Carol-very good use of space for different activities. We aren't finishing our basement right away but I am bookmarking his thread for later. Our 'family room' down there is 17x33 I think. Definitely room for multi-purposing. IKEA hack - ugh no. I do not have near the time necessary to plan and carry out that undertaking. :(. We ended up buying 2 cabinets vanity height and depth for $1,000 bucks. The rest we are winging. There have been strong disagreements about the built ins so we will see what we end up with. They will be more basic than my inspiration for sure. At this point I am very thankful for my arches. If that is what I end up with then I am happy. Have you seen Dutty's kitchen IKEA hack? Simply amazing! Your plan looks great! LL is an awesome visualizer. :)

Thank you all so much for your input and ideas and links. I spent a couple days REALLY thinking about the replies and then thinking about exactly what my problems are and needs are for solutions. I came up with some new realizations: I jolted awake Sunday in the wee hours, realizing that I had JUST given away to habitat for humanity the solution to my pot lid problem - grrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!!!! I HAD the perfect solution and gave it away! It was an upright roasting rack for chicken with a beer can but it was a certain shape that I COULD NOT find again, anywhere, now that I had given my vintage one away! In my case, I wanted something that did NOT impinge on the pot real estate (I was also worried that when sauteeing with a nearly empty pot and a heavy glass lid on the pot edge it might tip over with one of those edge clip things), was portable (sometimes I need a lid stand by the range, other times near the oven when using a dutch oven), either didn't get dirty while in use or very easy to clean, easy to store, and versatile enough to handle my little sauce pan lids up to my enameled cast iron lids and different knob types, too. What I ended up buying was the picture below, a stainless, commercial grade ham rack! I will put it upside down and put the pot lid upside down on the four "arms," and I can reach the knob under the hot lid easily without burning my hand. On the step stool this was agony to decide, but after REALLY considering how I want to use it, where I want to store it, and the fact that years ago even though I had a 6 ft high quality ladder I bought an ultra light one from Costco and it's absolutely been the GO TO ladder in the house ever since, so I know the value of "overpaying" for an ultralight - I went with the williams sonoma link, which is on back-order until March 14th. On the sponge, what I came to realize is that I'm having some significant hand strength issues due to unknown joint flare ups, and this has kept me from being able to scrub hard enough with a regular dish cloth to get crusty stuff off, therefore I need the sponge. It has also kept me from being able to wring out a sponge dry enough for it to be "dry" overnight. So I'm going to try a method where I put my dish cloth and sponge, dampened, in a glass and lidded glass small corningware each night and nuke it sterile. The lid and contained moisture should keep them from drying out and becoming a fire risk. I wanted a small carbon footprint solution, so running the dishwasher or washing machine every day is not likely to happen (we are a household of 3), yet I want a solution to the stinky sponge!! Thank you all once again! I love to read this board for ideas and of course eye candy! This post was edited by beautybutdebtfree on Mon, Feb 24, 14 at 8:01

Hi Mark, Well I thought that the solution was going to be paint the window trim, baseboards and everything dark but that won't work unless I paint the baseboards throughout the rest of the room the same as the walls right? Then I thought about painting the window trim but keeping the baseboards white. I have a small open concept kitchen and living room with high ceilings and the rest of the room is SW Mindful Gray. Here is a picture of what I started with, white on white along with an inspirational picture of what I was going for. Hopefully that will help!

I would try tl determine the height difference in the room end to end. probably laser level. the cab on the left you provided a pic of will need to be shimmed on the right to flush it with the wall, and then ALL other cabs will need to be shimmed up to match, and who knows how high the last one will need to be shimmed? Are the cabs level now? If so, then shimming flush to the wall will throw off level. The pic you have shows all cabs already installed, so I'm unsure if you have any slack to increase the gap on the left and then use a heftier filler strip. If I had done all this installation and every cabinet was plumb and level, I would likely scribe a really thin filler strip for the left gap. Not ideal but better than leaving the gap or having to redo the entire thing.