couches, angled island, powerpoint on island are good bt having dining table so far away frm kitchen not practical...I can imagine a tiff everytime the table is to be laid...who is going to ferry all the food and cutlery up and down?

It looks great love the finished design

Hi @Robandlyn new designs can take some getting used to. However, the Houzz team is confident that these changes will help Houzzers find relevant questions and answers more quickly. We do not have a 'photo questions' topic however, we'll take this onboard as a suggestion. However, you are still able to post photo questions directly on the photo – As for your concern regarding the leaderboard, it rewards our most active users – as most forums do.

Lovely ideas . as always Julie - will check out. your suggestions. We will wait a month or so to see if the liriope still appear before we put in new plants to avoid a repeat issue.. Bigreader - Here is a photo which shows the plants at the back - a red maple and birds nest ferns. Moving the ferns forward would be problematic as we need to cover them with shade cloth during the warmer months to avoid the foliage browning plus the maple is well established.. Once the maple gets a larger canopy this shoould solve that issue. To the right are pieris and a Prunus hedge. We will also remove the Liriope in the above section as they have become a thick horrible mat. The plan is to lay some pebbles on this back section as it is just a thoroughfare from the garage and plant some low growing clump type plants in the front sectiion of this strip. Would this look ok? Comments welcome.