"Sometimes, I wonder what we really *get* out of having designer appliances and keeping up with the Jones's." I really do think that your "Average, run of the mill appliances" are more reliable than the "fancy stuff" we buy and it's certainly less expensive and easier to get parts and service for them.(I base this on comparing "everyday appliances" I've bought for my rentals~~~and I just never get complaints about the appliances from my tenants). Example~~~~One rental has a "run of the mill" gas range. It's about 10 years old or so now. It uses spark ignitors to light the burners, I've never had to replace one and I've had cleaning people (that are most likely NOT careful of the ignitors) when cleaning the range in the condo, yet I've never had to replace an ignitor.~~~Now compare this to the posts we see of ignitor problems with the fancy stuff, (Blue Star, Capital~~~etc) We see the ignitors, ignitor modules fail on those or pinched or disconnected wires (sometimes when brand new)!!!!. When one thinks of how many more Whirlpools are sold, and even Electroluxes than the really "Esoteric Stuff", (Miele, Gaggenau, Wolf/SZ) and then compare the number of complaints~~~~~well it's like my appliance guy said, They sell so many of the "more common stuff" that even thou the complaints "may seem to be equal to the esoteric stuff", all in all the "Common stuff", is pretty dern reliable. (I had mentioned to him that "Maytag" seemed to have a lotta complaints about their clothes washers a few years back, & that was his response to me). My Maytag washer & dryer have been trouble free for 5 years or so, except I had to have the big door seal "bellows" replaced in the washer. Anyway, I did not buy my Miele Optima to "Keep up with the Jones", I bought it because of that top cutlery rack. I'm kind of a rebel here, gray is "all the rage here now", and I've expressed my opinion on that and NOT in the most "Politically correct way"~~~~~~now there's a good example of following the Jones's (even thou they are color blind)!!! Anyway, good luck with your new Miele, YOU DEFINITELY "Stepped out of the Jones neighborhood and into the Vanderbilt's abode", with that purchase, (LOL)!!! I hope it serves you well for a long time, and I hope my Optima does not come down with the same disease yours got!!!! Gary

Those are very nice chairs, ML. I agree that they could go in the living room as easily as the dining room. I like the wavy "x" legs, especially. It gives them a little something extra. I have studied your diagrams and read your descriptions, finally. Ran around all day yesterday - went and got a Holter Monitor at the cardiologist's and then hit Salvation Army, where I got a sweet little bakers rack - solid metal, welded seams - for $35! Just needs a little 3M Rust Reformer. I think you have shown us the kitchen design before. I remember the sink across from the Bertazzoni, the big garden window, the baking area. I am not sure if you had the nice indentation there for the cook to have a safe zone, though. I do remember the sitting area outside the bedroom, though. It is neat to see the diagram of your home after all these years of seeing photos of little parts of it and imagining how it all fits together. The nosy neighbor, is he on the side with the clawfoot tub and your clothes closet? Is the new vestibule in the front new this time? I don't think I remember seeing that. I am also a bit surprised that you gave up on the storage/pantry units on either side of the window seats. I like your idea of base and wall cabinets with your favorite solid surface counter there, though. Does the table that you use in that space have extensions that you can use to fill the dining room if you have a large group? I am now struggling with an idea I have for my family room. We now have a nice (but huge) 1990s TV unit with the doors that slide out to shut the TV behind. Which I never do. The thing is 5 ft high, which is too high to place my gnome garden upon. I have my air plant garden up there, but it can hardly be seen. I want to ditch the furniture, get a larger wall-hung TV (old eyes can't see small print) and have a furniture piece that I can set things on and under. Craigslist had an beautiful console table for $230 that was under 2' deep at its smallest configuration that looked like a sofa table. It could be pulled out to 8' long! Yet it was only about 8" deep! I could set things on the floor underneath it, as well as on top. It did need a little restoration (it was from the 1930s), and I would not feel really comfortable putting a garden on it, as drips could happen. But since I made the entire kitchen into an island, I have no place for a table-height table, and thought I might want that option if I could ever talk DH into getting rid of the hunk o'oak that I once thought that I just had to have! I'd love to give it to someone to make into a nice play kitchen set like MamaGoose made! We could bring up dining chairs from the basement and have a sit-down meal if we wanted to. Currently, we eat at the island or sitting on family room furniture. I have a tea cart DH and I have used as a dining table, though. So I am imagining that you have the extending table that I wish I had! I hope that you are well by now, and that Marti is over her cold, too. I hear that both flu and colds are going around in Michigan, with Norovirus and RSV also hitting hard. We have been lucky, so far.

Ppbenn, the wallpaper is "peonies" from tempaper. It is not standard wallpaper. Its a self-adhesive wallpaper, aka a giant sticker. I don't know how it would take water color bc of the finish. But, Tempaper sells a product that is plain that you can decorate. So maybe? Tempaper has a website with faqs, and they would likely answer questions too. It's a sm company/neat story. Good luck! I am sure my kids will paint ours soon. I've already wiped up pen and pencil. Marker and paint are likely not far behind. Fwiw: hanging this is just slightly different than regular paper. The back is very sticky. That is great if your flat walls meet crisp edges of the even/level ceiling. With my old wavy plaster walls and old wavy plaster ceiling, covered in tons of paint, a standard wallpaper likely would have been easier to hang because it would have been more forgiving to stretch, move and slide. But, this paper was worth the effort. And removal will be so much easier, though I have no plans to do it anytime soon. Fori! I remember you asked questions about the smeg. I hoped you would pull the trigger before me! I will try to remember to post a more thorough review after we use the speed oven more. I want to try to bake, heat a frozen pizza, and grill fish or meat. Then I'll post again. In the meantime, as I mentioned above, we have abused the oven feature on the smeg everyday for more than a month: reheat french toast, warm left overs, cook chicken fingers, spring rolls, eggplant parm, roast veggies and chicken, make nacho chips and cheese. It just gets hot so much faster than my 30" Berta gas range, which isn't particularly slow to get hot. And I think/hope it has to be more efficient to use the small electric oven than the larger gas oven. (?) And the mw is in use everyday, reheating my coffee, cooking frozen broccoli etc. The mw performs well, as I would expect. We have not baked, used the grill function, or done any speed/combo cooking. But to be honest, the combo features were secondary. I am not very good at following directions and I usually never use the pre-set options on anything! If and when I bake, it's usually in batches; I imagine I would usually use the range to bake and the smeg to cook dinner. I will use the grill function; hope it works well. We decided to take the leap, or be the guinea pigs, bc we only had so many spots to put a mw. The best spot was prime real estate, below the counter. To give up cabinet drawers, I wanted an appliance that would do more than mw. I cook, a lot, everyday and on holidays. A second oven was really attractive. Obviously I didn't have space for a wall oven. I don't even have space for a countertop convection or toaster oven. So we looked at combos. Since I only have 24" my choices were limited. The reviews on the Miele were really good. But it didn't sound like $$$$ better for how I would use the appliance. And I didn't have that extra $$$$ to just get the Miele bc it's the Miele. Really, my biggest concern: yes, my kids play with the knobs. But i can't blame them. It is cute.

Dining Room It's too small. To seat 8 people, you need a table approximately 7 feet long at a minimum, (8 feet is even better) you would have 3 diners on each side and one on each end. The average (non-skimpy) table is 40” wide (and up to 45”.) You need to add 3 feet beyond the edge of the table size on each side and end for enough space for the chair, the diner and moving the chair back. You need to have between 28-30 " seating space per diner. So for eight diners, you need a room size that is a minimum of 13’ x 9.5’ (14’ x 9.5’ is better) that doesn’t have a single other stick of furniture in it besides the table and chairs. If you want a buffet or hutch, add another 20” to 24” to either dimension depending upon where you put the piece. Eight diners will get you your family and both sets of grandparents. That’s it. No aunts or uncle or cousins or friends. If you want 10 diners you need a table that is 9.3’ - 10 feet long (that can be including the leaves). If you want 10 diners your room needs to be a minimum of 16 feet long, or longer if you want your buffet or hutch to be at the long end of the room. 10 guests will get you your immediate family, another family of four people, and one set of grandparents. And so on. In your plan, the dining room is way too small if you plan to entertain any more than 8 people at a time. I suggest that you forget about seating at the kitchen counter. Move the dining room closer to your kitchen, put it where the front bedroom is and expand it considerably into where the current dining room is so that it can accommodate the number of guests you will be entertaining when you entertain. If you live out in the country it is a good idea to get to know your neighbors and your children’s classmate’s parents, and entertain back and forth, you do need each other. Use up the entire front bedroom and half the current allotted dining room, and that should give you a good amount of space. I happen to hate totally dining rooms totally open to the kitchen. When you eat a nice meal, no one needs to see all the mess of the meal prep, but that is up to you how you want to configure it- totally open, partially open, whatever. You can get a dining table with many leaves and keep it smaller, or you can keep it open and your boys can do their homework their under your watchful eye, and you will be near to help and later to supervise their work on their laptops as they get older. Make sure the dining room and great room have lots of outlets and your home has good wifi connectivity in all rooms. Laundry and Mudrooms Someone commented early that the laundry room is too big. I disagree. You need room to open the ironing board. You need the counter to fold clothes, or to spread out sweaters to dry, or to lay out sewing patterns without worry that your children will set snacks on them. Maybe you put your sewing machine on the counter to sew. I do have an issue with the mudroom. I would not have the closet cut into the laundry room that way. I would figure out exactly what you use the laundry room for, is it also a craft room, do you need more counters, etc. Then actually think carefully about what kind of storage you need in the mudroom in terms of cubbies. i.e., do you need 4 cubbies? Five including one for dog leashes and other dog things? Plan that space out exactly to the inch. Use the ones shown in catalogs like pottery barn or crate and barrel as exemplars. Then I would think about pushing that closet forward so it doesn’t encroach on the laundry room, and find a more creative door solution so it doesn’t take up corridor space in the mudroom hallway. A desk in the mudroom? Can you please explain that? And speaking of closets- Foyer Am I reading that plan correctly, you don’t have any closets at the front door? Oh goodness! Well, you now have a much larger foyer because you have gotten rid of the front bedroom and the too small dining room. Make a large closet. Large. Larger. Your guest wear coats and boots and hats. If you can, have two closets, one on each side of the door. If you have six guests in the winter or rainy season, they will have six coats and six hats and six umbrellas. You know you don’t want those coats on your bed or hanging off your shower and dripping in your bathroom. With the larger foyer, you have the chance to make it gracious. Get a lovely table and a nice chair next to it so when someone comes and is waiting, they can sit. Indoors. There are marvelous ways to decorate a foyer. But first things first. Kitchen Your kitchen design isn’t logical and was designed by someone who doesn’t cook much. Great that you have two sinks, but both sinks need to be l-a-r-g-e. ‘Cause I know you know how long celery, green onions and corn and rhubarb are, right? And maybe there is a glimmer of hope that occasionally someone occasionally helps you out in the kitchen so do you really need to be bumping behinds when one of you is at the island sink and the other is at the range top? Please move that island sink. And as mentioned earlier, get rid of the counter seating, and with the dining room now right next door, eat at the dining room table like civilized people facing each other and have conversation. It’s worth it for everyone to walk three steps and let the kids set the table and carry things and you two for you to not let yourself be treated like a short order cook and have the children develop table manners and conversational skills and give their thumbs a rest from those e-devices. Without the counter seating you have tons more storage space in the island, and who doesn’t need that? And you saved all that money on counter stools, and you don’t need such a big slab for the counter either. Maybe you can put that saved money into better storage, like drawers instead of shelves for the lowers in the kitchen. About the kitchen sink- have you thought about using a single large sink instead of a divided bowl? With the dishwasher right there, how much do you wash by hand and when you do, do you really wash, soak, rinse, do a whole two separate bowl procedure? Wouldn’t you rather have one big bowl for the really big things that won’t fit in the dishwasher? Do you really want to carry a dirty-with-food and gravy huge platter through your house to the mudroom? Outside to the garage in the pouring rain? Does your kitchen need two entrance from the laundry room mudroom side? I don’t think so. Just have one, that will give you that extra space for more counter and more upper and lower storage. Keep the upper entryway into the kitchen because that is closest to the garage path, and close off the lower one. That will give you that wall and the one perpendicular to it, the one on the other side of the new dining room for a refrigerator, maybe even two refrigerators, a big sink, maybe two sinks, and a dishwasher. (And then put a full freezer in the garage.) Have the range on a wall where you can install a large hood that can vent to the outside, maybe the wall abutting the shed roof and put the microwave there on that side too. If you really want the second sink in the island, put a second sink in the island but not directly opposite another appliance and not smack dab in the middle of one of the long sides. Do you really drink enough wine to warrant a wine refrigerator? If you have meetings in your home for organizations, groups, parties, for your family and kids and groups you belong to, maybe a better (more versatile) choice is a beverage refrigerator that can be used for multiple things including things for your children, and get a lock on it anyway in case you do decide to store alcohol in it. Garage Your garage- is it really large enough? You live out in a countrified area. Maybe you have a van or a truck. I bet by high school your son will be driving and will need his own car. Mauybe both will have their own cars and part time jobs too. Don’t you think you should have at least a three and a half car garage? Or a two car garage plus a large electrified shed/workshop? I wonder if your two car garage is even large enough for your vehicles , let alone your bicycles, lawn mower and other implements of destruction. Look at all those things cutting into the garage space- a door, two sets of stairs. You need to be able to open the doors of your both cars on both sides, no matter what size car or truck you have. I don’t think you can do this. Think about this and do your own measurements, not what the builder tells you based on their own minimum requirements. And frankly, this is not a forever home for you if you have to walk up two flights of stairs from the garage with bags of groceries, either. Great Room Do you plan on having a TV in the great room, because I don’t see any place to put one. If you are having a regular fireplace with a regular height mantel, putting the TV over that is just too high. There are no other walls wide enough I that room for a TV. Is that a wall on the back of the foyer? If so , there shouldn’t be one, because your guests would be led into the great room. If you didn’t want someone at the front door to see into your great room you could have a wall there with a doorway into the great room off to the far right and you could choose to shut the door when the doorbell rings or when and if you keep the front door open with just the screen door on. The room is H-U-G-E. Have you planned out your furniture placement? Does it make sense? Who sits together on benches squished against a wall on the side of a fireplace except teenagers you don’t want in that proximity? Is that a wood burning fireplace? Maybe instead of those benches, build in a place to store cut logs ready to use in the fireplace, you can use both sides, and sort by size. On the other sides of the log storage, think about other built in storage such as closed storage on the bottom with open shelving on the top. You can put board games in there, and things like coasters and a basket or two to corral toys, and some nice decorative items, too. Just clean the logs before you bring them in or you'll have all manner of bug and rodents. And maybe think about putting in something that can make the fireplace easily convertible to a non-wood burning one because many areas are dis-allowing wbf's or so severely restricting their use because of either fire concerns or pollution concerns or deforestation concerns that you might want to switch over some day, or when you sell the house down the road the convertibility of the fireplace may make it more sellable. The last reason is the least compelling but if it doesn't cost a fortune it is should be considered even for that last reason, too. Master Bedroom Is there any particular reason you have the walk-in-closet on the far side of the master bath from the master bedroom? That’s a bit of a hike and doesn’t make sense unless one spouse has a very different schedule and doesn’t want to awaken the other. Is that the case? Is that a linen closet in the hallway outside the master bedroom? Get totally different doors. Get a series of cupboard doors, upper and lowers so all parts of the closet can be easily accessed, or else you’ll end up with corners of that closet you can’t get into. Having a door to the master toilet is disgusting. Yes it is, and I am going to spell it out because you haven’t figured it out. You have just used the toilet and your hands are literally full of the most disgusting disease-causing coliform bacteria and you have not washed them, and now you are touching the door knob and the door and the molding and who knows what else on the way to the sink. Just get a partial wall or something to disguise most of the view. But nothing you have to touch on the way to the sink! With all the doorways into the room and the windows, have you made a to scale drawing of that room with your furniture in it? Besides your bed you have have two dressers and a media stand. Hallways Where are they? It seems the house needs to be made 8 feet wider at least so you can have hallways on so rooms can be accessed via hallways without going through other rooms.