I agree with Pam about the function things, but, at least where I live, having the kitchen fit the style of the house, aesthetically, will have the greatest visual appeal. Make the whole house cute! Use the original kitchen as a style cue. Sochi phrased the plea not to lose the MCM as personal--I'll extend it to the rentability. Renters want function function function since there's nothing they can do about anything. Having the whole house read as a single style makes it so much easier to furnish and live in, and makes the house make sense to the renters when they're walking through while it's empty. I've lived in a '30's beauty of a rental with an unadorned, clean '70's kitchen, which wasn't bad. It was all function, white slab cabinets, white tile, and newish appliances. The kitchen had no charm but had lots more function than the '30's kitchen would. Lots of cabinets. Separate cooktop and ovens. Garbage disposer and dishwasher. So that was fine, if unexciting. The rest of the place was really cute, and had the original hardwood floors and walk-in closets, plus original tile and huge tub in the bathroom. Then there was the early '60's place with the panelled wall in the living room, panelled den with built-ins, and pink kitchen. Original, very clean, appliances. It was cute! The whole house was cute. The original kitchen, with it's display cabinet peninsula was cute. The panelling was a bit of a gulp, but it was clean and unmarked, and went so well with the style of the house. My furniture looked just fine. And the kitchen was very functional, other than too wide an aisle. Lots of cabinets, and more in the laundry room. Okay, as a former renter? LOTS OF CABINETS!! That's the ticket to pleasing a renter. And cute. Renters want the place to look like something. Keep that MCM thing going. Anyway, slab cabinets are easier to clean between renters. :) I also have experience from the landlord perspective (including surveying the competition), which also says that closets and cabinets are worth extra $$$, but generally, you'll get your rent based on location, pleasantness of surroundings, space, upkeep and storage. Utterly bland will rent at full price. Too much character (e.g., mauve walls or anything "weird") won't rent well, but a little style with neutral colors goes a long way.

I just finished an entire gut/reno in Garden City. I am a budget shopper with expensive taste. I would recommend my contractor but he has relocated upstate due to a family illness so our job was his last. I bought cabinets through him and his upstate contact but I will recommend the brand highly, Fieldstone, and costal cabinet works carries them. I did price out Ken Kelly and they are very expensive and a friend just used them and was very disappointed. For tile I went all over the island, I ended up buying at Cancos, the Tile Shop (great prices, and they have a sale every holiday), and I splurged on an Artistic Tile inset from Fancy Fixtures. If you want to be blown away by a showroom check out Fancy Fixtures, then if you want to come down to earth look at the Tile Shop. Also Old Country Tile is great they have a big showroom and are very helpful. For plumbing supplies and hardware you really can't beat online shopping. I got everything from Build.com, no tax, free shipping, great customer service. Knobs.com showroom is great to look at but I got baldwin hardware 40% off at build.com with a coupon code that I googled. For appliances I used PC Richards, you can haggle with them, Dennis in Carle Place is great. Stone yard we used was Yorkshire Stone in Happauge, ask for Ray. They were wonderful! Any other questions message me, I've done a lot of homework and can get you great deals! Good Luck!

A 4/12 roof pitch is generally the point where shingles, metal roofing, etc. are commonly recommended and are durable. Lesser pitches generally tend to be built-up roofing (tar and gravel, membrane, etc) and similar types of roofing. Of course, there are lots of possible technical exceptions which require lots of additional roofing materials and careful workmanship. Climatic conditions also make obvious differences. I differ with Stan about what roof pitches look like, but then I really don't know what a "modern ranch" is compared to anything else. Cliff May and Joseph Eichler did often use 3/12 or less with tar and gravel roofs, which often had to be repaired. I lived in wonderful Eichlers in Mountain View and Palo Alto for many years. Many home owners, when faced with repairs, opted for membrane roofing.

Did some additional thinking and modeling of this, and we are down to two options: First is a 60" opening with bypass doors, ideally using our existing solid wood core doors (since we have two original to the house that are no longer needed). This gives an 11" return on either side. This has some upsides (no room space needed for door swings) and some downsides (nervous about bypass hardware quality, and can only access one side of the closet at a time). Second idea is two sets of 30" hinged double doors (so each would have two 15" doors). We would split these with 7" of trim to match the double windows in the same room, so that would give 7.5" of return on the two wall sides. (Interior space would be open between the two so they wouldn't actually be two separate closets.) We have similarly sized cabinets and this seems like it would be enough space to access the closet space, but wondering if anyone has a similar setup and has thoughts. Thank you!