Oh, heck yes. I just made some CL, 18x42" cabs into the stacked cabinet look. How big is your microwave? Look at that in relation to where you want it to be. Mine happens to be 23", which fit nicely into a 24" base cabinet. mpinto is right, though. it would also fit nicely into my 24" upper.... I might have to consider retrofitting that since I've discovered I hate bending down.... (thank you!) If you don't have the talent, tools, skill or (insanity) nerve, get someone to come cut out the space, trim it and help you plan for an electrician. It should not be expensive, unless you've gone and put in those worthless 12" base cabinets. Then you're going to have to cut something out spanning two cabinets, with a new face frame top. Well, in my head, still not that hard. You'll just have to have some reinforcement for the lower sections. I'm stopping now. I'm fearless due to lack of knowledge, but it works out for me so far. The answer is yes.

The only flat-out regret I have is not picking an absolutely flat tile for my backsplash. I have lippage. :( The thing is, it doesn't show at all until you turn on the UCLs. I loved the UCL before my BS went in, used them all the time. When I first saw the irregular corners of the tile, I went nuts. The tile boss came out and very gently and sweetly showed me how it was in the tile. He offered to replace offending tiles, but it was everywhere. He was right, and I could have prevented this if I'd thought about anything other than color and price, so word to the wise. It looks great without the UCL so it means I can live with it. If I got to do this all over again, I'd spend more and get cabs replaced. I'd probably do stain instead of paint. Light counters instead of dark. Not that I don't like what I chose. These were decisions that were right for exactly where I was at the time, and my kitchen is still cute and I like it. Dark gray counters really look good with creamy white cabs. But I like pristinely clean counters. I don't mind wiping often to get crumbs and little drips up. On dark, I can't see a thing and have to run my hand over it constantly to find stuck on things that shouldn't be there. Next time... :)

We've had 4 contractors...no GC. 1 plumber to move the gas line, but they didn't seem to care about building codes when they drilled though the ceiling joists and didn't listen very well when I told them where to put the gas for the range. The actual gas supply is where it needs to be but the shut off valve is *barely* not behind the adjacent cabinet. We did our own water supply. 2 drywall contractors, the first of which was recommended by neighbors and were HORRIBLE, the second were reasonably good where it counts but still haven't come back out to sand in corners near the floor so we can have straight baseboards. Good thing we're nowhere near ready for baseboards. And to be fair to them, we did have a hurricane get in the way of everything. The 4th is a very expensive electrician, who my dad has known for 20 years and does all his electric. They've been pretty good too but a lot of junction boxes are still set back to far for proper seating of covers, and we haven't even tiled the backsplash yet, which will make it even worse. Long story short, there are many out there who won't do the job you would do in your own home if you were able to. So now my regrets...we're not finished, so they haven't all come to light yet...I only have 1. I wish we had better quality cabinets. They're not terrible. They were already assembled RTA we bought off Craigslist and they saved us about $6000. The thing is, if we gotten the ones we were planning to buy (Shenandoah from Lowes) we would probably have run out of money by now. So there's that.

Mrs Pete..I agree..now OT, sorry, but I was reading your post all starry-eyed, and I have deep personal interest..)) do you bake gluten-free too? I can bake gluten-free. It is more difficult in that the finished product tends to "spread" and don't like to stand up straight, and they require more internal support ... which is something you want in a wedding cake. If you need to serve gluten-free people, these are my suggestions: - Go with a single layer of gluten-free cake ... most people don't care about gluten, so this allows your baker to do what's easiest for the majority of the cake. - Make that layer one of the small layers. - Consider carrot cake as your gluten-free layer. Most people like it, and it's an easy choice for gluten-free. - A whole different thought: Opt for cheesecake, which isn't always gluten-free, but absolutely can be made without that bitty-bit of cornstarch or flour. Yes, a cheesecake can be stacked. If I were doing this for a wedding, I'd offer a variety of self-serve toppings: Strawberry, cherry, blueberry, chocolate, nuts, maybe coconut. I did not even have cake at my wedding - no, not even Costco, so I am likely not your target person to talk cake with, but I am most definitely craving cake now (lemon please, with lemon filling...maybe alternated with raspberry....). And that's the point. A whole lot of people just want a house ... they'd see a difference in 3 bedrooms vs. 4, but their eyes might glaze over if you started talking about optimizing the kitchen or the merits of different types of windows. Aren't they just ... windows? As for lemon, I am making a small wedding cake tomorrow for the royal wedding. My daughter (but not her English husband) is absolutely insane over the royal wedding. Since it's just for us to play with, I am experimenting with a "naked cake" ... it will be lemon (my lemon cake is INCREDIBLE, if I do say so myself) with fruit (or maybe just blueberries? I haven't been shopping yet.) and lemon cream-cheese frosting between the layers. I am driving this cake over to the hospital where my daughter works because she and her fellow nurses are coming in to work early to watch the royal wedding, and I'm going to watch with them. How'd she convince them to come in before 6:00 am? She promised them my cake, and she reminded them of the cake I brought them recently ... it was two layers of carrot cake sandwiching a layer of cheesecake. It was better than what I made for my co-workers on St. Patrick's Day: I experimented with a Green Velvet cake (like red velvet, but containing an entire bottle of green food coloring) sandwiching a cheesecake ... the next day every one of us was confused: we felt fine, but we were all pooping green. When we all realized the source of our malady, we laughed 'til we cried. If you like lemon and raspberry, try Key Lime Cake with Raspberry Filling. I made a simple three-layer cake (with raspberries on top instead of flowers and whipped fluff icing) for a casual wedding that featured BBQ ... it complimented the food very nicely. I thought it was "you CAN'T have your cake, and eat it too." We always seem to have cake at my house. We eat it, and we still seem to have more. Current house is someone else's fully custom house. I've always wondered why realtors advertise that a house is "custom". That means it was built to someone else's taste. Doesn't seem to be a selling point to me.