Agree with Bungalow House and others. My home is rural and casual, and light, airy cafes for a little light control are just right for some of my deep-set double-hungs. Funny the directions people come from. I'm older also and aggravated with myself when I find I'm being influenced (still?!) by whatever the current trend is. :) Joycesvoices, your description of a cafe on top for light control was perfectly clear to me and sounds as if it would look very good. Having seen a whole lot of styles, you know you'd not be breaking any new ground with this by a long shot, but obviously it'd be a whole new look for some. It has the wonderful design virtue of suitability to space and function and would be a happy break from the too-usual. Why not tack up $3 worth of fabric and see what you think? BTW, cafes HAVE been around for some while in the wish-I-could-afford-to-hire-them design market. I've seen them in a bunch of pictures of lovely homes, like the House Beautiful mentioned, and they've been popping up in those commercials that make people like me rewind just to look at the room. (My husband just loves that.)

I have a faucet that sprays and stays: Cobra faucet. It's really great in my laundry room, which I used for dishes for nearly a year. ;) It's not so "nice" looking as some of the others. I think it would work really well wall-mounted; I have it on the deck of a laundry sink. It might help for you... Brenda, I had to look back at what I'd written when there was some implication that I was proferring any sort of marital advice!! lol and then some. While I can claim to have been acquainted with my partner going on 33 years, I know I know positively zero about marital (or any other kind of) harmony. By returning that faucet I wasn't really keeping peace or falling through on any game plan; it was just not really possible to have kept it. You kinda had to be there.... ;) Back to hosing about faucets ... I think there are a few parameters to consider and evaluate for your own personal relevant importance/priority. I'll try to list a few, others can add: (i) appearance (ii) spray presence (iii) spray style (depress and hold or stay-on) (iv) spray default (returns to spray on close or stays where you left it) (v) arc (affecting where stream starts relative to dink's edge) (vi) arm length (affects where stream hits bottom of sink, closeness to drain) (vii) pull down vs pull out (affects how your arm twists to grab moveable spray head) (viii) touch (foot pedals, finger touch - possibilities beyond needing a hand to turn faucet on/off) (ix) one/two handle (affects whether water temperature is mixed internally or by you with two separate handles). (x) mobility of spray handle (thus "pro-style", others address this as, say, the Cobra, Karbon's moveable spray arm, pullout and pulldown spray heads attached to faucet arm) I think selecting a faucet is a very, very personal priorities thing. Plus, critically, a matter of dovetailing with the sink you choose. Don't forget that. I think too often this is a source of outright mistake, as opposed to, say, personal preference. Problems arise when the faucet doesn't spray in the right place on the sink's bottom, or there isn't enough room to mount handles effectively or the spray is too high or hard or for whatever reason having to do with the sink (and there's no obvious formula for determining this), the spray bounces too much. I'm sure others will flush out these lists, the list of personal preference parameters to negotiate, as well as the list of problems-sources. The only part of this whole process I truly hated was choosing the faucet, and I'm not sure I did a good job. My Karbon Kohler gets too wet at the handle, all of the time. I suppose this is a function of how I use the sink, with dripping-wet hands. Dunno. It may be just that coupled with its appearance with the little chrome ring on the countertop you just really see the water all puddled up. It's kinda annoying. My lady lux needs to have a button depressed in a too-concerted effort; there's not a ton of room to pull it out given my sink - a mistake I suppose. Both faucets need a huge amount of water pressure before their spray stays on (not so for the cobra which stays in whatever stream style you depress; it's a mechanical switch rather than an internal one dependent on the water pressure). The cobra wouldn't have been a long enough reach for the kitchen faucets. FWIW the fauset I really really wanted was the Waterstone semi-pro. At $2500 that was just an order of magnitude more than I could stomach paying! But it had a great stream, good spring, beautiful appearance, great "hand" - really a good one if you could find it in a fire sale or something.

We're done! Okay, nothing is ever really done. I have some machine modifications planned. The pretty Italian espresso ware and coffeegeek paraphernalia are yet to come. And the Italian decor remains to be gathered. But the modifications will be hidden or well-integrated, all the paraphenalia must live tucked away behind doors, and SWMBO is probably not going to permit too much Italian schtick on the walls. So the look of the northwest corner of my dining room - sorry, her dining room - is about like it's going to be. Elektra #1, what we're calling La Macchina now, lives on a 42" sideboard from the "Historic Charleston" collection by Baker Furniture. I couldn't believe I found this piece, which fits the spot perfectly, matches the existing sideboard, and is allegedly from a old Portland hotel (I have my doubts), so quickly and so cheaply. Facebook Marketplace, folks: its a real competitor to Craigslist. The piece is sturdy, but long legged furniture still wobbles when used as a workstation for a 150 lb machine. So I built a sturdy wood shelf, 6" deep, and screwed it to the wall. The rear legs of the machine rest on the shelf and the front legs on the sideboard. It hardly moves now. Future project: paint the shelf white, bolt the sideboard to the shelf, and leash the machine to the shelf. That will be for even more rigidity and also as an earthquake precaution. I brought a 240v 30A circuit, a 120v 15A circuit, a 3/8" o.d. polyethylene water supply line, and a 1/2" o.d. poly drain line, up through the built-in cabinet to the left of the machine. Yes, I (carefully) cut holes in the century-old cabinet, but you can't see them unless you look inside or are standing in the corner of the room, where the machine lives. The 240v line powers Elektra #1, is wired through a timer, and currently the machine is automatically switched off at night and on at 4 am. During the day, it heats the house :-) The 120v line runs the grinder. The water supply line goes through a pressure regulator and a water filter, in the basement, before coming up into the cabinet. We have extremely soft water in Portland so no water softener is needed. The pressure regulator is meant to lower line pressure to 2-3 bar (30-45 psi). Future project: add a pressure gauge so I can set the regulator accurately. The drain line goes out the bottom of the bumpout where the cabinet lives, and waters a soon-to-be very energetic rosemary plant. Hopefully rosemary likes acidic soil. I had a problem with the drain line icing up, but a change to its routing has solved that. The Elektra itself is slated for some future projects: PID temperature control, grouphead temperature gauges, LED "barista lights", replace the missing hot water valve, preinfusion switch. There is some polishing to be done, and we still have not decided whether to install the side panels. A new coffeegeek friend will help me replace and align the Elektra grinder burrs. Future project: add a darkroom timer so I can push a button to automatically grind the desired amount of coffee. All the "stuff", like knockbox, tamping pad, scale, bar towels, etc are hidden away in the sideboard's cabinets and drawer. When I use the machine, a bar towel is placed over the sideboard's front edge to protect the wood. For now, I'm talking a break on the Future Projects and trying to learn how to use all this hardware. There is a steep learning curve. I can't properly steam milk yet. My bottomless portafilter pours look horrid a third of the time. I'm sticking to darker roasts for now; light roasts proved beyond me. But I can usually produce a drinkable cappucino, and SWMBO has become accustomed to, and indeed insistent upon, a daily morning cappa - which she takes in bed - as well as on-call cappas upon demand. All in all, she has generally acceded to the large metal thing in her dining room and is planning to make us sets of espresso, cappucino, and latte cups. When she does that, I'll know La Macchina is really part of the family.

Tips for the space -if possible, remove the leg of the sofa that is in front of the French doors and make sectional into a sofa. Then, pull the chair and sofa closer together. That would be a game-change if you could do that. -remove Peru art. -remove the sconces -put third small art above the fireplace with the other 2. Nothing on those adjacent walls -c tables by the fireplace chairs. Remove the tray on the ottoman. A lighter feeling ottomans would be nice but not 100 percent necessary -large arc lamp by the sofa. -Room needs some softening. drape panels on outer windows only of French door area. (would have to cover windows slightly due to radiator, so I'd buy semi-transparent). On both sides of window by sofa. On outer side of windows by fireplace. -jewel-toned pillows on chairs and/or sofa in rust, blue and green. -remove the large chest from under the window by the fireplace. Add a shallow table that fits in the inset.