Thanks folks! All good input. I just emailed my brother, who's an architect, and his suggestion is: Keep the built-ins ONLY on the long wall. Don't wrap them around on the short wall flanking the wood stove. He would like to see bare wall there (with a firewood bin on the right and the chair/ottoman on the left of the woodstove.) What do you think about that? Regarding door hardware: I was thinking no hardware, actually... just those push-to-open thingies :) Color: my brother suggested stained or painted almost-black (playing off the slate woodstove wall). Palimpsest suggests wall color. I would have done white just cuz its my fall-back. I will have to think on that! Depth: The built-ins as drawn are about 11" deep. We don't have any A/V equipment deeper than that, so no need to bump any part out. I'm also not a huge fan of bumped-out cabinetry in a more modern setting. I know I said I wanted to keep it cottage-y, but it still has to work with my modern furniture :) I could probably be convinced if there was a really compelling argument, but my druthers is for simpler, usually :) Height: I considered varying the height (taller on short wall, etc) but I felt like going taller made the already small room feel a lot smaller. DIY- yes, we're building these ourselves :) .... although I think we may buy the doors from Scherr's. We have a really long project list to get through this year!

Ditto marcydc. I have seen handles like the ones marcydc linked to. I got a 20 feet long strip of extruded aluminum (channel) from which you cut the length you want. From a Richelieu hardware distributor. Keywords / key numbers for web search are " Richelieu 318612170 OR 31861210 " 318612170 Inox Stainless plating on aluminum extrusion http://www.richelieu.com/produit/detail.php?no=318612170&fr=pgr 31861210 anodized finish aluminum extrusion http://www.richelieu.com/produit/detail.php?no=31861210&fr=rec (This one costs about half the price of the Inox one) You have to cut it to the length you want. If you cut it into tiny lengths your cost per handle is next to nothing in dollar terms. I cut strips to be as long as possible, the same length as the drawer front. -- I also got Klippig (at Ikea). Klippig is better than Strecket, in my opinion. It's easier to pull because the grip edge is larger and angled forward. 45 degrees or 30 degrees. With ridges underneath. In 2008 I spent a lot of time on the phone with a senior Ikea person telling him I wanted a handle like this. Nine months later Klippig came onto the market. Perhaps my input was helpful to the process. Here is a link that might be useful: Klippig has an angled front

As an update, after spending some time with this over the holidays, we aren't really feeling the various iterations that would allow laundry--it seems like we'd really have to take out the lower lefthand window entirely to make that work and even then the flow wouldn't be ideal. The most viable spot seems to be where the coats and broom closet are if we move the door, so we'll keep that as a future option. That lands us with storage and a baking counter along the lower lefthand wall. (This is what is already there, except right now it's on freestanding shelves and carts.) This leaves a couple of dilemmas: length and depth of baking counter. We have 24.5" of clearance for a counter in the corner before hitting the bottom window (and only 20" if we want to clear the window moulding too, which would probably look better and be simpler). This feels too shallow to be useful for rolling dough, etc., so I'm considering keeping counters 20" deep on the ends with the section under the window coming out to 28" or so. Second question is the length. The window opening is exactly 36", and with the moulding, it's 46" long. So if we stick with stock cabinetry (which I would like to do from a cost perspective) this could be a 21"/36"/21" split along this wall, or a 15"/48"/15" (both with a couple of inches of filler on each end). The first feels like more useful storage, but will it look strange to follow the window opening vs. the moulding? As far as utility, this will all be drawers below with two 18" open bookcases on either side of the window, and much of what will be stored here is moving out of an existing 32" drawer bank, so the 36" seems more than adequate. Two 24" drawer banks would also work. Thank you!

I can measure later when I get home. There were two *big* decisions we had to make, actually 3. The one we did NOT do was add glass in the top section of 5 upper cabinet doors to reduce the cost. The two choices we DID make (and would make again) for additional cost was (1) a no-reveal design . . . instead of a gap between cabinet doors and between drawers, they are, for lack of a better term, 'sleeker'. Chandler had both styles side by side, and the gap looked dated to my husband and I. We were willing to pay a little more for the better, more modern look, and (2) After much internal wrangling, we chose to have the cabinet color applied by Chandler in the shop. My research on Houzz and elsewhere + people I know who have worked with kitchen designers overwhelmingly said that was the best way to go. It was a good decision. They offered 2 shades of white, and we chose the brighter, whiter, less creamy one after carting two painted cabinet doors around to the slab yard, hardware store, etc., and looking at them both in our own light. I can email and ask what the paint color is, but there was not a brand name on the door samples when we chose our color, just the color name on the sample doors: Cotton (that was creamier) and 'Chandler White' that was the brighter white we chose. I can say that it was definitely worth the additional cost, although it took my breath away at first. Here's where I asked for help on Houzz: [Is It Worth the Cost[(https://www.houzz.com/discussions/is-it-worth-it-to-have-new-cabinets-painted-by-the-cabinet-maker-dsvw-vd~5424802?n=14) .