Yesterday, we went to the store to select cabinets. It was almost exactly three years ago that we went shopping for cabinets for the current house. That time, the cabinet people had laid-out all the rooms ahead of time and we just got to pick color, door style and the pulls. This time, it was a different vendor. And, they hadn't done anything ahead of time. We talked about layout and features for two hours. We said almost nothing about colors or door styles, and absolutely nothing about pulls. Different vendor, different system. They're going to put together draft layouts of all the rooms and send them to us and we'll go back and forth with changes and tweaks until we fit what we want into the budget we have.

My biggest issue: I want the counters to be a little taller than the standard 36". Maybe just an inch and a half. No problem, they say.