one side which is making it hard to figure out how to fit in a full sized door. But I think you could do their closets like this using 24" wide regular doors set where you have a full height ceilings. (Yes, I know 24" wide doors aren't exactly "optimal" but where space is tight, they will work FINE as closet doors, particularly for a child's closet!) Both closets would then be shallow walk-in closets (3.5 ft deep x about 6.5 ft wide) with hanging rods to the left and right of the door and a narrow aisle down the middle. Since you wouldn't have to walk very far into the closet, it wouldn't matter that the aisleway was narrow. Obviously, on the side with the low ceiling, you would not have any storage above the hanging rod but I had a similar closet in one of the secondary bedrooms of our old house that was built under a stairway and it was actually pretty functional. With kid's closets, you often want to put set the hanging rod pretty low anyway.

Oofasis - you are so right. I am starting to freak out. They are almost done mudding/sanding/drywalling and on Monday will start painting. By Wednesday the cabs should be going in (yikes)! Okay, this might get a little long, so I understand if y'all are not up for it!!! LOL! Long story long, in anticipation I spent Sunday evening (after putting the kids to bed) measuring and cutting up paper to create a "mock island" to see how it would look and get my husband's opinion (we are adjusting/tweaking things in the field, as it appears things are not quite what they seem on paper). He flipped. In a calm way, but his comments totally pushed me over the edge into total self-doubt and fear over what this is going to look like in the end. We have hired a prof KD and company, and so far all has been stellar. There have been a few hiccups (Shaw arriving cracked, sink base not the right size/shape, deciding to get rid of the soffits) but the guys have been fantastic and it really has not been a problem so far (knock on wood). Then DH came in and said he thought it looked like we were putting too much "furniture" into the kitchen and that things were going to be too "tight." This from the guy who NEVER wanted to be involved. I've basically had to FORCE him to look at the plans and give me opinions. He and I decided on the layout together, and NOW he's saying it doesn't look right? And then he says, "I've lost you for 9 months to "that website" and all this kitchen stuff, and it seems we're going to end up with a kitchen crammed with furniture like my Mom's house when I was growing up." Could there be a worse insult??? I can laugh about it now, but at the time I was...not mad, just FREAKED. What if he's right? Of course I talked to my construction guy and he is totally calm - "Don't worry, we make changes on the fly all the time, we'll lay it out for you with actual cabs and you can decide what you think," yada yada yada. He made me feel better. To fully explain: we have a very long and narrow kitchen. The sink used to be on the window wall and the main walkway through the house bisected the kitchen right behind the person at the sink. If you were doing dishes and had the dishwasher open noone could pass because the dishwasher came within an inch or so of a peninsula coming out of the opposite wall. The fridge was literally on the OTHER side of the penisula, totally outside the work triangle. It was crazy and annoying. More than once one of my kids came barreling through the kitchen right when I was making my way across the kitchen with scalding boiling water. Not good. So we have pulled the sink off the window and put it in an island. I will have about 42-45 inches of aisle on the work-triangle side of the island to do my thing. The plan was to make the island about 32" wide and fairly long - angled in toward the work triangle aisle at the ends and with seating at one end. That would mean the outside aisle on the other side of the sink (strictly for walking through the house - no cabs or anything over there) would be 36" wide. 2 different kd's told me this was plenty of space, as most hallways are 36" wide (as are ours). But for whatever reason, when my DH finally could SEE it on our floor, the narrowness of the 36" freaked him out. The odd thing is, our hallways don't seem narrow, and the island is open on top - it's an island for goodness sakes - so it's not going to feel closed in...Don't get me wrong, I would LOVE to have a wider kitchen, but it is what it is and we are not up for bumping out the whole house - we need our yard and outdoor space as much as we need a new kitchen! :) Anyway, now I'm trying to decide if I want to cut down on the island overhang to provide more walking space on that side. If I do cut it down, though, will this gigantic 3618 Shaw sink (b/c I couldn't get a replacement 3018 in time - plus my kd had mistakenly ordered a 39" base cab for the sink so the 30"er would have looked weird anyway) look out of proportion? I am undermounting it, so hopefully that will help. UGH. I can't wait to just get it all in and see what is what. In any event, my GC said do not worry, we can play with things when we put the cabs in. They will show me all my options and it will look fabulous. And in his mind, 36" is just fine. But as he was saying this he said, "don't mention it to 'kd' because she gets nervous when things are changed - she was really nervous about taking the soffits out because she would have ordered taller cabinets." So that got me thinking about the cabinets...the hood...hence this thread. Whew. Long story - SORRY!

Can you post a photo of the trim? Some trims are really standard- they can be replaced for $10-$18 at home depot plus $5-8 for a good bulb. Sometimes they are not standard but can be fixed with a can of white spray paint. Then other cans have trims that are integrated and can't be removed at all... Generally working with what you have will be cheapest as it doesn't require an electrician to replace the housing in the ceiling. To me LED bulbs have a better light output than the LED retrofit kits, others will disagree. Make sure to watch the color temperature (I like 2700K) and you will need to replace the dimmers as well.