1) flooring is going in after cabinets, to preserve the floating aspect of a floating floor. Cabinets and appliances are going on top of 1/2" plywood; in the case of the stove (where you can see under it) we've put in a piece of cork that isn't tied into the main floor. 2) I went with a craigslist special. A general contractor had redone a large yoga studio, and was trying to get rid of their overage- 6 unopened Boxes. The cork came from Lumber Liquidators -- Lisbon Van Gogh. The boards seem to be about the same quality of the various styles I looked at in local flooring shops (APC, Wicanders, US Floors). The yoga studio has had it down for nearly a year now, with no signs of problems. 3) no matter what you go with, get samples, take them home. There is no way to evaluate the color or design of a cork floor without putting it in the space and touching it. Decent flooring places will let you take their samples home. Of course, a lot of places aren't interested in 80sf jobs... I tried for months to get a quote from several of them, and was about to go with a cheap homedepot floor when 120sf showed up on craigslist.

Hey Prill, My dining room is BM chocolate candy brown, 2107-10. It is a wonderful brown. Truly, like dark chocolate-yum. When I was trying to find the colors for the kitchen, the guy at the BM store suggested I go to the next couple of paint chips on that strip--driftwood,sandlot gray, and sea froth to find my color--they were so purple for me! I ended up with a gray with brown undertones, more of a taupe for the kitchen/family room. Hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply and sorry things are not going better in your relo. We've hit a few bumps here, but smaller one (like discovering a slab fill that came out with the tile -- a repair or patch we didn't know about, a $358 bill for 2 sq ft or less of concrete patch (got them down to $150), the cork color, and then the fact that we couldn't get it clean with this concrete dust. This is the wood flooring we went with and the floors were darker and much redder. I posted over on the decorating forum when we were deciding on them and had a photo of the wood and cork sample together where they all looked about the same color. We had a new sample pulled right before we ordered and what was delivered was different than that. Your kitchen is what I was expecting -- this was a red mahogany. I was willing to still go with the color, but not a floor we couldn't clean in the kitchen and with the dogs coming off the back yard and patio. Just got to be too much, so instead I am compromising on having the softer maple in the kitchen when I had agreed to that when we decided on cork for the kitchen. I like how it looks -- may just have to get a gel mat or two. We are still talking about cork as a possibility for the upstairs when we do that. Wish I could share a glass of wine and side of commiserating with you. Hope it all gets better soon.

Re. the dishwasher drawer, we have a regular drawer underneath and it's totally fine. I store our tea towels and other linens in it -- it never occurred to me not to, and it's a definitely a perfectly clean drawer. It's separate from the dw cabinet section above it, and you really can store whatever you want in there. However, dw drawers themselves aren't all they're cracked up to be, IMHO. They don't load all that well and I almost always use our regular dishwasher and not the drawer. The other thing is that our drawer dw doesn't have heated dry and the dishes are often still slightly wet when the cycle is done. I know a lot of people are super high on a drawer dishwasher and I do like the size of it, but if I didn't also have a regular dishwasher it would really drive me nuts. My advice is to be sure you really test it out carefully at the store before deciding to put only drawer dws in your kitchen. Good luck and have fun designing your new kitchen!!