Defrost, I am in zone 5 and wintersowed all of my tomatoes this year. ... and I had plenty of ripe tomatoes by August: Here is a summary of the schedule I followed this year. (Your results may very) Beans - direct sown in June Broccoli/Cauliflower - wintersown in February Carrots - direct sown in April Cucumbers - direct sown in May Lettuces/Spinach/Chard - wintersown in January, 2nd batch sown in late June for fall harvest Peas - wintersown in March Peppers - the only thing I sow indoors (March) Radishes - direct sown in April Tomatoes - wintersown in March, planted out late May Herbs, perennial or hardy annuals - wintersow whenever, usually February because I have the time. Herbs, tender (such as basil) - wintersow in April Hope this helps some! Bonnie

I had an angel of a carpenter who cut the old sink and a small section of countertop out together, and built a 2x4 base for it. He made temporary plumbing connections and left it in place for me to use most evenings, when work was done for the day. When it was in the way of the work, it was disconnected and moved around. I don't suppose every crew would be willing to bother with this (in fact, the carpenter and the GC had a friendly but spirited discussion about the time that was taken to do it) but perhaps it's worth asking. It beats washing dishes in a tub or bathroom sink, by a mile. We set up our temporary kitchen in a wide hallway next to the kitchen, a few steps from the bathroom and thus the water source. On one side of the hallway, in a recessed niche we put the refrigerator and a table. The table held the coffeemaker, microwave, and a toaster oven stacked on top of the microwave. The crockpot lived on top of the fridge, when not in use. Under the table we put the garbage, recycling, and a tub for dirty dishes. On the other side of the hallway is a large linen cupboard. I banished the sheets and towels to a bedroom closet, and used the shelves for dishes and dry food storage. It worked quite well, and some fine meals came out of that hallway kitchen. If I did it again (heaven forbid!) I'd add a portable induction burner.

I really enoyed planning my kitchen (with help from here). It's not perfect because there are always constraints in any project, but I'm really happy with how it all came out. I remember your post from before. Do you have an updated layout to post? One thing I was thinking is that you could extend the run on the right side of your drawing to fill the available wall space up to where the patio doors start. If you want to extend further you could make the patio access just a single door instead of double. Your trash can move to your prep zone and be a pull-out. That spot might be good for the kid-stack. Here are some of the things that I feel we got right: (You should definately read all that design stuff that Buehl posted and start making a long list of all your thoughts so you can prioritize and widdle the list down later 1) Measure: This is free. Measure all your items (such as cookie trays, serving trays, casserole dishes, crock pot, prep tools like cuisinart, blender, juicer, stock pot, pots and pans, slow cooker, etc, basically everything). Then you will be able to design drawers the right size so you have a place for everything. If you're building a pantry, you can plan to store some of the large items in there, but you still have to measure them so that you build the pantry accordingly. Also, are you storing seasonal things in the kitchen such as holiday dishes and serving items? Plan on where all that will go. 2) Ask: This is free too. Ask your family members if there is something that they really want to be incorporated in the kitchen. For our family of 6, only younger DD and DH each had a specific request. DD (age 9) was just getting into baking, so she wanted an additional electrical outlet away from the all the zones, so that she could plug in her mixer without being near me if I'm prepping, cooking or cleaning. There was a perfect place behind the trash pull-out in the island seating area. Now we call that side of the island the baking zone. DH wanted to be able to access his blender and juicer without having to get down on his hands and knees to dig through a cabinet. He got a tall drawer where those items can stand up straight and are easy to access. 3) Hide the MW: We like cheap not-built-in microwaves because we don't use it very much. Cabinet builder made a spot for it where we can close the cabinet doors if we want to. The doors slide back out of the way when it's open. But if you are a heavy microwave user, then you might want it built-in or above the oven so that it is more prominent and accessible. 4) Almost all drawers, maybe a cabinet if you need it: Agree about having lots of drawers. I do, however, have two shallow cabinets in the island where the stools are. It's wide but not deep. We ended up doing that because the island is 4' wide and on the opposite side there are drawers. That left a wasted space on the stool-side, so we put cabinets there. In there I put things that I don't use often, such as long serving trays, a long skinny bread basket, and extra casserole dishes for Thanksgiving and other gatherings. These would not fit well in a drawer. Also in there go vases and other things I want to access but not often. Sometimes one cabinet is needed somewhere. It just depends on what you are storing. 5) Trash can at the prep zone. 6) "Kid/sports stack": For school age kids and people that are always packing coolers for sports, having a stack for them is great. I call ours the "kid stack." We put in a 4 drawer stack at the end of a run. In the top are the school lunch totes, school cutlery, wet wipes, etc. Next drawer has small lunch tote sized water bottles, insulated food bowls for school, reusable snack and sandwich bags. Next drawer is the snack drawer. In there we have all manner of snacks that they can grab while packing their lunches. The bottom drawer has sports water bottles. After the kitchen was finished they actually started packing their own lunches because it was all set up to be easy. Also when people are leaving for sports, they can load a small ice chest (kid stack is right by ice maker), throw in some snacks and water bottles. This stack is not anywhere near my cook, prep, or clean up zone so we're not tripping over each other in the morning. 7) Coffee/tea stack: If you are coffee and tea drinkers, see if you can put a drawer stack under where you keep your coffee maker. Ours is a 3 drawer stack. Top 2 drawers are all about coffee and tea, and the bottom drawer has dishtowels. 8) Bright LED lighting on dimmers. It's so frustrating to not have good light in a kitchen because it is a work zone. But at night or while entertaining you want to turn it down, so have everything on dimmers and try to incorporate under cabinet or over cabinet lighting if you can. 9) Cleverly placed electrical outlets: Place your outlets as low as allowed and turned sideways. Try to match them as well as you can to your backsplash material so they blend in. If you have an area where you don't want to see the outlets (for us this is a long run that is away from the zones, and has glass cabinets and such, so it's the "pretty part"). There I didn't want to interrupt the pretty backsplash with outlets, so we put an outlet strip up under the cabinets. This works for outlets that don't have something always plugged in. But for things that are pretty much always plugged in such as coffee maker and toaster, it doesn't work bc you'd see the cord; for those a low/sideways outlet is best so the cord is hidden behind. Note about that -- since the outlet strips are there (where under-cabinet lighting would normally be installed), we turned the under-cabinet lights around backwards and mounted them under the cabinet, but in the front rather than the back. 10) Venting: Have an appropriately powerful vent over the cooktop. My DS has NO venting in her kitchen. It's awaful and this is a $$$$ house. It's so stupid that the builder did that and the previous owner never addressed it. 11) Niche above cooktop: Before the remodel, our cooktop was in front of a window and I got in the habit of putting the salt, pepper and olive oil on the window sill. When we remodeled the cooktop moved to a regular wall. So we made a niche with a sill where we put these things. I like having the basics within easy reach. Mistakes/oversights: - I forgot to plan a place to hang the dishtowel. This really bugs older DD. - I didn't think about the paper towels. We have them on the counter. But after we finished, I saw a picture where someone had built the paper towel holder into the place where a drawer would be under the counter. It was such an awesome idea, but too late for me. My thoughts on your layout:

I think 24" is fine for a dish hutch, and you will also be able to store flatware, linens, and extra dishes in the drawers. Just make sure there is no center stile in the upper cabinet. Also, you can put an inexpensive MW on a shelf, incorporated into the pantry, as long as you include the correct clearances. I have my $80 Walmart MW in a cabinet with a door. You need at least 36" to pass between the end of the peninsula and the fridge, or the pantry cabinet. A dining table needs to be about 3' from a wall. The way the seating is drawn on your table, I can see that you might not need that much space, but the people accessing the seating on the back side will still need space to get to those seats. If you have an available table, and some large boxes, you might want to mock up the layout to make sure that both table and peninsula will fit. Your plan shows filler between the fridge and wall, so I'm assuming that's part of the final cabinet plan--having custom options is great!