bmorepanic- I've know you're a frequent poster so I was pretty sure you were okay, but I just wanted to be sure! Getting the right tone can be so difficult online. I really like that 1/2 round table, BTW. Is that Scherrs or DIY? Angie- Skytrain, US Navy retired! Went on to fly GIII, but the handle is stuck. Mixed hardwood drawer boxes are one of the Scherrs options that's less expensive than the solid cherry. Here's one of the coolest things about working with Scherrs: I wanted that micro/convection combo wall oven lower than standard because I didn't want to be reaching up and over a hot oven door to pull out a heavy pan, like at my SIL's house. So I talked to Leon and told him about how high I wanted it, and then said, I want the cabinet above to be able to hold full-sized sheet pans (it's got those dividers for sheet pans and pizza trays and a pizza peel and cutting boards), and then make the cabinet above the size of whatever is left over. Then, however high that top cabinet above the wall oven turns out, the ones on top all along the left side have to match that height, whatever it is. Dang, I just remembered that I still need to get glass for those glass-front doors. Obviously I never use anything in there. Also, FYI, if you couldn't tell, the cabinets are all 30" deep with 27" pullouts, uppers 15" deep and set higher off the countertop than normal, 22", so that stuff would fit under them, such as mixer and coffee maker. The customization you can do with Scherrs is wonderful!

Well, we ordered our coach lights today. We will soon order some for the back of the house. Here is what we chose. I appreciate the assistance given. The one below is for the front of the house. It is in oil rubbed bronze -- much browner than in the picture. We ordered two larger ones to go beside the front door, and 3 medium ones (2 on either side of garage door, an one at the garage man door). We concluded that we need coach lights that did not extend too far (not deep ones), so we had to go a different direction. These lights have built in LED lights. The lights are made by Artcraft. Here is the ones we are ordering for the back of the house. There are 4 total along the back which is all one plane (not jogs out).

Before you can decide on seating you need to design based on a balance of what you need every day, what you need when you have guests, how often you need the additional seating and the activities that will be done when you need the additional seating. Example: Typically I have 2 people watching TV or playing board games in the evening. About once every two weeks I have 4 people. A 5 person sectional with an additional chair works for both board games or TV. About once every 2 months I will host dinner for my siblings and spouses - then I have 10 people, but the girls usually hang in the kitchen, dining room and the guys go watch TV. Still works. About once a year I have the whole family over for some kind of function. That will be 30 people. I didn't plan my seating for 30. I have a couple of rooms that have seating and we end up a bit scattered. I have enough seating if people use the livingroom, dining room, sitting room and I pull extra chairs that I have in the bedrooms and store in the basement. We just kind of muddle through. In the two years that I have lived here I have not once needed more than 6 seats for watching a movie. My sister entertains a lot and has a large number of guests at one time on a regular basis. She has a great room with a dining table that seats 12, bench seating under her window wall that butts against her corner fireplace, a 4 person couch with a chaise plus 3 recliners and another small bench that she will place in front of the fireplace and an ottoman that can go in front of the TV for addional seating. She also has several shallow boxes that fit over her TV so that it looks like wall art instead of a TV. Knowling your needs really helps define the amount and type of seating you need.

IMO the most critical aspect of residential lighting design is the lighting of walls, kitchen counters and cabinets and the light quality and distribution of wafer and giant gimbal units is unfocused and disappointing. There are few affordable adjustable-angle and wall-washer recessed fixtures other than the small gimbal, elbow and eyeball fixtures that extend below the ceiling. Recessed lighting began with store displays and couched accent lighting is still its best use but today's open space designs and giant TV's have reduced the opportunity to create dramatic focus points in a house but that just makes those few opportunities more critical. For a tight budget the most affordable 4" retrofit adjustable LED I've found is the Nora Cobalt with a Haze reflector that matches the Cobalt Click 2 downlight. Its has a Cree COB LED and is Title 24 compliant for excellent color rendering at the price of a retrofit PAR 20.