Apparently kitchen designing can go on forever.  So it continues, tweaks upon more tweaks, now almost done. We actually drew the cabinet and island locations on the floor with marker, and made the realization that the island was battleship-sized (modification shown here).  I'll reiterate the importance of a designer vs an architect at this stage of the game: looking and obsessing about your blueprints are one thing.  Actually standing in the space is another.  The practical experience of a design person is more important than one might think at this stage of the game.  The guy crafting the stairs showed up during all of this to poke around and ask lots or engineering related questions.  It will be interesting to see what comes back from him.  

Note the ceiling beam detail above and in the photo below.  This is a clever method of concealing the structural steel in the ceiling and making it look like a decorative design decision of the room itself.

Found a good deal on appliances. This is a display unit that was being sold from a store very close to the house, and all three stainless pieces are now in storage for my kitchen.  I'll still need to figure out the rest.

And... I did some research to find out the actual hanging industrial lamps in the 'inspiration kitchen" photo (see post below) by doing a Google image search.  The lamps in that kitchen are manufactured in the Netherlands and have a pretty cool look. That cool look will set you back $800 each.  As it happens, I saw these at a street festival this last weekend, and picked them up for $20 each. True, they do need some love, but not $780 worth of love.  We shall see in the end if they can be made to work. 

And just a reminder to use the Photo Archive links found on the right side of this page.  I don't always have time to write here, so progress pics just go directly to the photo archive.  They are organized by floor or major piece of work, so they are pretty easy to use.