Tinam61, thank you! Susieq07, thanks so much for posting your buffet. Stinky and Kitchendetective, thank you so much for all of the suggestions and advice .. they helped me out tremulously. It really helps to see what I have here through new eyes, and see how you all would go about designing the space. Persnicketydesign, your dark wood sideboard up against the white wainscoting is beautiful! Mldao, I don't think it looks busy at all, you've set up a wonderful vignette. I love, love, love your trumeau mirror, it looks wonderful with your sideboard. Lynn, thank you so much for doing a mock-up for me!! I'm a very, very visual person and it helped me out so much. Seeing the different colors and shapes introduced really gave me a much better idea how to proceed with this! That lamp is too cute. I love the 'pop' of red with the flowers. I agree if the shelf stays, something very simple, like the black framed mirror you put up would look great. Now I just need to pull together my thoughts, start searching and implement all of your help and great ideas. :)

Computer area is not just about the computer. You need a printer, storage for printer paper, fax/scanner and other stuff that goes with the printer. Most people need these things unless you have an office near where the family spends most of the time. We actually have 2 printers in the house, 1 in the baseement office which is printer/scanner/fax, then another one under the kitchen desk. These get used all the time. We have a nice color laser printer, and when the kids have projects for the school, this is an essential part of the 'stuff' that we need to have in the house. I can't imagine going to Kinkos to print because our printer is not good enough to print out a school paper... (been there and done that!) Another thing that you need is a place to store kids junk: pens, markers, crayons, colored paper, scizzors, glue, glitter glue, etc etc. Where will that go? What about a place to charge stuff? we have 4 cell phones, ipad, 2 laptops, 3 ipods that get charged nearly every night. So far, these get charged in respective bedrooms. It would have been nice to charge these at a central station. I don't. I sure wish I had designed them into the house. I also like having a desktop in addition to my laptop. I like the large monitors to do some stuff easier. If you are working from home, this is more of an issue. I am not ready to trade my laptop completely for my high res 24 inch flat panel screen that I use with my desktop. I also like working with my feet on the ground which means 'desk height' not countertop height. Most people still need a phone station with a personal phone book, pens, paper, calendar, message board, grocery list, mail sorting etc. I have met very few people that have completely transitioned to a no-paper household. What about the storage for your stereo system? No one has the stereo amp out in the open these days. They are hidden behind a door/elsewhere and the controlled from the laptop/iphone. LOW: if they are ripping out their desks, it tells me that they are older folks that have already raised their kids. I can't imagine running a household without a central work area. However, the kitchen desks do not work when they are smack in the middle of the kitchen because having it in a bad place obstructs the work flow both in the kitchen and the desk. I often see desks that are too close to the work area of the kitchen and WAY too small to be useful. So what the family ends up doing is to use the dining room as the de-facto work table and it gets covered with projects and paper. The family never eats in the DR and use the kitchen table to eat. In many of these homes that I have seen, the DR is a poorly designed office (since it is subpar as an office) and the kitchen desk is the drop-zone. This is the reflection of poor design rather than the idea that the kitchen desk is not useful. Each space that you design has to be done well enough to be useful. IMHO, the kitchen desk has to be big enough to work as a small office. You need to be able to store just about all you need in that little space. Then it has to be out of the way of the workflow in the kitchen. You current location is a great location for the small desk because it is NOT in the kitchen proper. If you had put it next to your current refrigerator (which often were in the 80s and the 90s), it would have been useless...

Two things. There are a couple of scammers advertising free woodworking plans. They provide stolen copyrighted plans. The most prolific changes the name often, but advertises 26,000(or so) FREE WOODWORKING plans. The best way is to either look here or join a web site for woodworkers and ask there. Two good ones are WoodNet.net or Sawmill Creek.org

It gives me the impression of 3 blocks of things with the square shape of the items on the book, the square of the record player and the rectangle of the bird house. I would take the skull out from under the lamp as well. I love the color of the wall, I like the art arrangement but the frightened person is a little too jarring to me, it becomes a focal point. I would take it all off and keep trying different things, that's the fun of it. The bird cage and phonograph are good, but with all the art on the wall you don't need a lot of small items on the credenza, by the way that's a real find.