Planning the Perfect Kitchen

The kitchen planning kit offered at the end of this useful book almost justifies its price. At the reader's whim, outlines of cabinets, appliances, counters, islands, windows, doors and typical kitchen furniture peel off of and stick onto the waxy surface of the volume's fold-out, quarter-inch scale, stiff back cover. If the ideal layout one impulsively composes fails to please, each stick-down component lifts up easilyand sticks back down in a preferred location. Another boon: the ring-bound book lies conveniently flat for ease in planning. And text and illustrations float in an eye-enchanting sea of legible white space. However, the authorseditors at Country Living magazinecover an enormous range of ideas, and packing so much information into 86 pages renders their writing drab. Occasional errors, too, are troubling (discussing flooring, they call pine more porous than oak, when the opposite is true). (Jan.)