I am fairly new to this forum and have enjoyed browsing through all of the lovely kitchens and reading the comments but I have yet to comment myself. Until now...I must tell you- I LOVE your kitchen!! It's my 'dream' kitchen! We are getting ready to do a full remodel of our kitchen and I am completely stuck on the cabinets. Due to our budget, we have selected Mid Continent Cabinetry and I cannot decide on a door style!?! :-\ Would you mind helping me select a door style that would be similar to yours? I can't exactly tell from the pictures just what yours look like and since every company offers something different, I'm just not sure which one to go with! Here is the link to the Mid Continent site: http://midcontinentcabinetry.com/Products/Signature_Series/ We will be going with the Signature Series, full-overlay door. I am considering the Adams with the 5-piece drawer option (least expensive) in the Traditional door style, the Concord (mid-expensive level) or the Mission (most expensive) both with the 5-piece drawer option in the Simple door style. Or should I select something different? I would appreciate any and all input! I'm so stuck!!! Thanks much! Here is a link that might be useful: Mid Continent Signature Series door styles

I absolutely love your kitchen but probably because it is very similar to ours. We have creamy shaker style cabinetry with some glass doors, midtone maple floors and the overhang of our peninsula is dark-stained maple - all the same elements as yours (except we have a granite counter - the very classic giallo ornamentale). Our kitchen has been finished since September and I am still playing with accessories and colours. I lived with it for awhile to figure our whether I wanted to stay in the neutral colours or whether I wanted to add some pops of colours. You do need to live with it and let it just happen and evolve. My Process then became: When I put some of my "play" dishes back into my glass cupboards (not the everyday ones) I noticed that blue was a common colour in my dishes and so I lived with those for a while and then I found some really cool orange/terra cotta plant containers at a local garden shop and they "spoke" to me so I brought those home and put ferns in them (they would actually look great in your space). The blues and oranges are really adding to my space. I will now wait a while but when I'm out and about I do keep my eyes open for little touches. I would wait before doing anything over your stove as you may find that you like the openness of the space depending on what else you do in the room. Don't forget that whatever you put there is going to get dirty and will need cleaning. What about a piece of metal artwork ? Just as an aside: I look at some of the beautiful kitchens that people have done with the fancy frou-frous and wonder if I should have done something like that and then when I see yours, which is so similar to ours, and I go -nope- ours is perfect for us. Again, I love the clean simple classic gorgeous lines of your kitchen and the accessories and accent colours will evolve.

Thanks everybody for your nice comments - makes the work seem worthwhile! Scrappy 25 - Sorry for the confusion. There are 10 pieces of RR flooring scrap in the top. It is built in 3 sections: 2 end sections of four pieces each & 1 center section of two pieces that run across the grain. The 3 pieces are lap jointed & attached underneath using pocket screws and those are the 2 seams that are visible in the middle of the top. The 2 larger sections don't show any seams because they have been sanded, jointed, sanded, jointed.... then glued together & more sanding to achieve more of a finished furniture look. Hope this diagram helps to understand what I meant. The edge was not too hard. We got a long router bit (on clearance at Woodcrafters - $15) and DH had to kind of freehand it around the edge. Then he did a 3/8" radius on the bottom edge to knock off the sharp corner. There are a couple of "wavy bits" but not too bad. To quote DH "hey, I'm not a machine" - haha! The finish: first we used Behlen water based grain filler, then General Finishes brand water based stain - 4 parts Espresso & 1 part Brown Mahogany. Then 4 or 5 coats of poly. We experimented with several stains & finish coats. Loved a brown wax over the poly but it failed the water mark test. DH absolutely hated the water based filler & stain. It raised the grain too much and required too much re-sanding. Live & learn! It probably took a month of weekends + evenings for the finished product. Here's a picture of our test piece. This is the size of each piece - about 1' x 4'. cat-mom: Do you mean the table with the funky legs in the living room or the tree table in the corner of the island shot? DH made those too! In the living room, the top is the stone sink cut out from my brother's kitchen reno. The bottom is just pieces & parts - mostly farming scrap metal. The tree table is just a slab of tree from our yard & crape myrtle legs. Sorry I don't have another picture of that here.

Wow, thank you, everyone, for your kind and encouraging words. Having spent countless hours, taking notes from this site (even when I knew some things were impossible to achieve in this kitchen) and quietly admiring all of your beautiful kitchens, from the big, jaw-dropping ones to the smaller, but oh so lovingly personalized ones, it means a lot to me and my SO that so many of you like what we've done so far. As newbies to all of this, we questioned every single small decision we made, and then questioned it some more, never quite sure if we made the right choice--especially going with practically the same color floor and cabinets--so it's great to get some positive feedback. Except the soffit. We never questioned that decision. We knew those had to vamoose! You should see the ones we took out of the bathrooms! EEEeeeeek! Anyways, thank you so much!