Bee for Brian's Profile

Who cares if the room would "look smaller" with full-height cabinets? That room has a pass-through that opens it up plenty, and it's not that tiny to begin with. You could do everything in your power to make it look small and that wouldn't actually affect your ability to move around, cook, exist, breathe air etc.

My 1954 kitchen has the original custom cabinets that go all the way up, and I love it even if that means I had 40+ cabinet doors to paint. I do have to have a little step stool to get to the highest cabinets, but I got used to it instantly, I use it all the time, and it's not a problem. So much better than my last kitchen, whose cabinets had the space above that inevitably became ugly unplanned open storage. Or the kitchen before that, which had a soffit over the cabinets, meaning no storage at all.

I love the after, but I am not so insistent on possessing my dream kitchen that I would get rid of a ton (literally) of stuff that seems perfectly functional and whose only crime is dowdiness. That "before" picture would be a lot of people's "after."

I remember the first time this piece was on Apartment Therapy, back in 1992. The text was "Nicole really saved this dated dresser! The Ozzie-and-Harriet look is so 15 minutes ago -- that whole style ought to have some derogatory nickname like 'Middle-of-the-Century Moderne.' All that awful wood! But now a quick coat of tangerine paint has freshened it up and made it palatable once more."

Then its second appearance here, in 2002: "Reggie found this garish dresser on the curb and toned down the hideous orange with a sophisticated gray paint. Now it's so pleasingly neutral, you hardly notice it's there. A perfect disguise for an outdated relic!"

OK, you got me. I couldn't see how this was going to be anything but miserable, but it's delightful. (And I too remember the doors on "Family Affair.")

I have to smile at that commenter who begged to differ because her subway tile grout is easy to keep clean -- subway tile is way different from the wide-gapping square tile shown in the main photo. (Not least because subway tile is more likely to be on a backsplash than on a countertop.) I had the wide-gap ceramic tile on countertops of an otherwise unbelievably wonderful rental in California, and I would advise people not to even consider it. Messy, dirty, uneven, crackable -- it's got everything you wouldn't want in a surface. In fact, the only reason I read this article was that I was curious that someone was saying there would be at least one pro alongside the zillion cons.

My aunt had a toaster with no slots in the top. You would insert the bread into a slot on the end, it would toast as a little conveyor belt carried it past the heating element, and then it would fall out of a slot on the other end (onto your plate!). I've never seen another one like it.

The neighbors' dining room had a buzzer under the dining room rug so that the hostess could summon the help from the kitchen with a tap of her foot. Other neighbors had old-style switchplates with two buttons instead of a lever (a glamour that I got to enjoy when I bought a 100-year-old house). These same neighbors' swingset had a sliding board just like ours -- but THEIRS was better because at the top of the slide, where you might rest for a second before sliding down, there was a little plastic canopy! (And in a harlequin pattern, as I recall -- probably the genesis of why I can't get enough diamond shapes to this day.)

I much prefer the diagonal-set style that makes diamond shapes instead of squares. And I don't buy the notion that that look is inexorably tied to the '50s -- it was around long before then.

If I were doing a kitchen floor, I'd be so tempted to go red-and-white instead of black-and-white: http://retrorenovation.com/2011/12/28/red-and-white-checkerboard-floor-where-to-find-it/

Color theory doesn't really seem to hold up with white ceilings, though, does it? Otherwise all those white ceilings would be advancing like crazy and the average room would feel oppressively low.

I second the suggestion of looking closely at the pale end of the paint chips. Especially if your wall will be white, you might be surprised by how effective an extremely delicate color is, even if it seems like it's just "white" on the paint chip. I'd recommend considering a really pale dusty pink or a blue that edges toward celadon.

#5 looks fine with that white china but you might want to think twice if the bookcase's eventual contents are colorful. These vibrant examples remind me of the problem with vases on display in stores: So many of them look nice with their figured decoration and bright colors -- but then they end up upstaging the flowers when you actually use them. Clear glass or solid-color vases for me, and one color (bright or otherwise) for the back of shelving. The back wall of the shelf is not the star.

Last fall I needed a relatively narrow toilet and settled on Mirabelle's Provincetown, because of the dimensions but also for price and because the tank is a cute oval shape -- pretty distinctive. It was easy to install. The thing that I love most about it, though, is how fast it flushes! It is DONE flushing and refilling within 10 seconds. We got one of the unslammable self-closing seats, and it literally takes longer for the seat to close than for the tank to refill. The refill time is never mentioned in ratings and research, but it's definitely a consideration for me now.

In my last house, I put in a Toto dual-flush that looked sleeker than any of the Totos shown here (looked a lot like #11, with the "skirt" that disguises the usual intestine-like lower anatomy of a toilet). It worked fine but the contractors had never installed a skirted toilet before and they evidently didn't get it shimmed exactly tight, because a tiny wobble ensued. Moral: If you pick an unusual model, get someone who's installed one already. Toto has a great reputation but the dual-flush feature is not that much more efficient than the lower-flow models, and the price tends to be higher. I'd pick the Mirabelle again, even though I had never heard of the brand before last fall.

My partner bought me a heated towel rack early on in our relationship when we still had separate houses and I was renovating a bathroom. I think it cost $400+ and unfortunately it didn't fit the bathroom. Fortunately it's perfect for the house we got together -- there was barely room for a couple of hand towels on the wall rack, but removing a makeup vanity station left an ideal spot near the tub for this rack. We were hoping its heat would keep the bathroom warm in winter even if the rest of the house was kept at 64 or so, but alas. Having the warm towel is a plus, though, and they dry out faster after you're done. My partner lays his clothes over the rack (it has a LOT of rods) so he can have toasty underwear and socks ...