Thanks worthy, I appreciate the comments. I did remove a small bit of subfloor at one point to see what was under there. I'll take a closer look but it seems like just older concrete. I can't tell if it is heaving or cracked or moist, however. When the walls come down maybe I can access under the subfloor a litte easier and see. The furnace/laundry room area has no subfloor and by the looks of it more recently poured concrete. This concrete floor looks to be an inch and a half higher than the floor under the subfloor. I have made sure that the downspouts take the water well away from the house. Well the "finished" part of my basement is conditioned I think. At least if "conditioned" means hot air and return vents are installed. Is this what you mean by "conditioned"? Thanks again. gary

nsm - Great question. I originally wanted the Ringhult, but it's too dang expensive for this humble abode and I feared the look was too modern anyway. The pink undertone gave me pause--I even talked to the kitchen sales gal about it. She suggested it's because it's next to such a pure white with the Ringhult and the lighting in Ikea doesn't do it any favors. If you look at the other displays at Ikea--especially the sink display--that's Veddinge and it didn't read pink to me. The color is relative, I think. My walls are Sherwin Williams Snow Bound and they look very complimentary. I like the two together a lot. However, my fridge and range are closer to pure white and when I compare them to the cabs they look there iis a slight pink undertone. Of course, no one sees this but me and I actually like pink anyway. If one has stainless steel appliances I don't think they would notice the undertone unless they tried to pair Veddinge with a neutral counter or backsplash that has a yellow or green undertone, which would probably not look good. We've been using the cabs for about two months and so far so good. Since they're painted I don't expect them to last forever. In our last house we had the Adel white shaker style that I think was a thermafoil and I loved that finish. wore like iron. If the shaker style came in white rather than the creamy color I would have jumped on that style again, but I dislike SS appliances and white appliances with the Grimslov doesn't look good to me.

I'm in the early stages of a full gut job, so I only have a few things to say. My GC is really good about telling me what he needs and when, but I did run into a little time crunch with the flooring because it needs to sit for at least a week to acclimate and I couldn't make up my mind. He is great about answering my questions and helping me decide things if I'm confused - like we just went over light switches and there was a discussion on whether the under cabinet lighting should be on one switch or two. I would say the GC should definitely help with how much floor to order. I didn't have a KD, so I'm doing that. For me that's the biggest stressor - making all the decisions and stressing about them. So from that perspective, I would say get your stuff picked out and/or ordered early so you don't add to your stress about choosing and getting it on time. Also, that way you won't find that a light you like takes 2 months to be delivered. It's funny because I read here about other people saying something similar and I thought - eh, I won't pick something that will take that long to deliver, I'm not that fussy, I don't have that big of a budget, etc. And then I found that there is no rhyme or reason to how long things take to get. I picked a $50 light that had a fairly common look, but it was a little cheaper than the others, and the delivery estimate was 2 months, so I had to get one of the $70 ones that looked similar. Not a huge deal, but just an example. I don't know how much we are over budget right now. Originally I was hoping for a $30k remodel, but I had to expand that to $50k, and I think we may go over that by a little. Things like extra outlets and switches are going to add up. He did a great job putting up plastic to keep the dust out. Unfortunately it made it so we pretty much could only use half of our house - kitchen, dining room and downstairs bathroom is behind the plastic. The main problem we have there is that we have a dog and his dog door was in the kitchen, but we are dealing. We have baby gate up on the one side and we just have to walk him more. Our dining room is the 'staging area' where we have our new fridge (which we are using), and all the other stuff that I have bought and they haven't put in yet - other appliances, sink, faucet, flooring, etc. We have a little temporary kitchen set up in the office. I have a pretty small house, so it is tight, and it wasn't possible to put the fridge in there with everything else. We are using a toaster oven, crock pot, microwave and sous vide. We are only finishing up week 2, but so far it hasn't been too bad. I make one big meal in the crock pot - stew, casserole type one pot meal - and eat that every day for lunch and two dinners. Then we make something else one night - last week it was london broil in the sous vide, this week it's meatloaf in the toaster oven. Then we go to family every Friday anyway. We go out once or twice and so far have gone to friends or family another day. Ok I guess I had a lot to say after all.. Here are some pictures just for fun. because I'm dying to share with someone but didn't have a good reason to start a thread about it. Before: kitchen - yes it's horrible, just horrible. I see some of these before pictures and I think, man wait until you see mine! We painted the cabinets red when we moved in because they were a really dark stained wood and the stain wasn't even in the best condition. I thought the red would be fun and funky since we were planning to renovate anyway.... then it waited 10 years. I was going for a french bistro kinda look. dining room looking into kitchen now: kitchen - they found that the electric was so bad they decided to take down all the plaster, then they found that there were no studs or insulation, so they are adding that. (one of the things that is going to push us over the revised budget) As of this afternoon or tomorrow there will be no back wall there because we are taking out that window and door and putting in french doors. - that's one of the things that made the original budget get revised. in the dining room looking into the kitchen - taking that load bearing wall with all it's duct work and electric is another thing that made the original estimate go up. (the board in the middle hanging down there is literally just holding the light switch.) Oh also, I think the work phase of ours is going to be about 6 weeks. I've been planning for 3 months. My GC is on site almost every day. I let the guys use our downstairs half bath. We have just pretty much not been using it. The floor is dirty, but other than that they seem to be being pretty good about respecting our stuff, but it's really only my GC and one other guy, and my GC is I would say pretty invested in making me happy. I swear he must get half of his business from my mother-in-law. He's always like, 'oh I saw your mother-in-law last week when I was working on so and so's house' and my husband's uncle called us to ask the GC to give his spare key back. So our relationship is different than just any GC. He also worked the rough supplies into the estimate. I was responsible for picking out appliances, counters, cabinets, tile, etc. In the end he got the cabinets for me because he got a better price wholesale, so he WOULD do that stuff, but I like to comparison shop.

Found this post and was wondering what did Samantha end up doing with her kitchen? We have a similar situation where our galley kitchen floats in the middle of the house dividing front of the house from the back garden limiting the light and size of appliances.