Many people have mentioned the "expense" of putting flooring under the cabinets, but the actual financials are usually a wash. It will be more expensive material wise to put the flooring under the cabinets, but it will be a much easier flooring install. It'll be more expensive labor wise to have your flooring person cut plywood to put down under the cabinets and then do even more cutting and fitting to get the wood to go around that plywood. In the end, labor usually being more expensive than the product, it usually makes more sense to just put the wood over the whole floor and then install the cabs and appliances. If the wood ever needs to be changed out, it's no big deal to cut it out right at the toekick line and install different flooring. The big risk in wood flooring in a kitchen is the inevitable moisture damage. Yes, "traditional" homes used to have wooden floors in kitchens, but there was no subfloor. The wood was laid directly on the joists, and anyone who has ever lived in an older home knows that the expansion/contraction of that wood over the years left gaps between the planks that modern homeowners would throw their hands up in horror over having. :) Well,those gaps and no subfloor let any water problems drain right out of that wood floored kitchen with only minimal damage to the floor. The water didn't stand on it for hours. Today's modern building methods have a subfloor that will trap the moisture, or a cement slab that will trap moisture when you have that refrigerator water line leak. So, getting moisture alarms shouldn't be optional if you want a wood floor in a modern kitchen. It will help to alert you to when you have a problem. And, it is when, not if! It's a wet workroom after all!

-- The Look In a kitchen "petite" like ours, two parallel runs make it visually simple. It's a straight line walkthrough with no doors. Three or four drawer-cabinets make a clean sight line. All in a row. The entrance hallway at one end, and lots of sunlight at the other end. On hettich.com and blum.com it's a clean look (showing islands not galleys with walls). We will keep one wall uncluttered and use glass and mirrors to increase natural light. On another wall we will have horizontal uppers (hiding the vent hood inside). We would hide any small appliance that found its way into our space. If we decide to have a cabinet, we'll build the facade out of drawers bolted together at the back, to keep the same look. -- Loss of space I believe frameless cabinets have rails that take up about 1.5" space (width). The loss in width compared to having shelves is negligible. In my current face-frame cabinetry the loss in width is about 5 inches (!) I'm not an expert and I'm not playing one here either. These are my figures based on a little bit of observation. I'll be glad to know more from anyone who has details or breadth of experience. -- Trade-Off if all drawers Glad to know that someone else is wondering about "stacking things as well". "As well in drawers as on shelves", I presume. I'm thinking that we'll need Internal drawers inside a few of the deep drawers. -- Storing Noxious Odor Products In the drawer under the sink I'll keep cleaning products in a sealed container so their odors don't get out much. We don't have many different products. We have a huge entry closet where we keep shoe care stuff -- that is where I'd keep some of the cleaning stuff if it became a concern; e.g. 8 feet from the kitchen. -- Storing Tall Things We could have a 4" wide pullout for these, next to the wall oven column. In a utility room where the water heater is 15 ft from the kitchen, we keep tall things like Swiffers. -- Height Inside for Big or Odd Shapes The front of the deepest IKEA drawer is 12.75" high. I'll go see at IKEA if inside is enough height for tall pasta boxes and storage containers. I'm inclined to believe it'll suffice. A cute narrow olive oil bottle might need to be stored slanted or somewhere else. Our blender comes in two parts each weighing 2 lb; we'll lift it out manually. We mix by hand as we believe this lets us practice what the gym has prepared us for. -- Bulk Buying We buy in bulk in the Fall, and I expect our deep drawers will hold this stuff. We currently have about 12 cu.ft. storage for All our food outside the fridge. After reno, our kitchen will have double its current storage volume so I'm not worried. -- Plumbing Hiding the plumbing is a fascinating topic once you get into it. You get to save space, and you get one more advantage. You hear less noise water makes when it goes through the P trap. Under the sink I'll weld a tight elbow to turn the sink waste on a horizontal line going to the back wall. Using copper it takes very little space under the sink. Once the waste line reaches the back it turns down to go to the P trap. Tight elbows are used as WC closet bends and in those combo dishwashers-with-sinks in their top. I'll use the same configuration to free up space for my drawers. It is code and legal; it is almost never done and almost never even thought of. I did this under a bathroom sink to hide the plumbing. The 3" countertop floats in space wall to wall no support under it. No plumbing visible either. Out of sight, out of mind. Gurgling noises are reduced or 99% eliminated. The P trap is behind two tight turns in the sink drain pipe. So you don't hear any "plup plup plip plip" noises which can be an irritant. The dishwasher connection Wye will be on the back wall near the P trap. The dishwasher's draining noises are then also reduced or virtually eliminated. To get access (occasionally) I'll slide the drawers out and remove them. So, Getting at the pipes may not be a concern, unless I haven't considered something.... -- Garbage disposal Never had one. Have never heard one in operation at anyone's house. It doesn't bother me much that I may never know what a disposer can do. Don't know anyone who has one. It's just not on my radar. gwent, "lots of GW'ers here love the all drawers" - i haven't seen that, so far. owls4me, thank you for calling me a king of planning. Thank you midwestmom, lowspark, jejvtr, gwent, circuspeanut, owls4me, poorowner, fwhartford, terriks, danielle00 and all GW. -- David

Here is the photo of the kitchen before we moved in. The fridge in the photos is not the one that is there now. We put a 36" counter depth with wood paneling and the exposed compressor grill on top there now. In front on the right of the swing doors is the bar with full counter and pass through window. In a couple of years, we'll replace the counters, cabinets and floors. I forgot to say the floors are not the reddish/pink tint. It's a slight multi dirt brown and yeah. What can I say. Another chapter for another day with the floors. LOL. We have a lot of other priorities to fix and update that are rather costly and can't be ignored. I know a lot of people don't like the Black Stainless Steel but I love it. So the question remains, can we get away with a black dishwasher (to replace current one) and ice maker that will match the lower cabinets when they are painted black if we can't find the matching wood panels for them? Thanks all!

No pictures not built yet. Question is if I need appliance pulls functionally My appliance guy just told me they are not needed for either of these and actually too bulky. Regular as long as big enough will work. I was thinking 5” for other base cabinets but if doing these in the regular pull I’d go a bit bigger 6-8 inches).