I love your gorgeous home! I like the back of the island with the planter boxes as they are, but I think your plan to remove the boxes and lower the brick facade to expose a view of your granite would look great! I think such a plan would update your home without detracting from your home's MCM look.

I can't wait to see your finished project. Again, I love this space! Maybe some nice person will photoshop these proposed changes for you--anyone?

May be way too expensive (but you would save money on granite), but what about keeping the idea of the planters, but having the boxes made out of copper, or aluminum (depending on where you're going with handles, etc.)

You have the perfect spot under the skylights, wonder if you could even grow basil, thyme, oregano?

Could you do plainer counters and have a Wow piece of granite for your stove backsplash? That way visitors could see that highlight without having to notice all the counter paraphernalia, etc.

What's on the left side of the brick? You are so lucky to have such a unique space to work with!

Oh, you have a classic! What a great home and a nice wooded site you have. If it were mine, I unequivocally would not change the island and planters. But then, I'm an old house junky and always balk at changing original designs that are still intact. You can have fun with your stove backsplash and your countertop - granite, mosaic tile or whatever. IKEA cabs with slabs sounds just right. raehelen has a great idea about growing herbs in the planters! By the way, have you seen the formica boomarang pattern? Love it. (Clearly, I'm opinionated on this one - hope it helps you decide though!) Cheers, -Kim

Jakabedy, You have a beautiful gorgeous house. I've seen that picture before and it is always stunning.

IMO, great move to plan to keep that atrium in the house. You could use formulaic colors, materials, decor, components everywhere else in the house and your house would still be terribly unique! *That* is brilliant (but don't be formulaic ;-) ).

I do like raehelen's suggestion to use the copper, aluminum or even the dark zinc planters.

However, if you don't use the planters, well, I'm a great believer in making the changes that work to the way you live rather than plan to live based on resolutions ;-). So, I think simplifying the "backsplash" without the planters and brick etc. is a very good one. Choose an interesting stone as your DH would like and the area will still be central. You'll be able to make your countertop 7" to 12" (or any amount really!) deeper in the bargain - not a bad thing.

However, here's a suggestion for you. Would you consider dividing your 17' (yea gads, really?!) island into two with a bit of a walkway leading through the atrium to the kitchen? By my calculations, if you make that walkway a 3foot wide walkway, you would have 2 6.5foot long islands instead of the landing strip you presently do which is presently obscured by the plants and the tall backsplash. 6.5feet is still a good sized island (or two) and it would only cost you one 3' cabinet. The walkway will also help to focus the attention one the atrium and it'll help to bridge the two spaces.

Otherwise, with an interesting stone, the long sweep of island will still be gorgeous.

Thanks, all. Yes, the island really is 17' long! And the beauty of it is the aisle is more than 42" wide, so there is plenty of room for 2 or 3 or 4 people to work.

The ends of the island are pony walls about 4" thick and as high as the backsplash w/o planter boxes (which just lift off, BTW) -- sided with a distressed hardwood tongue-and-groove that is used elsewhere in the house on walls. We don't have to keep the pony walls, and if we went with a no-backsplash option, they would go, anyway. To be replced with ? ? ?

The idea of splitting the island with a walkway is interesting. But the sink is centered in the island and would have to be moved, and we would have to deal with the flooring then. There are some spare pavers in a pile in the yard near the spare brick(!), but it would involve chiseling away at the slab to try to recess the new pavers to the proper level.

I never thought about rebuilding the planter boxes of a different material. That is an interesting idea.

I've thought about putting the WOW granite on the range backsplash only, with a simpler quartz on the counters (there is also a groovin' wet bar across the atrium from the island, so it needs to be updated at the same time with new cabinets/countertop). But I'll probably need to do some photoshop mock-ups of various granite patterns. I wouldn't want it all to get too busy.

Pavers, bricks, slab wood, pebbles, distressed wood, trees, loud granite, stainless range hood -- yowza! We may have to be tranquilized.

I'll try to take some better pictures tonight so it all makes more sense. But here is a shot that gives you a peek at the pony wall on the end of the island. The wood on it matches the wood on the living room wall at the far end of the shot and on the "front" wall on the right side of the shot. The brass doorknob in the lower right corner of the shot is the front door.

It seems to me that instead of it being an island, it's really a galley kitchen that happens to be open. I'd continue to treat it like that. My preference would be to leave the brick as is so that, while open to the kitchen, there is still sufficient separation between the spaces. It's not as if any new granite won't be seen...it just won't be seen until you enter the kitchen.

I love your kitchen. I wouldn't want to split the 17' long island, either. I like the idea of the copper/zinc/etc. planter boxes. With those skylights, it would make a great place for an indoor herb garden (although with all that glass -- is your house hard to heat?).

One thing to keep in mind -- nexus yellow-brown (love it, btw) has a lot of active veining in it resembling zebrawood. You might want to make sure that the busy granite you pick doesn't compete with the busy doors.

Can't wait to see how this space turns out!

There's a NY loft kitchen in Finished Kitchens that had a really long open galley set up similar to yours (that peson might have had a small L leg; I don't remember). That person used Ikea and a LaCanche. You should check it out for inspiration.

I can't design and would never try. But I just wanted to say that I love your kitchen and the whole space--the whole idea of having the outside indoors has always been something I love! (never had it, but love it anyway) I just wonder what you plan for the floor, because I like it the way it is.

I love the planters. Update them if necessary, but PLEASE keep them. I love how it helps the kitchen blend in with the atrium

FYI -

Heating the place isn't so bad. It's the cooling that's the challenge. We're in the deep south and the skylight bakes us -- that's why I lost all the African violets shown in the photo in the planter boxes. We're getting a shade cover for the skylight (really a grouping of ten skylights) this year.

I'm sorry that I don't have any good contribution to your discussion, but I have to say that my jaw dropped the first time that I saw this photo on another thread.

I also wanted to share with you one of my current favorite kitchen photos, which happens to not be MCM, but does have a WOW granite backsplash and quartz countertop.

Here is a link that might be useful: Patricia Gray Inc. - WOW backsplash w/ Quartz Countertop