My pizza baking stones. I have individual size and one large. I'm afraid they'll break if I put them anywhere else. Most times I leave them in when I'm cooking as they retain the heat, but its not hard to take them out if I need the space. Also, it encourages me to use them more often, they're pretty wonderful things for heating up sandwiches vs frying sandwiches to melt the cheese!. I also use them for bread.

Gosh what a funny turn around - this discussion started right after I had finished my last kitchen and now it is revived just as I'm going through all this madness again trying to replace a kitchen in my new home .............. when I can find someone interested in doing some work. Jennifer, I'm leaning to Bosch appliances if they meet my requirements. One of my joeys lives in Germany where Bosch and Siemens (made by the same company apparently) are made and are very highly esteemed. Because I have so much renovation work to do on this house, I'm watching my pennies a bit so I will probably stick with a Dishlex Dishwasher that has always served me well and these days they are extremely quiet too, but I am looking at Bosch for the oven and cooktops. In earlier posts I praised the Fisher and Paykel oven and cooktops, but then discovered a BIG flaw in the design of the oven - it had a double glass door with a gap between the two sheets of glass and guess where every crumb and spill went, so they will not be on my radar again. I'm also hearing good reports about Electrolux but very bad ones about Miele and their service which is really letting the brand down. For those getting on in years too - beware of push button settings and slide controls, arthritic fingers just cannot manage these. As well, I'm told the slide controls on cook tops are not as accurate as knobs.

I would leave the render colour and just tile a trim around the base in a pattern and over the arch of the brick. But I also recalled the pizza oven at a pizza place where I grew up. They make great pizza, but the oven is so cool! You could do something like this!

Congrats on the new home. Very exciting. As an experienced unpacker (we move every 2-3 years), the trick for organising is to stand in the space, consider how you will do things (ie imagine you’re cooking dinner, cleaning up, getting a drink etc) and, using sticky notes, decide where the easiest placement of kitchen utensils will be. You might, at this first stage, have six items that would be best in one cupboard. That’s normal. Choose the one(s) that you use most often, then with this in mind, redo the process. And be prepared to throw the whole system out after you’ve been in the house for a month or so Houses have a strange way of encouraging us to adapt to them no matter how intellectual/consistent/prepared we think we are