This is a picture of a portion of the space, that was actually our old kitchen. Used and messy, but not quite finished.

The grey portion of wall in the back is actually now my "foot sink" as my contractor came to lovingly refer to it. It is tile like what is found in commercial kitchens so it has a texture and does not get slick when wet. Tiled about four feet up the wall and built a shower curb in the front. Also, wanted a color that I did not worry about cleaning. The pipe coming out of the wall now has a faucet that I linked below. I chose not to have a traditional laundry sink b/c I was in greater need of a place to throw muddy boots, shoes, cleats, wash vegetables from the garden, wash out paint brushes, can even bathe the dog in there if I need to. I fill a bucket with water right there when/if I need to soak laundry. I have found that if I can get feet washed off, it is just as easy to get the kids to their shower or bath upstairs for a full "cleaning." I measured my laundry baskets and my carpenter built the sectioned platform that the W/D are on. I fit three baskets under there and sort the clothes. We also had to work with an existing chute, you can see coming down in the corner. We purchased a length of laminate counter from Lowe's and cut it to fit on top. Too high to be of any use for folding, but it does provide another surface for storage (actually clutter gathering, mostly). This room is most of our old kitchen space, the entry into this room is adjacent to the new kitchen entry and it has become a great traffic pattern. Everyone stops here first, unloads and then goes into the rest of the house. Has significantly cut down on the "trails" that I was constantly chasing before. And, while it is a "pass through" room, there are doors on both sides that I can close to hide/deny the mess.

This is my desk area to the left as you are facing the W/D. Continuing left we created a short hallway and lined it with cubbies on both sides. Small open locker area with hooks high and low and drawers underneath for shoes. We are a family of five, but put in six for balance and have found it great to have the extra spot. When friends come over they have a place to deposit their backpacks, shoes, etc.

Finally, the opposite cubbie wall and and what was our old kitchen table is now my folding table, directly across from the W/D. The kids also use this for projects, etc. and it is great b/c as a small separate space they can leave their "work" out beyond meal times.

This got way longer than I intended, but I think I put almost as much time into thinking about my laundry room design as I did into my kitchen. We had to work around some existing walls and structure and I wanted to use every square inch I could and I knew that I would be spending a significant amount of time in here. Good luck on your project, you seem to be off to a fantastic start!

Here is a link that might be useful: faucet

By the way, in case I forgot to say it, NEVER USE MASTIC WITH GLASS!!

:-)

We used the Hafele 502.15.220 designed for pails that hang from a rail. Of course it had to be the more expensive one at $59.00.

We studied the instructions and pictures posted by metoo2 and another post of hints and tips by lowspark (I think). In case anyone else is interested I thought I would post our solution.

The cabinet is face framed and there is a pre-drilled hinge hole at the bottom of the door interior.

Had to fill the hole in order to attach the steel plate.

You could use a piece of dowel the right diameter or use a hole saw and a scrap of wood. Caution should be taken as the hinge holes could be metric - some adjustment for sizing might have to be made.

Measure the depth of the hinge hole to determine the thickness of the plug.

Using the table saw to cut the plug.

Plug inserted into existing pre-drilled hinge hole and glued with carpenters glue.

Plate ready to be attached to cabinet door.

Picture shows how the rail is mounted in the cabinet. The bungee is supposed to be hooked to the back of the carriage but the mount blocks any access for it.

Offending rail bracket from another angle.

Solution: added an eye screw 7 1/2 inches from the back of the frame (ymmv) on either side. This allows the bungees to open the cabinet door exposing the garbage can in front and part of the recycling can in the back. Adjust to your liking.

Bungee attached to eye screw at top and the base plate at bottom. Notice it clears the offending bracket.

Bungee attached and trash bucket in place.

Left base bracket installed near the front of the cabinet.

No other modifications were necessary with the exception of using longer bolts to mount the foot pedal on the face frame. Just follow the pictograms that come with it.

Thanks to the hard work of my DH, I am now gleefully opening my trash/recycle cabinet hands free and it is worth every penny!

Details... The cabinets are Amish made of quartersawn white oak with miniwax Red Oak stain. The floors are quartersawn red oak with no stain. The counters are Green Mountain Original soapstone.

This is our nook. The table, which we had custom made, comfortably seats our family of four for casual dinners. We have two more chairs and 2 leaves which we can add for a little bigger dinner. The secretary in the hutch folds down and provides a writing surface plus a place to stash mail and odds and ends.

The kitchen itself sits behind the nook. The formal dining room is through the door at the end of the kitchen. I wanted to wine fridge and "real" fridge as well as the pantry on the edges of the kitchen so they could be accessed by guests or the kids without getting in the way for the cooks.

We have additional seating for four at the island, which is handy when we are cooking for company or for breakfast or snacks for the boys.

The faucet is the Kohler Simplice and the sink is the ever popular single bowl Ticor. I'm very happy with them both. You can also see our giant cutting block in this picture. For a while we toyed around with the idea of making part of the island butcher block, but I'm happy with the compromise we struck. The fridge an Amana French door.

The range is a Blue Star 36", which is dream to cook on. The hood is by Futuro and the backsplash was custom made by Artistic Abode based on some line drawings I provided.

The Micro is an Advantium 120. It is a convection so it serves as our second oven and we are really enjoying the combination of that with the Blue Star range. Our reach in pantry has custom made cafe doors which match our cabinets and a pendant light which matches the pendants over our island and in the nook.

And here is the pantry itself. It is small but mighty!

Thank you again to everyone who patiently contributed to my threads. Building this kitchen was a pleasure. I wonder if I'll ever get to do it again...

These three pictures are the toekick drawers in the Butler's Pantry before the handles went on. BTW, we delibrately left off the handles on these drawers so the finished bank looks like there are only 6 drawers when in fact there are 8

Open:

Drawer removed from cabinet so you can see the carcass

Closed

And this is one of my best toe kick drawers. You open the toekick drawer and inside are two more draws for storing cans. It's in my prep area so right where I need it. Talk about maximizing storage

Original Finishes – 60s cultured marble counter, 70s metallic wallpaper, 80s peel-n-stick vinyl tiles, no shower

My main Design aesthetic was –BLING!

Finishes – Polished, high gloss, clean
Primary Shapes – Square and sharp
Colors – Metallic, white, transparent, brown
Materials – Wood, marble, chrome, glass, crystal

Duration – 1 year to design, plan, shop and import
6 months from demolition to completion

List of projects
1. Vanity – Floating vanity made from bubinga, an African rosewood. Finishes in gloss waterlox varnish
2. Mirror frame – Bubinga
3. Shower panels – Bookmatched Bubinga with 5 coats of marine varnish
4. Shower doors – Hydroslide from CRL, 3/8" starphire glass
5. Shower panel – Wood and chrome (ebay)
6. Toilet - Ebay
7. Shower wall and bathroom floor – Pure white Sivec (Macedonia) marble 18x18 (over Schluter ditra/kerdi)
8. Bathroom walls- Custom made Starphire glass tiles 4"x18"
9. Tile inserts – Swarovski 1"x1" Foiled crystals
10. Sink – Marble vessel sink
11. Faucet – Chrome waterfall vessel faucet
12. Towel bar, tissue holder – Chrome Danze Sirius
13. Sconces – Candice Olsen Chrome/Crystal Sconce
14. Chandelier – Chrome Snowflake with Swarovski crystal
15. Countertop – ½" Tempered starphire glass with 4" chrome standoffs
16. Window – Aluminium double glazed with laminated privacy glass
17. Door – Laminated privacy glass
18. Door lever – Chrome Omnia
19. LED lighting - under the floating vanity and edge lit glass wall tile

Before

During

I found about 2/3 mineral oil and 1/3 beeswax worked for the best consistency.
just melt them in a pan together over very very low heat, pour into a container and let cool.

get the best food-grade extra light mineral oil here:
http://www.steoil.com/catalog.asp?productgroup=70fg

this is an example of a beeswax off ebay
http://cgi.ebay.com/100-Pure-Beeswax-1lb-Block-Cosmetic-Grade_W0QQitemZ150253418883QQihZ005QQcategoryZ134295QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1638Q2em118Q2el1247

http://s58.photobucket.com/albums/g267/d_roady/DIY%20Soapstone/

Some teaser images:

Various parts of my story in progress have been posted in other threads, but I'll try to mention some key points here.
We were very interested in keeping cost down, so the DIY option with soapstone was wonderful to discover. A quality granite or Silestone install would have been triple the cost.
We went to M. Teixeira in N.J. and picked our slabs. If I had it to do over I would NOT have chosen two side by side slabs. The vein patterns are too similar and end up repeating each other in our kitchen. Out of 4-5 side by side slabs I'd take the 1st and last, for example.
When planning how the slabs will be cut, I'd suggest the backsplash pieces be taken from exactly the same spot as the counter they will sit on later, so that the veins and everything match.
Black epoxy was best for 99% of the seams in our install, but where it crossed a white vein I had to make some corrections - digging the black out with a Dremel and replacing with "Instant Install 29" epoxy, which cures to a translucent white. The Instant Install 29 is great to work with, 14 minute working time and then it suddenly hardens up, locking things into place. You can sand it 15 minutes later (thus the name, 14+15=29). It can be tinted to match the stone too. 5 minute epoxies are too fast for big seams I think.
Make sure your cabinet tops are a perfectly even plain, 6' long levels help. Shim any and all gaps - none of mine were more than 1/16". Then get a bead of caulk on the cabinet tops before resting the stone on them. This just makes for perfectly even support all around. We used bottle jacks to lift the stone up a few inches, caulk under it, then set it back down gently.
Doing the caulk and a seam at the same time is daunting, but the caulk has a long setup time, so it works out OK. You can slide the stone over an inch to close the seam after buttering on the epoxy. Jam it as tight as possible to make a thin seam. Most important for a good looking seam is to have the two stones perfectly aligned - any height difference will have to be fixed by sanding one down to match the other.
Diamond cutting and shaping tools are great. They cut the harder parts of the stone just as well as the soft parts, which makes for nice straight lines and even surfaces. A diamond grit drum on an angle grinder is great for shaping the edge of a sink cutout, for example. Regular sandpaper drums don't do as well.
The dust from cutting and shaping is amazing, wait till it's warm and do as much outside as possible. If you can't, like me, then get a good fine particle dust filter for your shop-vac and always attach a collection hose to the tool, or have someone hold the hose right at your cut. It makes a huge difference.
When cutting you need to support the stone underneath, so it won't fall away and break off before the cut is done. I had 1/2" thick styrofoam sheets available, but thick rubber mats from Costco would work too. The photo album shows a good example of this in practice.
For final sanding I tried a million things. What worked best on the flat areas (to clean up seams) was a 5" wet sanding pad on a dual action polisher at its lowest speed. I used a Porter-Cable 7336. Sanding pads were 240 and 400 grit. For a backer pad I used a flexible one made for car buffing, rigid pads were too hard to handle. For product specifics, see my other post on this topic. Edges can be sanded with a good hand block and wet sandpaper. The highest grit with any benefit I found to be 400. Others may stop at 220 or 340 - just a matter of preference.
I feel like there's a million things to say but this has rambled on enough. Happy to answer questions and add details in follow up posts. But if you're looking for tips, please do check out the full Photo bucket album. There's 80 images covering every step of the way.

Thanks again everyone and happy Easter!
Don

I'll usually leave 1/16- 1/8" caulk joint in places like that. Just make sure it's uniform.

I know I use matching sanded caulk for the horizantal line between the tile and granite. How about between the tile and the cabinets? If I don't butt the tile up against the cabinets, what would I use there - grout or caulk?

Already answered. :-) (DAMN I'm good! LOL)

my light rail molding has a rounded edge - I planned to do all my cuts on a wet saw (but I do have a grinder also). How best to cut the tile with a rounded edge to fit around the light rail molding?

Either or-- whichever's easiest for you. If you use the grinder, obviously make sure you're wearing safety glasses, and use a continuous rim dry diamond blade..

Thanks for the compliments!

Yes, the backsplash is from a California tile maker by the name of Jeffrey Court.

I bought the spice rack from Costco here is Southern CA about three months ago. It's made by Olde Thompson. I went to their web site and they do not appear to carry the one I have for some reason. Maybe it's exclusive to Costco. I like it so much I'm thinking of buying a second just in case I break a bottle or two. I think it was only $25 and in large part the reason I went with our particular backsplash. LOL (said, only half joking)

To the left of the photo is a niche carved out of the backsplash. The spice rack was supposed to fit inside the niche...until we discovered the over the stove microwave was much deeper than first thought. We all conceded that the spice rack looked just fine in the corner. :-)

Jodi-

Here is a link that might be useful: Olde Thompson