Thanks for all of the compliments and good wishes! I owe a lot to GW, so I wanted to show what can be done by "seeing" the layout function first. Also I used the new SW alkyd cabinet and trim paint. It is soap and water clean up when wet, but scrubbable after it cures. It levels very nicely. We used it on kitchen cabinets, bathroom cabinets, and whole house doors and trim. (painters sprayed it on the areas they did. I laid on with a brush and laid off with a foam roller on the projects I did.) Tinker, the original back splash was very basic 4 x 4 "bathroom" style tiles in the same antique white as the formica. So they are kind of hard to see in the before pictures. The installer had to remove the old counters and lay down a new plywood base for the install on the counters. He removed the wall tile and I believe he only had to patch drywall in a few spots. There were also some drywall patches behind the stove area, as the 220 outlet had been removed by the electrician, and in the wall area where the original cabinet had been. It took the tile guy and plumber a week. He was a true pro and knew that the drywall patches needed to dry, that the tile needed to be set up before grouting etc. He was very proud of his cutouts by the electrical outlets, and we showed him the tiles we had to work with and asked for his input on the details. He came up with the diamond behind the stove. We like that because that tile, and the half round liner bar were leftover tile from our previous kitchen, so that made it feel like home. So the backsplash is the same porcelain as the counters in the main field, with the sesame colored liner bars, and the black running bond horizontal tiles.

Okay, so here's the new rough layout. As you can see, I'm reusing the original kitchen wire and switch position for the recessed LED cans and Lutron dimmer. The 3-way will be turned back into singles, with a Leviton Decora (single pole, dual switch) for the over table fixture and matching pendant over the sink. I would also like to use another dual switch for the undercab LED's, using the lower switch for those and having the top switch ready for above cabinet LED tape(?) light after I tear out the soffit when re-dooring/refinishing the cabinets. The right side switch (near the garage) of the previous 3-way will again be a Lutron dimmer and recessed LEDs in the living room area. Looking at it now, I don't know if it's worth re-ganging the right side switches just for the gimball/eyeball recessed pointing at some wall art...maybe I'll skip that for now. Does this layout look okay? This post was edited by ImNoBobVila on Fri, May 31, 13 at 3:25

Thx kindly unfortunately for me it takes a lot of words at times to really explain well. Best then be entertaining. Was it worth it? ________ Current 2017 Winter Spring yard plan We currently have an nice range of hydrangea getting underway in the yard as well as some being installed this winter through esrly spring. This is Hydrangea macrophylla 'Mathlida Gutches' with acid pH soil with Aluminum Sulphate added a few years prior. Electric Blue Division of same bush in new yard in the process of the root ball adapting to the new pH enviroment. Obviously there are local pH range variations working here. Over time it will stabilize to purple or pink, unless I act on it. Liking the effect I added dolomite lime to one side of tbe bush and Aluminum Sulphate to the other. Summer Yard Plan I'm going to add some serious Alocasia, Colocasia, Banana, Giant Canna and Giant Ferns this year. Many are hardy here or might be hardy enough and possibly survive a wet long winter too. That is if tricked just right. Others will need to be over wintered inside, until I have expanded enough stock to test for more effective outdoor methods. We have sodium vapor and T55 lights on timer and gas heater installed in an insulated side shed also an unheated 40 F garage holding Brugmansia planters, now in suspended animation. To have success as a zone shifter, one has to know why a (semi)tropical didn't work outside. Was the actual cause cold hardiness, drainage, rotting, or slugs or other pests eating roots and bulbs? Mulch type, tarping, soil amendments, correct bottom drainage, and/or correct pH* could make a huge difference on meeting challenges. I'm getting a little electronic temperature datalogger to help save me on making repeated measurement trips. For a highly desired buried rootstock survival outdoors, one could even lay a 20watt seedling heatmat over the crown area, dry mulch, and cover with a waterproof tarp (e.g., for a Colocasia 'Thailand Giant'). With our 50-ish F ground temp below and an 85 F small zone above, it just might work. 100 watts / winter for protecting 5 prize tropical plants zone would be much more cost effective, and last longer, than a tropical vacation. * pH could effect root health or function, fertilzer loading or type needed and possibly microbe aggression or pest range too. I've used so much commercial compost in my new yard that I better watch plants here liking either an acid pH or drier soil. I know this for sure because most of my purple to blue hydrangeas shifted to pink and red and I can also see that my ammended soil for hydrangeas stay more moist than before. Soil ammendments found here to shift hydrangea color and/or a pH test kit can teach me how to pH adjust here.. My soil is too dry, clay filled and rocky in fact to not add compost. My yard is not hardpan, having a solid clay layer, but is more of a glacial till. It has small to large rocks stopping most digging tools quickly. Having not pre-tested and already moved here, I must use an iron rod for initial digging. Then I screen out excess rock and add compost back, 20 to 50%, to make decent soil. I dig "root pits" and "bog pits (plastic lined) mixing the ammendents needed with my screened soil as I go. i dig a pit as wide and deep enough needed to support an adult plant size. My soil structure thus permits me to ammend, on a plant by plant basis, for that plants needs. For hydrangea, I can seperately adjust pH differently for side by side plants to display different colors. I can even try making a single hydrangea a bicolor red/blue or a have a mixed blue, pink and purple color range. The range is created with focused line addition of ammendmenrs lightly mixed into the soil, above the root ball. If concerned about eventual pH blending yielding a single color try a below ground water drip diverter(s) such as plastic edging strip(s). These effects work only becuase plants roots feed more verically than horizontally through the plant with major root zones feeding primarily above. Yes plants are more simply wired than our brain body connections. Or gardening success would be likely be thought to due to insightful plant psychology rather than plant physiology ... except for that Elf riden Butterfly Orchid that I'm growing under lights. Yes 'Hildos' rides again! Psychopsis Mendenhall 'Hildos' FCC/AOS Hildos' 'Papilio' clan was first seen by Westerners waving to them in the wind, while clinging onto trees in Trinidad and Tobago. Hildos' direct ancestor was promptly captured and brought back to England in the early1800s, where the seated Elf Rider likely magically initiated the craze for orchid collecting in Europe. An award was granted the butterfly in 1825. Interestingly, most viewing this stunning sight still only have seen the Butterfly and not Jockey rider. With plants you sometimes need to look closer to truely understand them.

I had a similar challenge with a downstairs office that was furthest from the central HVAC/furnace and too cold in the winter due to insufficient flow, also solved with an inline duct booster that was wired to the furnace accessory (air cleaner) terminals. 1. First, if your duct fan is 120V, have you tried plugging it into a variable speed fan control switch and manually adjusting the speed to balance the flow with the rest of the house? I did this for a few years, and it was somewhat adequate. 2. Second, this past winter I finally installed a DIY zone control board (Smartzone 4X, available from Amazon), to fully zone the office with its own thermostat. Typically zones use duct dampers that open and close for each zone. However, it was almost as trivial to have it control the duct fan instead - i.e turn on the booster fan when the zone was calling for air, and leave the fan off (effectively minimizing the airflow) when the zone was not calling for air. My duct fan is in the crawlspace near the furnace, so the zone control board was within a few feet of both. The most challenging part was connecting a new thermostat in the office back to the furnace/zone control without tearing open the drywall; fortunately I'd hidden extra cat5e cable in several walls during a remodel, for Ethernet or low voltage automation, and was able to use one for the thermostat wiring.