This old thread got revisited. @dani_m08 to answer the question about extra probe, I believe I ordered an extra one when I bought the set up. The probe wire is just setting in the junction box I think but honestly I cant remember. When I laid out the underfloor heating and the probe, I just ran another probe near the first probe, and it was then sealed into the floor self leveling compound as per instructions. then the end was just threaded into the wall like the one that would be live, and not connected, but just laying there in the box. Regarding the tile layout. I just decided to run it this way, after getting instructions on the 90Degree way, IIRC. The herringbone that I love is from my childhood and the side walks in my neighborhood that all ran at 45Degree. so that to me is herringbone. I know you posted on @sochi thread about her amazing bathroom and a wall mounted faucet. I would totally do it if I had the right sink for it. In my case I had made my sink out of soapstone and an integrated backsplash. The pictures of this bathroom reveal are no longer available because of the use of photo bucket, when it was Gardenweb. I did not keep my account with photo bucket. I'll add some of the reveal pictures so you can see the sink and floor. Regarding the sink there is no ledge for water to drip from my hands when using the faucet. The water drips right into the sink. In my other bathroom with a deck mounted faucet I am always wiping up drips and it is a nuisance. I much prefer the setup for this sink. Below: I love the flush finish from the faucet to the bottom of the sink. nothing drips on a counter or edge of a sink. Below: looking in from the doorway. Below: Here I am finishing up the sink. the backsplash was epoxied on as a separate piece. The whole soapstone install in the room took next to nothing to buy as they were all small pieces that I epoxied together with a 3 part stone epoxy. Below: this is the counter at the tub, and is in 2 long pieces but I was able to epoxy them together at there edges to make a wide slab for the top. All the soapstone was finished with a 60 grit sandpaper to be rough and this lovely soft tone of blue/green/gray/white. I did not oil it so this color tone would remain light. Below: If I recall correctly @sochi helped me decide on this Hubberton Forge Mirror. I have 3 different metals in this room, but they are all a cool silver to black color. Below: the center of this tower shares space with the kitchen on the other side of the wall. there is also some extra space that houses some electrical wiring. this is an old simple house. this bathroom was an add on when it got move to the farm in the 30s IIRC. The plumbing was all rearrange and some of the details that were orignially there I kept but updated it, such as this tower feature. The old one went and the carpenter did a wonderful job with this one. Below: This feature was another thing I kept from the old bathroom but flipped it from the other end and had the carpenter put drawers in it. Before it was a hell hole. things got lost and the build was soooo old and creapy I didn't like using it for storage. Now it is perfect for storage.

I waited almost 5 years, only half intentionally, and my plans changed and solidified, and I saved up money. It was the best thing I could have done. Waiting a little might is not a bad thing at all. My 40s cabinets are like that too. I don't know how well they'd move, since there's nothing to keep them "square" while they're being taken down and moved around. But that's a question for a carpenter. You need to find one who is really invested in giving you what YOU want: informing you of the likely outcomes, good and bad, giving you his honest opinion, that you feel you can trust. I'm lucky that I have that with my contractor. Most of the time he knows I'd prefer to fix something old, even if it may not look perfect, or might be too fragile for some of the families on this site. But he will tell me if something is a bad idea, and when he does, I definitely listen. But some workers just want things easy, or don't have the knowledge to deal with an old house, or know they're going to slave for hours at their craft making something fit and then the homeowner is going to come home and say "But it's 1/8th of an inch off! That's totally unacceptable! Just put in a new one!" I think, for you, it starts with figuring out what you really WANT, and I get the feeling you're not quite there yet. As I see it: You can restore the salvageable 30s kitchen (little reconfiguration, cheapest option), recreate the 30s look with all/mostly modern components (some reconfiguration, middle cost, may exceed budget), start fresh with a new design with the very best of the 30s elements (some reconfiguration/more cost, likely to exceed $10K budget). Or another solution. In the end, the only opinion that matters is your own. Trust your gut.

I have owned two old houses. The first one was a craftsman/colonial from 1926. The previous owners had painted over most of the original chestnut woodwork with flat white paint. This woodwork had been in the original untouched finished condition for 70 years before these people got the house. The rest of the woodwork that didn't get that treatment (fireplace mantle, bookcases flanking fireplace, and stair banister and newel post) was painted with Rustoleum high gloss exterior black paint. The brick fireplace was also painted with the Rustoleum. When they painted the walls and trim, they didn't bother to cover the oak floors with mahogany ribbon molding and corner knots since they were installing hot pink wall-to-wall in every room! Yup...hot pink in the livingroom, diningroom, sunroom, up the stairs, in the hall, and all three bedrooms...lovely! They also remodeled the kitchen with pink-hued faux woodgrain cabinets, pink formica counter and pink patterned peel-n-stick vinyl tile flooring. They cut a hole in the wall between the kitchen and a walk-in pantry to recess the refrigerator thereby making the walk-in pantry walk-in no more. The black appliances finished off the look of the pink kitchen. Moving on to the enclosed porch with the original textured glass fanlights and sidelights with the original glass exterior door, they painted over the inside of all the windows (the textured side of the glass) and sided over the exterior of the fanlights and covered the glass of the door with some kind of laminate. They also continued the theme of the kitchen out onto this enclosed porch by laying down the same pink patterned peel-n-stick tile over the porch floor. The PO's before them had panelled over two beautiful stained glass windows above the fireplace on the inside and sided over them on the outside. Fortunately, they left the windows buried in the wall. They also removed and discarded the glass doors that would have been on the bookcases flanking the fireplace as well as installing drop ceilings in the livingroom and bathroom. We undid all of this nastiness by redoing the kitchen in a style that evoked the feel of a vintage kitchen. Removed all of the pink vinyl floor of the porch and stripped all of the textured glass of the sidelights and fanlights and removed the siding on the outside of the windows. Ripped up all of the hot pink carpet and had all the floors refinished. Restored the stained glass windows to their former glory by removing all of the panelling and siding that was hiding them. We also installed interior framing on these windows to mimic the rest of the moldings. We also spent three years, lovingly, painstakingly and personally stripping and refinishing all of the chestnut molding, banister, mantle and bookcases. So we decided to sell this past year and move closer to the train station. I was recently visiting a friend in the old neighborhood and the people who we sold the house to saw me and invited me in to see their handiwork. What did they do? You guessed it - painted all of the chestnut woodwork white including the mantle and bookcases! Their reason was that the brown molding just didn't go with the colors they had chosen for the livingroom, sunroom and diningroom - a slate gray/blue color. I wanted to scream at them "if you wanted slate colored walls you should have bought a loft in Chelsea and left my woodwork alone!", but instead I grinned and beared it. It's their house now. I just hope they understand they dropped the value of their investment by about $10,000. In our new house (1929 tudor), the previous owners had lived here for over 40 years. They had done the usual stuff - black and white vinyl tile over ribonned hardwood floors in the sunroom, foyer and vestibule; linoleum in two bedrooms, panelling in two bedrooms, hideous wallpaper in bathrooms and kitchen (including the ceilings). We are slowly correcting these issues. But they did leave us with three bathrooms with all original tile and fixtures, all original 6-panel doors, all original windows, all original light fixtures, the original beautiful deep green marble fireplace surround, the gracefully curved archways between all the rooms on the first floor, the original stucco and cedar shake siding, original shutters and iron railings on the outside, and all the original woodwork, albeit painted woodwork. And that's the way its going to stay.

Florantha, I have orange walls. We were criticizing the colors not because of what's stylish but because of the exact shades used. That particular yellow is very aggressive and the orange stripes going in two directions are a bit day glo. I think the orange fabric could be made to work with the right yellow on the wall. As it is, I find the combination, at least as it shows in the picture, to be painful (As in, ouch! my eyes!). They also don't go with the counter or the floor. The paint and homemade curtains both look fresh and clean, leading to the assumption that the current residents put them in, so the choice of them leads us back to the discussion about what it takes to design a kitchen. And I contend, as I have through this all, that it's little touches like choosing the right paint color, not granite counters. MV, It's interesting about the "other" kitchens you mention. I have my own big stack of (pre-GW/FKB) kitchen magazines. And while I can't live on a steady diet of Architectural Digest, I pick it up every now and then. I love looking at home and kitchen design, and am as likely to look at it in the background of a personality profile as in a house photo, because then you see real people houses. But I wouldn't want to live in most of them! I love thinking about how life would be in an MCM masterpiece, or the arboreal house with the canopy style copper roof. I love looking at them and thinking about how the way the house works will interact with the way the people live their lives. But I'm honest with myself and know that I want more function than one of those shiny Italian curvopoli where it's more important that the ladle and can opener match the kitchen design than work well, and that I'm too prone to clutter to do justice to an MCM. Kmsparty, I can definitely attest to the more cooking in a more convenient kitchen thing. I cooked less and less in the old kitchen because it was so awful. Now cooking is so convenient and pleasant in my not-quite-finished new kitchen that I'm actually cooking too much!