Our design plans noted optional living space on the second floor hallway. I planned a built in desk or shelf. I was excited about the possibilities of the optional space. The plans did note a small area in the optional space for a ventilation system. Basically two circular metal fittings that extend from the furnace to the second floor. Well they installed the ventilation system and it take over half of the optional space. The builder told us we might have to build a wall for us to add the built in desk. The builder told me that the reason the blue print called for optional living space was due to the duct work. He now wants to extend the wall. Thus that will probably cost more money than just installing a built in desk. Is this a typical scenario when installing a ventilation system?

Built-ins are typically 24 inches deep with handles. The space it sits in might actually be deeper though . Counter depth refrigerators are typically 28-30" deep. In our case, the space where our built-in sits is actually 28 inches deep. So many counter-depth fridges would fit - assuming that the unit isn't sensitive to being close to a back wall. So you should check to see what the depth of the space where your fridge sits is. I remember thinking 20 years ago that the $4000 we spent on our 42" built-in was kinda ridiculously expensive for a refrigerator. Now they are $8-10,000!! Joke's on me I guess. Anyway, ours is giving us some headaches but has gone 21 years now with one fan motor replacement (that I did) and recently the topping of of the "freon" by a service tech. I suspect that the compressor is beginning to go since it stopped for a few hours yesterday and needed coaxing to start cooling again.. Or it might be a valve or relay. Either way, key parts are 21 years old at this point. Given the price of a new unit, I'm going to talk to a repair tech about the cost of replacing most of the key components. Even if the cost is over $1000, that lots cheaper than the price of a new built-in. The next sensible option is to spend money on a new 36" counter depth stand-alone (they don't make 42" stand-alones) and have some cabinet work done. That's probably a net cost near $4000 - half the price of a new built-in. Those are the two economically smart ways to go. But if this all gets to be too much of a hassle we may end up spending the big bucks and just buying a new unit. But its hard to justify doing that "on paper." OTOH, that's the lowest hassle factor way to go.

Pro cooking requires pro ventilation. Please review the many hood topics in this forum for an idea of the requirements that apply to hoods. If your purpose in buying a "Pro" cooktop is "Pro" cooking, or for that matter any cooking that yields hot oil or grease vapor, or excess moisture with or without entrained odors, your hood has to capture and contain the cooking plumes from the cooktop pans as well as the burner combustion products that pass around them. This requires a hood that extends beyond the cooktop in width, and beyond it in front-to-back depth. One would need a rather high (and loud) airflow rate to achieve even mediocre capture with a 15-inch depth hood because the hood flow would have to bend the rising (meter per second) and expanding front-burner cooking plumes toward the narrow hood aperture. Hood flow is very ineffective at changing air direction well away from the hood; rather a hood functions by keeping plumes that make it to its aperture from escaping into the kitchen. Wolf should be embarrassed by their poser kitchen imagery on the linked page. A 15-inch depth hood will limit you to heavy cooking on the rear burners (assuming a wall mount), and even then the hood has to be wide enough. If the hood metallic structure is to be hidden, then hood inserts are used in bump-out cabinetry in order to achieve a 24-plus-inch depth (as determined by cooktop size and placement), and in this case a desirable 42-inch width to overlap a 36-inch cooktop. For a powerful cooktop in action, baffle filters are more suitable than mesh filters as shown in the Broan link. Mesh filters will loose effectiveness unless rigorously kept clean. They also have higher pressure loss if effective, and thus reduced flow rate for a given blower. No air flows through the hood to the outside that hasn't been allowed into the house, and this inflowing air is called make-up air. Supplying it at low pressure loss, and conditioned where necessary, is an integral part of hood selection and integration into the kitchen when capture and containment require significant air flow. Once the scope of the kitchen ventilation task is understood, we can support determination of the details. kas

I am not a KD but I love the idea of benches that fold up and a table that can be used for entertaining.. Very interesting! I love the idea of having a space for your family to eat as one of your important parts. My only worry (and this is because my family is messy) that if something spills on the counter it is going to flow right on to the back of those cushions. Of course your family is not the messy bunch mine was. (kids off to college now) I like your kitchen plans and look forward to seeing all the clever solutions that the experts provide.