As is usual with these "please help me" posts, I start by asking one question, only to have other posters bring up additional issues/suggestions - a good thing! I now have (at least) 2 projects - one for the long (natural) view of trees and field behind the pond. A second for a "people place" at a different corner of the pond. drtygrl - yes, there were a few suggestions to make a platform or destination area. What I liked so much about pls8xx's suggestion is choosing a different corner of the pond. That way the "people place" is closer to the house, hence more likely to draw people the short distance to the pond. Also, by putting it in that corner, the human elements (adirondack chairs?) are not competing with the long "natural" view. Initially I was a bit unsure about a platform under the ash tree, because it seemed it might turn that into a "busy" area rather than a peaceful one. By moving it to the closer corner, I will be able to have my cake and eat it too :-) pls8xx, I understand about the importance of a planned view drawing, I draw home made ones all the time (pencil), and enjoy it. (it's my engineering background) I often work a plan for a year or two before implementing it. I don't see myself planting anything new here for a year at least, because I will be too busy removing cattails and reworking that corner. I'm still really impressed how you deduced those contour lines, your 50 years of experience really show. I've also learned first hand about drainage, having made a few corrections already at this property. Fortunately, my house sits on a small hill, with a gentle grade that naturally takes all the water away. Given that my driveway on a hill was not constructed with the correct camber, I experience first-hand the effects of rain and erosion and frequent repair. While I love the idea of a large sitting area in that corner, I'm not enamored with the path through the grass to get there. I like the large unbroken expanse of lawn here, creating a plain foreground for the view beyond. And the simple addition of chairs will allow the viewer to "know" which direction to go. That corner has always been difficult. The lawn slopes down to where it meets the pond, except when it gets to the low left corner, then the natural slope goes well below the pond edge in the corner, creating a small low spot that is spongy with water in spring and after heavy rains. In other words there is a dip. For the mower, it's also a sharp turn around a wet corner at a weird angle. (because of it's small and distant location I've been able to ignore it for years.) By redoing this corner with the addition of a lot of soil and a raised area, several problems could be fixed at once. And I will pay attention to scale. When I first moved here from my previous suburban yard, nothing I did was big enough. With practice and mocking everything up with hoses, I believe I've gotten much better at achieving appropriate scale for this large country property. I also really like Michelle's photos, that was a gorgeous pond! But as KarinL pointed out, that intensely landscaped pond may not fit into my WNY landscape, although there are ideas I can glean from it. Yardvaark, He's a homeless dude instead of a statesman. yuk yuk! Actually he needs no limbing, he has a long tall muscular trunk. However, he's been running with a scruffy crowd of 10 small punk trees behind him. The scraggly branches are theirs, not his. And the more I think about it, I'm inclined to agree with you that once that treeline is opened up a bit, the field alone might be a sufficient draw without a path. The reason I envision a path now is because that would give me a visual way out of there. With it opened up, that may not be necessary. Once the trees are gone (within the next couple weeks) I will go a season and observe the field and evaluate whether to mow a path. Once again, I really appreciate all the ideas here! Thanks for staying with this thread and all my wordy responses. You have all helped me tremendously!

We had a Thermador range with an integrated downdraft for about 14 years, in the peninsula. I liked the arrangement so well that we kept the location of the stove, refrigerator and sink for the remodel. We also kept the Thermador to use in the new kitchen. That was not a good idea. The stove had problems almost immediately when it was reinstalled. The downdraft was doing fine. Now we had a real problem. We had to replace the stove, but finding one that would fit was a problem. That wasn't the biggest problem for us. We thought we were going to have to install a hood. Our kitchen is at the end of a long room and I remember how I hated the overhead suspended cabinets that were in the original kitchen. I just didn't want something hanging from the ceiling and destroying the view. Since we are old, we wanted a range with a self cleaning oven. It was hard to find one with our specifications that would fit into the space designed for the new kitchen. We bought a Dacor range with a Dacor downdraft. These are separate units. I love the range and the downdraft works perfectly, for us. Long story to get to the point. When the new stove and downdraft were installed, the installers left the vent pipe with the opening upside down on a piece of wood under the house. That mean the downdraft did not work correctly. We could not figure out the problem, so my husband crawled into the crawl space and took pictures. I guess they figured old people would never figure this out. We had to hire another company to redo the venting. They took the vent pipe straight out to the side with no turns. It works perfectly. It even vents the steam from my rice cooker that is on the counter next to the stove. My point is that if installed correctly, a downdraft works.

OK, got it. You have a back wall that is "blind": no windows. Consider keeping the kitchen in the middle. Here are a few more ideas. - The sink can face either the study (as is) or any other side (re-route the drain; usually feasible) - The cooktop can face the DR (as is) or the study. ((But is there a kitchen cooktop vent?)) - If you have a vent, where is the ducting currently? Which column? - The refrigerator could be on the "blind" back wall of the U with floor to ceiling cabinets all designed as one integrated look. - The refrigerator could be behind the column you leave when you open the study side wall. - The refrigerator could be minimized by getting a 36"Ariston undercounter, and putting a chest freezer somewhere else. - A large horizontal mirror on the back wall between your wide window and your kitchen will bring in lots of light to the kitchen, and give you a new angled view when you are in the kitchen. - Ikea 00122426 is a 39" long glass shelf with built-in lighting, that fits into a wall cabinet (either 15"h or 30"h or one cut down to the height you want.) The cabinet door can be glass. See http://www.ikea.com/us/en/catalog/products/00122426 - they may be discontinuing this product next month... - Having no wall cabinets is a good idea on at least one side. - In the one wall that you leave intact, you could open a gap (more about this later) hth

We are building a 4500 square foot home in a gated community in the coastal plains of NC. It is a million dollar home. We cannot compare our cabinetry to yours at all bc our builder provides custom cabinetry from his own shop. This also includes his trim. However we paid him already for his basic provisions in our home when we started. mostly this is for interior and exterior doors, trim, cabinetry, garage doors, interior plumbing ( we haven;t yet picked out hardware or cabinet pulls) Our allowances for the remainder however are crappy and yours and some of the others above sound better to me: Here are ours: 12k for appliances $9,400 for all exterior plumbing (including valves and drains) for 3 1/2 baths kitchen wet bar and laundry room (all interior plumbing the builder provides) 7k for lighting (builder provides interior can lights and exterior lighting) $ 3.50 per square foot for tile (We are going to be charged extra to install certain tiles.. marble for instance is more to install due to floor prep) $4.00 per square foot for any Karastan rugs we buy.. includes an 8 lb. pad for exercise, bonus room and a back stair well $65 per square foot allowance for granite. On our brick allowance ] we were never given a price... but it was basically builder's grade brick and so was the grout (plain grey mortar anything we picked over that was over. We had a stone accent on the front of the house that goes two stories and the same in the great room for our fireplace. We paid 15k for all the stone as an extra even before we built but then we were charged $2k over that after it was installed. And it was not even real stone, it was cultured ledgestone. He had priced materials at 1k for a 15k job. We are allowed only 4 paint colors in the home at builders cost. Then all other colors are $200 more plus extra labor (not sure how much yet) if the ceilings are not painted white. In fact we were not given total allowances on a lot of our build (plumbing for one) but were given singular allowances on some things and had to ask about other things. So far we have had to pay extra on everything we have put into our home... including having any color on the windows. At this point we are currently in wallboard and can't wait to see our overages on the remainder of our home. At the rate we are going our 1 million dollar home will be 1 million and a half by the time we are done! We are already being told we need to bring in more fill in the back yard and to sod all the way up to the pond behind our home will be extra. Can't wait to see his bill on that one. So at least you have total numbers to work with. We decided to keep certain things down like rugs, lighting and some plumbing fixtures so we can change them out later, if needbe. I have drawn the line on tile and decorative glass bc I don't want to change them later on. This post was edited by zoe52 on Sat, Jan 17, 15 at 17:57