One of the things I love about this kitchen forum is that I can see so many different styles. Sometime it reminds me of watching salsa dancing where you could watch 5 couples dancing and everyone is doing something a little different to make it their own. When I was working on my kitchen, I could look at pictures and see what things people did that called to me. One of the things I decided on based on the finished kitchen was going with taller crown molding. I didn't even know I liked it or wanted it (chuckle - this forum is great for finding things you didn't even know you wanted ) until I tried to figure out what it was about certain kitchens that appealed to me. Looking at the kitchen magazines aren't much help because they are showing the kitchen that is double my budget, double the space I have, and with whatever is the in trend that season. I like that we keep the finished kitchen thread nice. It is a celebration. You want to encourage people to post because it is helpful to the newcomers in figuring out your taste and style and really contributes to the sense of community. If I post that I really like X about someone's kitchen - then I really like X about their kitchen or I won't say anything. It's interesting because some of my favorite kitchens have been ones that I could never pull off but they had that something about them that was visionary.

>>...didn't have a pantry?>> Well, I wouldn't have any room to store any food, LOL. I cook a lot so I have doubles and even triples of every size cookware I use, plus 25 yrs ago I moved in with six sets of dinnerware and three sets of flatware. I have three separate spice drawers because I cook everything from Indian to Chinese to French and half a dozen other cuisines. It was my first (and so far only, thank goodness) opportunity to design a kitchen, so I crammed in all the storage I could. We were handicapped by only having 1 wall of uppers. One half-wall holds the frig and is open to the LR and DR. The other wall has floor-to-ceiling windows to capture a great hillside view: I worked with graph paper and managed to get everything behind doors. It was about a week before I realized I had FORGOTTEN to put in any food storage! I did have three narrow closets in the DR (a former bedrm) for the upright freezer, the microwave and wine stemware, and the table linens/vacuum/stepladder. But nothing for dried pasta, Asian condiments, dried mushrooms, cans of soup, etc. So.....we had fortunately not placed the order for the kitchen cabs yet. Two 18" wide pantry units were hastily added, and placed in-between the DR and kitchen. The top doors hide fixed shelves, the bottom doors hide rollouts. All are height adjustable, heavy-duty. I'd never had a pantry before. Now I'm spoiled and can't imagine living w/o one! A walk-in would be nice, but there's only two of us so not really needed. Ten years later I had a handyman built us a custom storage unit for our indoor back porch area. It was such a pain carrying the vacuum up and down stairs, I finally broke down and bought a second upright. I don't have any good photos of it, but half is deep enough for the vacuum and BBQ tools, about 12". The other half has shallow, 7" shelves that store dry goods like spray paints (for DH's hobby), DW tablets, Brita filters, vacuum cleaner bags, etc.

Thank you all again for your feedback. I think we decided to go with tumbled travertine in a white/beige color for the backsplash instead of the brick. Couple questions: - For a small space would you recommend small brick shaped tiles, brick shape and size tiles, or square tiles? We don't want to do the real thin tiles. -We are thinking about square porcelain floor tiles, placed in a diamond shaped pattern because we understand that will make our small kitchen appear bigger. If we do a square tile backsplash would you place them in a diamond pattern as well to match the floor pattern? -We are thinking of a medium beige color floor...the floors we have are original to the house and have to go! We can't do wood because of the way the kitchen is laid out with the rest of the house where we already have wood. Thanks in advance!

Have you considered a larger more sheltered entryway? Do seriously consider putting a roof between the left (garage) wing of the house and the right wing of the house for a larger covered portico, and adding porch/portico lighting in the ceiling of the new portico/porch. As you extend the roof, put your support posts literally against the inner sides of the two wings of the house (rather than crowding the entryway with posts closer together). ... One option would be to extend the roof on the right wing of the house: https://willophx.com/home-tour/ ... Another option would be to create a hip roof portico (preferably without the double bulky posts) : https://www.georgiafrontporch.com/portfolio_category/hip-roof/#prettyPhoto[gallery2935]/0/ ... Another option would be to create a rounded front for a flat roof of the portico, https://in.pinterest.com/pin/490610953134023345/ ... with the rounded part front of the flat (or nearly flat) portico roof extending in front of the front exterior wall of the house so it shelters the rounded front steps. By making the roof top of the portico deeper between its upper part (roof/balcony) and its lower part (ceiling), (with or without a railing), you could bridge the distance between the height of the two roof lines.