Sorry to sound a discordant note, but I personally don't like the French doors at all. I think an arch would be perfect. From the kitchen, the doors seem unnecessary, but more importantly, they would interfere with light unless you added the sidelights, which, as several folks have said, will look pretty busy IRL. But it's the view from the FR that really makes me dislike the doors. Sometimes it's easy to overlook the obvious, and here, the obvious is the fact that you'll have wall after wall after wall of French doors. Together they form an overwhelming block of glass and muntins and frames and grid shapes, with no easy way to soften them (these aren't windows and won't have soft, poofy window treatments). I think they could look even odder IRL. Either you'll have a shade or something on the patio door, and nothing on the others, or you'll leave all three doors nude, which will give you one black door at night and two others that have indoor light behind them. They will look similar, but wrong. Plus, in reality, I find that people actually keep interior french doors closed far less often than they think they will. I think the arch avoids some of these problems. It pierces that corner so that the FR won't feel so much like an isolated addition or a 3-season porch that's been tarted up--instead, it would be connected to the house. And having the curved arch lets you break up that infinite repetition of rectilinear grid, grid, grid without having to add anything. Finally, it will connect the FR and the kitchen with the rest of the house architecturally by repeating a motif you already have. Sorry to add confusion--just my $.02!

mike home by no means am I offended and thank you for that concern. Yes, the discussion did get a little off topic, that's sometimes the nature of the beast here. I am in your corner and also get disturbed when some of the posters here relate to their tech claiming a weak capacitor that needs to be changed out. Many times I bypass those posts because it does lend itself to ongoing critiquing. There's a lot of information about what a capacitor does, how it is constructed and so on. But you'd be very hard pressed to find much on the web about the exact science of what is happening but more so, a high level overview with a few technical aspects thrown in. The start capacitor is an electrolytic capacitor, period. However, an electrolytic capacitor designed specifically for DC circuits does have design changes as you mention. The start capacitor is considered expendable and it has a known life span, similar to an incandescent light bulb having so many energized times before it is expected to expire. It's encased in a Bakelite type plastic shell with safety designs to minimize it exploding in an attempt to keep them inexpensive. The run capacitor by design should last indefinitely however the materials used obviously give it a shorter life cycle, they eventually go but the anticipated life span is not projected. Staying with the PCB filled capacitor, the PCB does act as an insulator but not totally because of ripple currents expected in an AC circuit by nature, there is anticipated leakage through the substance. That leakage is known to happen and utilized in the design of the capacitor. It actually is what initiates the aluminum chloride gas around the electrodes eliminating electron flow for that half cycle. As the capacitor discharges and again builds for the second half of the wave commences, the process repeats itself with opposite polarities for that split second. You will be hard pressed to find very detailed instruction on that aspect in most technical or application type instruction, such as HVAC. You'll get a brief description of how they are constructed, their characteristics and how they work then more time on their function and troubleshooting. I did an extensive search of the web in hopes of finding some of the detailed design information about capacitors, as would be found in a textbook on them. I basically only saw the same high level descriptions as have been given here but nothing real in depth. It may have been a mistake to introduce a more drilled down version but I hope someone got something from it.

This looks lots better without the hutch! I think I feel the same way you do about doors. When I asked our designer who was taking my design and putting it into construction drawings what he would change, he said, "You have too many doors!" I told him I needed every one of them, kept them all, close most of them daily and the others weekly, and thank my lucky stars every day that I didn't listen to him! So it seems to me that you should keep these doors for all of the very good reasons you gave, ESPECIALLY because you can't multi-task in the kitchen with noise (I'm the same way), or you will probably regret it. I have a somewhat similar situation at the end of our lower level TV/WS room that sort of funnels down as you approach our stairs--a set of 48" wide double doors on the furnace room on a slanted wall on the right, a set of 48" double doors on a closet that juts out into the room on the left, and a set of 54" double doors to the workshop sort of straight ahead, just past the bottom of the stairs that go up to the right. I had planned every inch of our house, but the closet was an afterthought. When the 3 sets of doors were installed, I thought, "Wow, that looks cool!"--just like I HAD planned it! So, in spite of the irregular nature of the space, the thing that I think makes it work is the absolute sameness of the doors and trim, as well as the relative distance between them. But it's definitely not symmetrical. Our doors have no glass, and are stained 3-panel oak with with a simple 3-1/4" arts & crafts trim. We don't have all of the competing glass around that you have, since there are no windows in this area. Because you only see your 3 sets of doors from the family room, and with your seating arrangement really only facing the 2 sets of doors to the interior of the house, this will probably work out ok. I'd make the doors to the kitchen double doors, and have them open onto the family room walls, and have the lites, trim, height, and frame width match the doors to the dining room as much as possible--make it look like they were all put in at the same time. The sliding door to the deck will look different no matter what you do, but I'd try to get the other sets of doors to match it in trim and height, although I'm guessing that you won't be able to match the sliding door lites' design, since your pictures are showing different styles. Also, take into consideration the lites' style on the exterior windows of the family and dining rooms when you're finalizing your sets of doors. Not sure I'd put glass doors in the cabinets in the family room, since there's already so much glass in this room. In any case, can you try this out with a double door in the 6' space, see if you think it might work, and let us have a look? Anne

We have the standard box springs with pillow top mattress. Our bed frames then raised the beds even higher. So the top of my mattresses our about my hip heighth (I am 5'8) Our traditional nightstands were too low. As a temporary solution we used Buffet lamps for lighting, but had to reach for the alarm clock, etc. I now use an old secretary desk as my nightstand now (it does not have a roll top) and it is the perfect heighth. However it is a treck to get in and out of bed without a stool. Just something to consider, not sure if you were also using a standard mattress or a pillowtop.