When designing or redesigning a kitchen, you will be confronted with a variety of design options. I love slide-out shelves, which offer a combination of convenience and accessibility. For storing pots and pans, slide-out shelves let you use the entire shelf–front and back–and you can access any pot or pan regardless of its location. Some cabinet manufacturers also offer built-in waste basket and recycling bin options. The upside of a built-in waste basket or recycling bin is that such a cabinet can hide the mess that open trash cans present. However, the downside is that you can only replace a trash can or recycling bin with one of similar size.

After a few years of use, the rim of our waste basket started to break off. I thought that finding a replacement waste basket would be easy. But, after visiting Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, OSH and Bed Bath and Beyond and not finding a similar waste basket, I discovered that I was in trouble. How do you find a replacement for an unlabeled rectangular white plastic waste basket? Fortunately, I found a label on the white waste basket in the other built-in cabinet and easily ordered a replacement online. Actually, I ordered quite a few because shipping large plastic trash cans apparently is not cheap. When the trash cans finally arrived, I discovered that the white trash can I was using as a recycling bin was not the same size as the white trash can I was using as a waste basket. Doh! This time, I carefully measured the trash can and bought something similar in dimension. Hopefully it will work out.

TV Outlets. I failed to future proof the house. Had I known a few years ago that I will now be watching TV programs on my computer instead of the television in the living room, I would have installed a TV coaxial cable outlet in the office, where the computer spends most of its time.

Bath Screen. Every time I take a bath, the bath screen reminds me that I should have installed a sliding glass shower door instead. If I set the shower head to champagne spray, water exits the small seam between the bath screen and the wall. If I set the shower head to normal spray, the floor outside the foot of the tub gets wet.

Extra Sink. Rarely use that extra sink and faucet on the kitchen island.

Cellular Blinds. Cellular blinds work great throughout the house, except for the bedrooms. If your bedroom windows are facing any source of outside light, unless you have selected a suitable fabric that blocks light, your blinds may light up quite brightly at night. Additionally, the Top Down Bottom Up option was totally unnecessary and more trouble than it was worth. Now each blind has two cords for you to keep away from young children.

Indoor Laundry Room. Mildly convenient. However, you cannot run the washer or dryer at certain hours. Additionally, if the laundry room does not have a concrete floor (such as when it sits above the crawl space), certain front loading washers may exhibit stability issues.

I’ve been using a KitchenAid Bottom-Mount Refrigerator for just over two years. Last week, I encountered a problem where the cold water dispenser located inside the refrigerator stopped dispensing cold water. I pulled out the refrigerator and took a look and nothing seemed out of order. I knew the dispenser itself was “working” because I could hear it attempt to pump water whenever I pressed the button.

So, after much searching around, I finally was able to locate the cold water tank behind the two crisper bins. Seriously, the owner’s manual should tell people to check the water tank within “The water dispenser will not operate properly” section of the troubleshooting guide. Even though the refrigerator says it is 38°, I know for a fact that certain parts of the refrigerator are colder than others. For example, leaving a gallon of milk on the top shelf by the blower will cause the milk to freeze. Anyways, a thin layer of ice had formed in the water dispenser tank. I didn’t even need to heat up the tank. Just tilting it back and forth caused the ice to break up. When I pressed the water dispenser button again, it started pumping out cold water (with a few ice crystals here and there.)

I always find it hard to keep track of all the owner’s manuals. Sure, you might know where everything is at first. However, over time, all the manuals inevitably gets misplaced. One day, when you want to find a replacement part for an appliance or are troubleshooting, the manual is no where to be found. The solution? Visit the websites for all the manufacturers and download the PDF copy of all the manuals while you have the model numbers handy. Then, store them all in one folder on your computer.

If you wait a few months or years, a manufacturer may discontinue your model and remove the manual from their website. Having an electronic copy of the manual has saved me on more than one occasion.

Sometimes, a traditional hot water heater is overkill. If you need near instantaneous hot water, an electric tankless water heater may fit the bill. Works great in a small office kitchen or bathroom setting, unless you provide shower facilities. However, once you install several of them, they can cost as much as a traditional water heater. The advantage is that if you ever need to replace the tankless water heater, you don’t need a couple of plumbers to remove and haul away the heavy metal beast. Tankless water heaters are compact and convenient.

Previously, I had discussed grante kitchen counters. After you have selected your counter material, the color/pattern, and the finish, you will need to select an edge style. The first time I saw a kitchen counter with a 1 1/2″ mitered edge, I fell in love. The kitchen counter had simple yet elegant lines, and looked absolutely solid. I don’t like excessively ornate styles, and I am not an ogee fan.

I love the mitered edge because the counter and the edge do not appear as two separate pieces. Unlike other edges, the seam in a mitered edge is hidden along the top edge and is not noticeable. For other edge styles, the seam appears in the middle of the edge where the edge was glued to the counter. You may not notice it now, but after you’ve seen a mitered edge, you will notice the seam every time you see a granite counter with a non-mitered edge.

Selecting kitchen counters can be an exhausting process.

• What material shall I use?
• What color/pattern shall I select?
• What finish shall I use?

Consumer Reports actually ranks the different kitcen counter materials. For me, I wanted an attractive, low maintenance solution. So, the toss-up was between engineered stone and natural granite. I really liked many of the colors offered by CaesarStone, a manufacturer of engineered stone. However, most showrooms only display a small sample block of the engineered stone, usually in a binder. I found it difficult to visualize how an entire slab would appear based on a small square slab. In contrast, granite is easier to visualize since you can pick the actual slab that will be used to fabricate the counters. However, granite offers a lot of different colors and patterns, and each slab offers some variance from the others. I ended up picking granite over Caesarstone mainly out of price considerations.

A designer suggested black honed granite, which is more of a grayish black instead of a true black. Honed granite has a matte finish instead of a polished, glossy look. Granite Gold works great at cleaning polished granite. For a honed surface, I find that hot water and a microfiber works well at removing the shine when some cooking oil splashes on the counter.

How do you clean the burner caps on a gas range? I’m not talking about that fresh drop of oil that can be easily wiped off with a paper towel. I mean that burnt on gunk that just won’t come off. For me, the magic combination is a Dobie cleaning pad and Soft Scrub. It still requires some effort, but I have been able to tackle most stains that plain detergent and baking powder haven’t been able to clean up. However, this part confuses me. What’s up with Soft Scrub with Bleach? The whole point of using Soft Scrub (I thought) was because you wanted to avoid using a harsher cleanser. However, once you toss a caustic cleaning substance like bleach into the mix, is Soft Scrub still a safe and mild cleanser?

I had been using a Grohe Europlus II kitchen faucet for a number of years and the rubber spray control button had worn out. Actually, it probably had worn out at least a year ago, but I never got around to finding a replacement part. So, recently I stopped by the Grohe website to look up parts. The website included a contact form for writing in about warranty or replacement parts. So, I gave it a shot and received the replacement hand held spray a few days later under warranty. I was shocked. Utteryly shocked!! I didn’t have to call in and wait on hold for an hour. I didn’t have to mail the broken part back. It was too simple and convenient. I liked Grohe before, and I really like them that much better now. This is in stark contrast to the treatment I get from newspapers and ISPs. Kudos to Grohe for outstanding customer service.