Unless you have a showpiece kitchen or a kitchen not used much, grease mainly, not dust so much, is a fact of life in a kitchen irrespective of a good quality rangehood and unless one is like sallybrown168 put it, OCD, who wants to be doing more cleaning than less?? I live 50+km away round trip from my nearest safeway, so when I shop, I buy multiples and when I finally get down to the last of something, I write it on the fridge list. Have tried to train everyone in the house to "put it on the list" so we never end up running out and having the dilemma of needing to travel so far to buy a single necessary item. I guess it's because I live so far from the town that I can't forget something and it's not just kitchen needs, it's everything like the bathroom, laundry, pets and livestock as well. I stock up on bread that is frozen immediately, so I'm sort of a mini store and sometimes neighbours that don't store like me, will call me up for something they suspect I will have stashed away. In closing, I like the look of the open shelves and agree with ozcoley that you can see what things you have but I can see it just as well behind a pantry door too!!

Not exactly - lots of experience with climbers over structures, but not right next to the house like in your photo. However you could get around the light issue by planting a deciduous climber - wisteria or clematis for instance - which would let winter sun in and block summer heat. (... eventually.) Plus, considering that any kind of solid or transparent roofing material will cut light to some extent, a deciduous climber could well be the most light-friendly option. You can always thin them out a little as they grow, and the light that does penetrate will be unfiltered. The shade that plants provide in summer is always superior to the shade from solid roofing anyway :-)

One course is one layer of bricks. Yes, I counted 29 as well. I have attached photos of the finished sliding door. Our home is double brick throughout. With acrylic render. But, is still 28 course (bricks) to top of sliding door, with 31 course (bricks) ceiling level. You can see in photo, that the space above sliding door is equivalent to 3 more layers of bricks. Taking into account the finished ceiling.

Funnily enough I was browsing house sales this past week and the question reminded me of one property which sold for an unusually low price for a house of that size etc where the only negative I could see in the listing was the lack of indoor/outdoor living. And that soon after watching an episode of Escape From The City where indoor/outdoor living was on the buyers' wish list. So 'indoor/outdoor living' was on my mind as I read the question. But I'm still not sure what's on the original author's mind? If people only put sliding doors where "it faces north or there is a pretty view" there would be a lot less sliding doors.