In answer of the title: like excema?

Before my better half relented to on white cabs, he insisted on wood. I don't like pale wood so I wanted a medium or dark satin. My plan to lighten it up was a marble-esque countertop plus a nice, reflective backsplash like glass tile. Hope this helps!

Forgot to mention.. this option was MAJORLY growing on me. I thought it would be GORGEOUS, if a little overwhelming in my small space w/ oven stack and paneled fridge.

Oh, yeah, absolutely! (Shhhh, Weed! (funny)) I was really really bugged by where I forgot to tell the tile setters to trim at the top of the window casing rather than the bottom because it was so obvious. My way would have been even because of the corners. Instead, it's out of balance. I thought it would always bug me. But now that it's a kitchen, who looks at the window trim? It's not an art project any more and all the little flaws just disappear. Even the eyelevel color that never did come just right is just part of the backdrop now that there's life in the kitchen. I love it more and more every day. Though I might rearrange the drawer pulls. :) Because I can.

Your elevations don't have a heavy look, so I think it'll be fine. You already know that good lighting is a must. Add some extra if you can. You don't need to turn them all on at once. Have some for dreary days. Also, if you haven't chosen hardware yet, go light, like a platinum finish, and shiny. Then the impression is more about the light than the dark behind it.

Weedmeister, haha. Not exactly what I was thinking, but it's a good reminder that there are worse things in life than kitchen cabinets that aren't exactly the color of my dreams :-)

There are many more unpleasant things that could be growing on a person - now my imagination is running wild!

If at all possible you might want to add a skylight?

I had a couple of things that, at first, I thought really spoiled everything. The paint on the window trim does not match the cabinet paint. It's exactly the same paint but the cabinets were sprayed and the trim painted with a brush and you wouldn't believe how different they look. The trim looks white, the cabs creamy. Really disappointed, bugged the heck out of me for about a month. My tile backsplash was another huge (and expensive) disappointment. It is actually very beautiful on its own, just does not go with the kitchen AT ALL and I thought was significant enough to ruin the entire "look". I don't notice it anymore. The kitchen works better than I had even imagined and that's what's important now.

Salal, so good to hear that you can not even notice anymore the disappointing elements.

The more kitchens I see with darker cabinets, the more it's growing on me. Some even look downright cozy and inviting.

Only one side of our kitchen has no second story above it, and we probably don't have the room to squish a skylight in between the canned lights there, but we definately are keeping a Solatube in mind if it's darker than I like after it's all said and done. They are relatively cheap and evidently easy as pie to install yourself.

I threw quite the hissy fit when I came home from work one day to find the tile setter had done half the kitchen floor, setting the tiles square, instead of on the diagonal as I had requested. Neither he nor the GC remembered my request, and of course they simply assumed the simple set would be good enough so didn't bother to confirm. Both tried to tell me that my kitchen was too small to make a diagonal set work, but I still don't agree. At that point, it would have cost mucho $$ and time to correct the problem, so I caved.

The best part about my floor is the colour and materials. The straight set looks good, certainly not "wrong". I just wanted something else. But now I'm used to it, and I had to think long and hard to remember this issue before replying.

We ordered windows in haste, to correct an earlier error that we caught after the windows had been ordered but this didn't allow enough thinking time. Pella accepted the change and obliged with a delivery just in time. This gave us one double casement counter-height that will have countertop as windowsill and three nearly square large casements that were supposed to echo existing windows in the rest of the house, about 6 inches shorter than countertop. (We SHOULD have ordered 4-5 matching casements all ganged together for the front window and just one to match the old shorter window on the north-facing kitchen wall.)

The problem got worse because we never drew out things in an elevation drawing--the new windows were delivered as the walls were going up and we just paced out the layout right then and there on the roughed construction floor and marked things with a magic marker. No one would ever plan these windows like they ended up. The street side of the room will have no upper cupboards but the north and south ends will have cupboards and these will just about abut the two shorter windows, leaving a little strip of wall before the window casings begin. We should have made all the windows be a part of a single window unit and allowed no wallspace between the windows.

Since photo was taken, DH has finished siding the addition but the window pattern made hardships for installation by a homeowner-amateur installer. On the interior, we will have full trim on each window, leaving just a little strip of paint or whatever between each of the front windows. If we tile around them, it will also be a pain.

So window pattern is absolutely screwy, but it's beginning to grow on me when I look from the street. It doesn't look like ANYONE else's but it doesn't look bad. If we can handle the interior properly, the same will happen there as well. Once the other two old windows on the facade are replaced with casements also, everything might look just fine. Crossing my fingers.

Here is a link that might be useful: Goofy Windows on My Mansion Kitchen

One run of cabinets in my kitchen begins right beside the pass-thru to the dining room. When the builder and the kitchen guy measured for the cabinets they were very careful to account for the trim the builder was going to use around the pass-thru, but no thought of the countertop overhang so the granite installer had to notch out the trim to get the countertop to fit. At first it was all I saw in the kitchen. I just screamed MISTAKE, but once I got all my stuff arranged on the counters, I hardly notice it.

Also, I have a single base drawer stack that sits at the end of my refrig/pantry cab run. They put the 4" granite backsplash against the side of the pantry cabinet. I still don't like this, but that small area is our mail/message center, so as it turns out, there is always so much stuff piled there that I can't even see the backsplash most of the time.

Totally Confused

Things can DEFINITELY grow on you.

I have a theory that anything (or anyone!) that provokes a strong opinion/emotion in you is something you need to keep an eye on. A few things in my life that I have really disliked or liked I have had to do a 180 on.

And things you think you're sure about can change, or can become impossible, so you have to rework them.

This is why the longtime voices here advise people to take their time with a remodel, to live in a house for awhile before they commit to a whole bunch of permanent, expensive changes, even though everyone swearsswearsswears they know exactly what they're doing, they're not going to change their mind, and they havehavehave to do it now before the kids get out of school or whatever.

My advice is, if at all possible, do things like paint, measure and sketch obsessively. Use your imagination. Learn where your favorite place to sit is, where your kids play while you cook. What is it you crave from the house after living in it? What isn't working? These are not questions you can answer from a walk-through.

I have an all-original 1950s pink bathroom that made me smack my forehead in despair the day I viewed the house. I thought "As soon as I fix the other 50 things that desperately need to be fixed in this house, that thing is out."

But it's in perfect shape. And gradually, as I began to show my friends, I began to think it was really funny. I grew fond of it. Now I would never change it.

I just have to say that I am getting really excited about my cabinets. I saw Jodi in so calif's kitchen yesterday and it has darkerish cabinets to my eye and I adore it! My heart actually did a pitter patter. Just like I adore my friend's kitchen that has dark in all her elements and yet still works. It feels very much like Jodi's. I do love that feel.

In fact, I am starting to wonder if my original dream sample door that didn't work out would have just looked...well, orange...spread across a whole kitchen.

There is hope and I am feeling it!

BTW Growelry, I love that you have a pink bathroom. I think we should all have something fun and quirky like that. My powder room is this dark shimmery purple. First thing I swore I'd change when we moved in 6 years ago. The entire house has been painted inside and out, but that purple bathroom is still there, and for no good reason. hehe

with regard to squishing a skylight between canned lights, I have track lights inside the well of my skylight, also a pot rack. I like it.

We're in the middle of reno's and somehow I too ended up with med.-dark cabinets when my dream kitchen was white or light. We are ordering them next week and I came on the internet to look at more pictures of darker cabinets so I can get used to them as I too naturally choose light colors and am worried my kitchen will look really dark.

To lighten the look I plan on painting my other walls light and choosing light backsplash or glass tiles so light can reflect off of them. I'm also installing potlights and under cabinet lighting. Good luck and I hope you end up LOVING your kitchen =)

Thanks for starting this helpful thread.

I just compromised on my pantry shelves. It was explained by our project manager that KD hit the end of the budget and that was "what they could come up with" given what was left. Where I expected shelves in my pantry, I sort of have cubby holes because of all the vertical support they put in to build up the integrity of the wood. DH is being supportive - if I don't like it when it's done, we can rip it out and do something different, but we all know that's not very likely to happen.

Also, I am having second thoughts about my rapidly-put- together-and-decided-upon backsplash. I like it, but I should love it for this amount of money, right?

This thread has been a good reminder of what I started off saying to myself months ago at the start of this project - whatever we wind up with will be gorgeous compared to what we had before. If the granite could have been a prettier slab or the cabinets lighter or darker, right now I'm only seeing the differences by comparison. When I've stopped comparing and started just seeing the end result, I'm sure I'm going to be happy with it.

Good luck, needsometips08, and just keep looking for the bright side (pun intended!)

Absolutely! Things definitely have a way of growing on you.

During our remodel, I had decided on the size sink that buehl and others here have. Well, that's what I ordered and when it came, I gave it a cursory glance but didn't ...LOOK...at it. I immediately gave it to the granite installers and they installed it. Well, it was the wrong size. Overall the dimensions were the size I needed, but the split in left side/right side was not what I ordered. In short, the sink company sent the wrong sink in the right box. In the end, I actually LOVE the sink. It works well for us and I actually like the sizes of each side of the sink. What started out being a dramatic "my new kitchen is ruined" scene, ended up ok. (It also helped that the sink company gave us a credit for the mix-up.)

Somehow I ended up making decisions that I never intended to make and ended up disappointed for awhile. The first was the granite. I had a hard time finding a white granite with a bit of warmth to it. I found one I liked, but was a bit darker (too warm) than I wanted and put a 2 day hold on it and let it expire. Later I went back to the same yard and found a lighter version of the same stone that I put a hold on. When I went to the fabricator for layout, I was surprised on how dark the granite was - I remembered it lighter. But it was very pretty so I went with it. However, to this day I don't know whether I got the first slab or the second! However, everyone likes it, but it is not as comtemporary as I wanted.