Make my kitchen fan-freakin'-tastic!

I cannot speak highly enough about our http://www2.dupont.com/zodiaq/en-us/dbi/zodiaq-all-colors.html countertops. They look great, they're basically indestructible, and the price was pretty reasonable. I'd recommend going into a Home Depot or whatever to take a look at some samples, at least. We did a glass tile backsplash, and I don't care if it'll eventually look dated or not -- it's cheerful, it's easy to clean and I love how it looks. Definitely make sure you're using the right kind of grout and seal it properly, though -- we neglected that last bit a little and we have some maintenance to do as a result. The things I love the most about our kitchen: Cabinets that go all the way to the ceiling -- no gap for dust to accumulate, and lots of extra storage for things we don't have to reach all the way. A built in cookbook shelf and wine rack that our contractor put together -- it feel self-indulgent but it's just been SO HANDY. A roll-out pantry -- much much easier to find things, particularly little jars of spices or boxes of tea. We used to have condiments that would kind of migrate to the back of our cabinets, forgotten and never used -- no longer! (We took a lot of photos of our kitchen for the folks who did the design for us -- http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.246591578723922.53550.168628953186852&type=1)

Externally vented and very powerful hood over the stove.

Matte stone countertops? Let me share what I learned about these during the renovation we did last year. We ended up with soapstone in most of the bathrooms and http://www.thekitchendesigner.org/journal/2007/6/28/kitchen-countertops-slate-yes-slate.html in the kitchen and in one bathroom. If we had it to do over again, we likely would have gone entirely with slate. Materials: We definitely like the matte stone look. I also wanted material that was as strong and maintenance free as possible. I always liked slate, so I googled "slate countertops" out of curiosity and stumbled upon the article linked above. I ordered some samples - big flat polished tiles a foot square - and we put them on our existing counters and used the for a while. Slate works well. The downside is that it scratches and leaves white marks, but this only happens when very hard things get dragged across it, and you can fix it in an instant by literally "wiping the slate clean" - some soap and water clean it up, or some mineral oil in the worst cast. The upside is that (for good slate) it is essentially impervious to chemicals and heat, and is very strong. We tried everything we could on it - oils, acids, sharpie markers - and everything cleaned up pretty easily - some steel wool took the very worst of anything off. It has a matte finish, comes in cool colors and has some streaking or patterns - "movement" the designers call it. There is no need to seal it or anything but clean it with soap and water. You can put mineral oil on it if you want to bring out the movement, but it dries off eventually and looks splotchy while it does, plus you can see the small scratches. And because I really liked chem lab countertops for look and durability we also looked at soapstone. It was harder to get large samples, so we couldn't work on the surface, but we tried all the same chemicals and it was also impervious. There is a lot more information about soapstone than slate, so it seemed risky, so we decided to get soapstone for the bathrooms. Cost and suppliers: here is the deal: if you go to a kitchen place near you and ask for soapstone or slate, they will likely quote you a price that is well over the cost of granite. In fact, the price I was quoted for soapstone was $99 per sq ft, and slate was over $100 per sq ft. This is insane, and you can do much better. We have over 70 sq ft of countertops in our kitchen, and price was an issue, and we got it for much less. Good quality impervious slate is quarried in Vermont and New York. You can buy it directly from the quarry for $40 a sq ft - we bought ours from http://www.sheldonslate.com/, and I flew up pretty cheaply on Southwest to visit the quarry and pick slabs. Oh, the $40 is for the finished size, not the whole slab. We ended up with enough left over material to make an extra countertop for a laundry area. Shipping to the DC area cost about $600. I found a fabricator (recommended by the quarry, through they were not that awesome) who agreed to do the final fabrication and installation for a flat fee instead of a sq foot price. The slabs were shipped to them, and they did all the work. Overall, all costs included, it ended up about $65 per sq ft, which is almost half of what I was quoted and which is similar to good granite. We got light green slate for the kitchen, in part because it came in larger slabs, and grey slate for one of the baths. The grey is cool but would be too busy in large pieces. We are really happy with it to date. Soapstone mostly comes from overseas, but it is still quarried in Virginia at http://www.alberenesoapstone.com/. Again, I drove down to the quarry and picked out slabs. We mostly got http://www.alberenesoapstone.com/soapstone-materials/old-dominion-soapstone, but for the nice ground floor guest bath we got http://www.alberenesoapstone.com/soapstone-materials/alberene-soapstone. The Old Dominion is pretty soft, and got small chips in a few spots during the installation. It is more grey in color naturally. You can treat it with something like Tenex Tiger Ager and it makes it look wet, which is pretty, but for now we haven't treated it though we might for a change later. Is was about $29 per sq ft, if I recall correctly. The Alberene is nicer, much harder and darker, though it was $39 a sq ft, and the slab sizes are smaller. In the end we like it all, but like the slate better. It has cool patterns (especially along the edges) and has a very nice feel to it, but Alberene soapstone is also nice. The Old Domion is ok, it may grown on me more if we treat it to darken it. Send me an email address by memail and I can send you some pictures of what we ended up with, if you like, as well as slab pictures if you want to see what it looks like (this offer valid for other MeFites as well).

I have an http://remodelista.com/posts/tse-tse-kitchen-drainer where all our day to day plates, bowls, coffe cups, etc go. It is the simplest thing in the world to empty the dishwasher every morning.

We did a complete kitchen overhaul and remodeling of our 11x19 foot kitchen last year. The three things we did that I'm most proud of: 1) Our tile guy suggested epoxy grout, which will not stain like regular grout, although it costs a bit more, as does the installation. This was money well spent. 2) We had all electrical switches and outlets on strips at the base of the upper cabinets against the wall where the tiled areas are. This way, no switch plates interrupt the pattern of the tiles (which are white subway tiles with a few colorful accent tiles we got from Israel. We have 28 electrical outlets, and about 20 of them are on the strips, out of site from normal eye level perspective. It sounds like a lot, but we NEVER have to unplug anything to plug something else in. Also, we had the switch for the garbage disposal put inside the cabinet under the sink instead of on the tile wall. 3) We have xenon under cabinet lights, because I hate fluorescent lights. We also replaced 450 watts worth of overhead halogen lighting with 18 watts worth of LCD cans, and have great illumination. the LCD lights were way more expensive than halogen or incandescent would have been, but we're saving a lot of energy and the light is clean and bright.

i love the http://www.younghouselove.com/2012/01/how-to-install-penny-tile-and-lots-of-it/ look. i don't think this will look dated in a few years at all, as long as you keep the colors neutral enough. as a huge baker, i also love the pioneer woman's http://thepioneerwoman.com/homeandgarden/2010/05/my-floursugar-drawers/. seems so much easier to scoop flour out of a giant drawer rather than a little canister.

A proper stove hood would be my #1 suggestion. It makes it practical to use high heat on top of the stove, e.g. you can grill a steak or make a stir fry without setting off all the smoke alarms.

Kitchen countertops normally have a 28-inch depth but we extended ours to 32 and it makes all the difference. There is room for stuff like the coffee maker and the toaster AND room to prep food without removing said appliances. You can get granite done in a matte finish. I do think glass tiles will be out-of-style very soon (if they're not already). We have a HUGE window in front of the sink and I lovelovelove it. It can be a pain to clean but I don't care. Love it. Nthing stove hood. I have one that's nearly commercial grade and I can't believe how wonderful it is and I will never live without one again. My main sink is big enough to put a cookie sheet in it, flat. It's super deep, too, so it can be full of dishes (like during a dinner party) and you can't see the dirty from the table. Wonderful. Also, stay away from sharp corners in the sink if you can; rounded corners make it SO MUCH EASIER to clean. Double ovens are fantastic if you entertain frequently or host big family events a couple times a year. I like the idea of the microwave in the island. I think it makes the kitchen look less busy at eye-level. On preview, yes to all drawers on the bottom.

We just redid ours last year. Stuff we now have that I absolutely love: - Zodiaq countertops; they are all that. - French door fridge with a big freezer drawer under (it's counter depth too so stuff doesn't hide in the back and spoil) - cabinets flush with ceiling, omg so much more storage for all those weird things like the giant roasting racks & soforth that we use once a year but REALLY REALLY NEED when we do. - Drawers, big deep ones, NOT cabinets, for all the under-counter storage. Really. Almost every new place in Europe we've seen does this and there's a reason - it is tremendously space efficient. Also easier to store a bunch of stacks of random plates and bowls in a big drawer-with-dowels than in a little dinky cabinet. - get "frameless" cabinets for the ones you do have - ours were something we found at Home Depot and there's an incredible amount of space inside because it's not being eaten up by a useless decorative door frame. - we moved the sink from the 50's era facing-the-window awkward corner, to front and center, facing outward in the middle island, with lots and lots of prep space on both sides and the dishwasher directly to our (dominant) right hand side. It is FANTASTIC for working on stuff with people in the house because even if you're washing dishes or prepping food, you still get to be social. We had the luxury of working with an architect who is also a friend of ours, but we also budgeted extra to pay him to design all of this stuff right and figure out all the "gotchas" and space and materials weirdness that may come up during the project. Our kitchen was originally a little near-galley thing in a midcentury modern 1000 s.f. ranch house. We originally had an annoying partition wall in between the kitchen and livingroom / dining area. We demo'd the partition and installed the island instead, but we were still working with limited space in which my husband wanted to fit a ginormous fridge and 36" induction cooktop and massive wall oven/microwave combo. So yeah, we had to be extremely savvy with every millimeter of space. It was worth every penny we paid our architect, because we didn't run into problems with fitting appliances into the design or figuring out how many stupid GFI outlets we'd need, or how to seam the countertops so it wouldn't show, etc. This is why you hire professionals for big ticket jobs like this.