Julie, list those signs on Freecycle! That's great Freecycle material. Turn your DH onto Freecycle, if he's really looking for people who could use the stuff. My favorite give away saying: **I have faith that the universe will provide us with xxx if we need another one. **You KNOW we would have never been able to find that if we hadn't been digging in all of this stuff. **You have exceeded your fair share of the space, so you'll have to keep it in "your" space. **And just where, exactly, did this come from in the first place? **I DID deal with it, it's in the trash where it belongs. Remember, a place for everything and everything in it's place. **It's costing us $200 per square foot to store that thing. Is that worth it to you? Our current go-around is an old wool coat with holes, which he finally replaced. I'm going to cut out the wool and put it in the compost pile, but he thinks I should donate the thing. His feeling is that it's better than nothing if you have nothing. I told him there were tons of decent coats at the thrift stores and he could just go out and find someone living under a tarp to give it to. He's not willing to do that, so I guess I've won this battle. I actually did 90% of the decluttering when he was at work. I would load up the van and drop it off at the store right next to where I worked. This summer, he accused me of decluttering his boots. Turns out that he hid them from me in the trunk of his car! Gloria

@starpooh Yes, feel free to include it! Only thing missing now is our window treatments, but I'll add those pics to my photobucket later. @lisadlu Doors are a combination of Maple and Birch I believe. My cab maker tried to use large planks wherever possible but most of the doors are more than one piece glued together. Not sure about the warping, everything is fine so far, but it hasn't been that long and I cannot say for sure if it will or wont happen. Depending on how dark you want your stain, maple may not be the best choice because if you do it too dark, you will not be able to see the grain of the wood. There is a very fine line. Most people who have seen our cabs seem to really like the color. As far as what is framed and what isnt, everything was initially framed but in order to get the look we were going for, the frames around the cab doors were all cut to essentially make them frameless. Our other option could have been to use frame mount door hinges, but we elected not to go that route (I didnt like the soft close mechanisms as much). The drawers are still framed as they were originally built. Obviously if I could go back, I would have done everything completely frameless. Check out my construction pics on photobucket, I tried to add detail wherever possible. HTH! Here is a link that might be useful: Construction photos

Scootermom - Our kitchen is not huge, but they traffic flow is not through my work space, so it functions so much better than anything i've ever had! The kitchen footprint is about 10'-4" deep by 14'-10" long (these are the wall to wall dimensions inside the opening separating the kitchen from dining, which includes all the cabinetry). My clear workspace between range counter and island is 4 foot, all other clearances are 3 feet. My island is 3'-7" x 4'-9". You can see where I house my dishes and glasses below. On the bottom, the spice pullout is immediately to the right of the range. To the right of that is my baking cabinet and flatware drawer. To the left of the range are all my pots, pans and lids and the cooking/baking utensil drawer. My island holds 2 cabinet boxes, one 39" base that we swapped one drawer for the sink and a 18" cabinet base we converted to a double trash bin pullout. The junk drawer is over the trash bins and the knife/gadget drawer is in the middle. The drawer face at the sink flips out to house srubbies. (Excuse the dishes in sink...) BlackChamois - I like the idea of the vapor bar stools (and the Ghost Stools too), but have been nixed by the husband... He fears they will get scratched, thus ruined, from pocket items, buttons, kids, etc. We both agree we need backs on the stools for comfort and our small children. And we agree the stools should not be black... Here's a close up of our cabinet doors and hardware: see link below for hardware! I bought them in HD at special order desk so I could use my 10 or 20 percent off coupon. The shipping was free, so it was a win/win! white doors SW "rainwashed" doors. this is a very hard color to accurately photograph! It is soft, subtle and changes greatly throughout the day with the different lighting conditions, natural and artificial. *will post another post with Knob link... can't figure out how to do 2 in one post OR do i have the time to figure out the html code Here is a link that might be useful: MSL Pulls

I'm sure it must depend on the stage of life one is currently in. I live in a 1200 square foot farmhouse with my husband and four small children. We have very large parties with three or four other families with small children several times a month. We host all the major holidays and have a growing extended family. I literally cannot fit all the people in my house. There is nowhere to sit. There are bottlenecks in the kitchen, bathroom, and entrance areas. Usually, the children and toddlers outnumber the adults 3 or 4 - 1, and they are so loud and so boisterous that the adults can have no peace unless the kids are all outside. Since we are in California, most of the time our parties spill out into the yard and that works great because the weather is usually beautiful. But Dec-Jan and July-Aug are tough. We are building a house on a 5 acre lot right in the middle of town, and it will have a large kitchen and several large rooms for entertaining. Sometimes I worry that it will be hard to take care of, because I am used to cleaning and caring for a 2bd 1bath tiny little house. But my kitchen right now is 10x10, and I have 48" of available countertop on one side, and 5' of countertop on the other. My husband cooks as much as I do, and he loves to get all the kids in there cooking and helping him. I have a hard time being in the kitchen when everyone else is in there too. It's just too crowded and loud and I like to have everything orderly and clean before I begin cooking. I am planning a large kitchen- 15x24 or so with a small eating area included- so my husband can have one side and I can cook on the other and we don't run into each other and I don't have to clean up his mess before I start cooking. I agree that large kitchens cause the cook to walk farther and, because of the space between stations, some efficiency is sacrificed. It is true that my tiny galley kitchen is very efficient, if by efficiency you mean not having to move much to reach everything. But in my current kitchen I trip over kids and my husband and the dog and the dishes and on and on every time I turn around. I'm thinking maybe inefficiency in the form of large aisles and lots of space would be heavenly. I plan to glass in one of the porches off the kitchen and make that into a pantry/summer kitchen where my husband can make his ginger beer and fermented stuff and I can do canning and vegetable washing and large crop/batch cooking and seed starting. My in-laws are in the downsizing phase and they warn me that the extra room I am planning in my new house will be an expensive, uneccesary burden. But again, how much of the "downsizing" craze is fueled by retired people with no children left in the home? My new house will be 1700 square feet of entertaining space on the main floor, with another 1000 square feet or so of covered porches. We will put all the bedrooms in the upstairs half-story. If we need additional kid space, I will have a daylight basement that can also be finished eventually. I did design a main floor study/bath combo that can be turned into a master suite should we ever need one on the main floor. Maybe I will get in my new house and realize that it is too big. But if so I can just not finish the basement or parts of the second floor. But it would be nice to have that problem as opposed to the space limitations that I have now.