A resounding YES.
I sometimes have to play games with myself to tell myself that I did do lots of homework so I should feel more comfortable with the decisions. I do think a lot of it is that I do like so many things when they are done well. Just look at the kitchens on here, all types, all colors, and really about 99.9% of them are terrific in their own way.
Sometimes ya just gotta stick with the plan and work from there. When you make the decision, just work with it. Easy for me to say hahah
..I am getting better with it, but I can so relate. Right now I am having anxiety over some smaller options. Truthfully, most of the time things really do come out better in the end and its just he piecemeal stages that gets you fixated on the pieces instead of the whole. Hang in there and panic with me.:)

Absolutely! I am normally a very capable decision maker, and there were times that I just couldn't! Many times, I narrowed down the choices to 2 or 3 that I liked and couldn't decide on. I gave the choices to my husband, and asked him to choose. Of course, I had to give him the 20 questions on WHY he chose what he did. But 9 times out of 10, I went with what he chose on those items, and I have been pleased with those items. BUT, I just could NOT choose a dishwasher. He chose one out of the 3 that I had narrowed down to - and I hate it. WAH.
Don't feel bad about the cherry cabs. There's nothing prettier than dark cherry cabs when it's done right, and you make the right choices (ACK!) for the other stuff that go around them. :)
By the way, they're installing our cork floors as I type this. That was a VERY hard choice, maybe even the hardest one I've had to make. We shall seeeeee.....

---Boxie

I am the queen of indecision. Hopelessly wishy-washy. Even on the Myers-Briggs test, I come up practically equal in every category. What's worse is that my husband is pretty much the same way...don't know how we'll ever get this done!

I think I have to give myself a design deadline and stick to it. That's my first big hurdle.

After that, I feel like things are not going to be so bad. I have some definite tastes, preferences, and limitations that will help narrow down a lot of choices, which is good.

Oops, my 4-year-old son is politely (he points out) asking for his turn on the computer. I will go work on design drawings while he plays his game.

I love that about your Myers Brigg!
I am updating here, because one of the things I agonized over was pendant lights. I finally decided and of course, they were on backorder for like 6 weeks. I decided to stick with it and wait. They finally came over the weekend. When I looked at them I was getting sick because they just didnt look so good to me. I agonized a bit more thinking if I should go back to square one and then had my self conversation that I did think long and hard about it,so at least try them. ( also figured they CAN be changed out if need be). guess what . They were hung today and they honestly look better than I had hoped. Smile smile.
(I am now only fixating on the height which I do think is good but just in case, can certainly be adjusted later if need be).
The moral of the story is that most things do in fact work out. And I know for me, if I can just keep moving forward, things work out well.
Have faith. now on to the sink-granite-faucet dilemna.

aussies, I could have written your post! I too am going with darker cabinets and have been second guessing myself - especially since I am going in tomorrow to see the KD to make the final plan...! But I found a maple that matches the wood trim throughout my house and thought that would be nice but, I don't know....White with dark wood floors would look good too.

We're going with maple and a light cherry wood laminate floor and ubatuba granite - I'm on a tight budget but want the granite, so I'm cutting where I can. That was one decision I made easily!!

Good luck!

I have been lurking on this forum for a few weeks now and have really enjoyed the pics and tips! It's been very helpful!!

Hi Aussies,

I wasn't indecisive when I made my decisions with my partner, but boy, did I second guess myself because of my very critical family, particularly my sister! Apparently all our choices of materials and colours were wrong. They love the richness of warm wood cabinets and couldn't understand why I chose a different look.

I had a good conversation with a girlfriend recently over the whole house reno thing and how our culture really does make us feel indecisive and inadequate with our choices...

Anyways, my point is for you to trust yourself and your decisions. This is what I learned to do. When I have a questionning moment - after ordering the supplies - I'd remind myself of the enormous amount of time poring over magazines/doing research on the internet/figuring out the elements of why we liked a particular feature or look.

Knowing that we've laid down the groundwork made me realize that our choices are the best ones for us.

PS - I've seen some beautiful dark cherry cabinets on the forum here!

YES! I too second guessed myself with EVERYTHING - including the cabinets! But - it's now too late to change my mind on them, since they are being installed in a few more days ( and they are cherry!). Now I am in a last minute panic mode about the hardwood floors - and my installer is ordering a box so that I can see more of how it will be rather then the small 6 x 18 sample. It's hard not to second guess yourself, as there are just so many decisions - and it's expensive!

It's just maddening isn't it! We went back and forth over maple vs. cherry cabinets and ended up doing almost exactly what cambro5 did. (natural maple cabs, Brazilian cherry floor, Uba Tuba).

Either the maple or the cherry will look fabulous! A friend of ours who is more way more design savvy than us told us:
1. Lighter maple cabs are less formal and will help make the room look a little bigger, but it's a little plain so you'll want a counter or something else that pops, otherwise it could be boring.
2. Cherry cabs are richer and more formal and will really draw they eye. They may make the room look slightly smaller. Take care that the counter and other elements work together with the cherry cabs and don't "compete" with them.

We really liked the natural cherry cabs, but they darken over time so you don't totally know what you're getting til about 6 months later. We were on a little bit of a budget and found that the less expensive to mid-range cabinet makers tended to use more "sapwood" in their cabinets. Sapwood doesn't darken like the rest of the cherry does so it looks the same when you get it, but 6 months to a year later some parts have darkened and some parts haven't. We saw a couple examples in displays and friends home who ended up with a very sort of striped two-tone look. We decided we weren't willing to roll the dice on this and went with the Natural Maple cabs (hence the decision to go with a cherry floor). They just came in and we love them.

Best luck to you on your decision. I don't really see how you can loose, both should be beautiful.

aussies, Sorry, but I did not read all the post because I have to go.

What I did was buy all sorts of magazines or go to the library. I bought mine so I could put them in a folder. I would cut out all the pictures you liked. From cabinets, granite, knobs, flooring, etc. Then you have some idea of what you like. Have a folder for each item, it will make it easier. I put them all in one, and what a mess!

Thank you all so much for your empathy and support! It's nice to know that I'm in good company :) This forum is more than just an excellent resource for doing research, it's also like a Kitchen Remodel Survivors Group ;)

I think really this whole process is just overloading my natural instincts to research and deliberate. If I was just buying one appliance for example, I would usually spend hours just researching that one smaller purchase. Now that I have so many different decisions to make at once, many of them expensive and might-as-well-be-irreversible, all of them interrelated! I find that the more expensive the item, the more difficult to decision. And I wonder if it's all going to come together nicely -- you know, like it's one thing to pick nice elements, it's harder still to have them complement each other.

I agree that I've seen a lot of different kitchens that each look great in their own way. Sometimes that's part of the problem too -- I remember when I saw mysterymachine's finished kitchen, thinking "oh, that looks GREAT, maybe we should go back to maple cabinets" :) I've also read a couple of people's posts where they are unhappy with the way things turn out. I can so picture that being future-me and I dread that feeling. It's a little reassuring though that when I see pictures of the kitchens they are so disappointed with, I often find they don't really look so bad. [Please be prepared to remind me of that in the future if I ending up posting a "Waah, I hate my kitchen" post!]

I have also done a lot of looking at magazines and books. I believe I probably have a copy of all of the current kitchen books from the library! ... as well as several books on residential lighting design ... and a million little pieces of granite.

sheilaaus122, glad your pendant lights worked out! I'm sure I will be panicking about that in the future too ... although my worry tends to be in direct proportion to the ability to change something later. So I worry most about the cabinets and the granite. Then the floors. Or maybe it's just because I haven't gotten to the smaller details yet :)

Boxiebabe, I'm sorry to hear about your DW. Hope the cork floors turn out great -- be sure to post some pics once they're in. I grew up with cork floors and I think you'll like them. Very comfortable to stand on and they can look really nice too. I think maybe mysterymachine had cork floors that looked good too.

Thanks to all of you who reminded me that I have seen some beautiful kitchens with dark cabinets that don't look dated at all. I seem to be just noticing the bad ones right now -- I just got back from the vet, where they had some horrible looking dark cabinets too. I tried to tell myself it was really the style and the fact that they were probably '70s melamine, rather than the dark color!

Does anyone have any photos of completed work or do they know of a thread that does?
Thanks
Melanie

Do you know about the Finished Kitchen Blog? See link.

Here is a link that might be useful: Finished Kitchens Blog

I'm so glad it's not only me!!!!! :-)

I keep wanting to tell my builder that I am normally a very reasonable person. But I know he wouldn't believe me anyway. At this point, my indecisiveness about cabinets is delaying the whole project! Ugh.

I do think, though, that there are many things that make it hard to be decisive:

1. Some of us have never done this before, and there is a LOT to learn. I frequently make a decision only to learn later that there are good reasons not to do it that way. OR I get conflicting information (what's better? particle board or plywood for my cabinet boxes?) and don't have the knowledge base to judge for myself.

2. It's hard to shop when you can't see the prices. How many times have you spent hours finding just the right tile--only to discover days later when you get the quote that this particular tile requires special handling (or whatever) and the labor will now be more than budgeted? Or that the roof shingles you've selected are discontinued in a 30-year and are now only available as a 50-year--which means more expense. Back to the drawing board in both situations. And it can be even harder to find something I like the second time around; after spending so much time finding just the perfect thing, it can be hard to let that go and settle for something else.

3. As someone mentioned above, everything is interconnected. Today, for instance, I am having serious second thoughts about the bathroom tile, after I saw something similar at a friend's house and did not care for it. But if I change my tile color, I will also want to change my vanity stain color. So back I go to the tile store--and the cabinet shop, where the KD will probably shoot me for proposing yet another change.

4. Sometimes things happen that necessitate or encourage a change. For example, the plumber discovered that the plumbing in one bathroom was not up to code. The wall behind the sink had to be opened up, and suddenly I saw the opportunity to put in a new recessed medicine cabinet. But this meant moving an outlet that had just been put in. Or then there was the day that the sheetrock went up and suddenly a different bathroom seemed really dark. So I requested an additional recessed light. The electrician thinks I'm wishy-washy when things like this happen. I think I'm just reacting to changing circumstances.

But when I think about the YEARS I spent designing this house, I know that the "indecisiveness" will ultimately get me exactly where I want to be. Yes, it's excruciating to me, to the people working on my house, and to my very patient husband. But everyone agrees that the house so far is flat-out stunning. It took a lot of back-and-forth to get the design just right, and I guess it's just going to take a lot of back-and-forth to get the interior details just right too.

Oh, and by the way, about the dark cherry cabinets? I had the same exact conflict when I started this. I always imagined I would get cherry cabinets because it would go well with the dark wood trim in my house. But it wasn't sitting 100% right with me. What finally helped me make my decision was when I took out all of the magazine pages I'd piled up over the years and began narrowing them down. But instead of pulling out pages where I like a particular detail, like I usually do, this time I selected out only the ones where I liked the overall look. At the end I realized, much to my surprise, that out of the 10-12 I loved best, 90% had white painted cabinets. And that was that.