Thank you!!! We went to the kitchen store yesterday (during a nasty snow storm!) and we looked at a ton of options. I can't tell you how dang difficult it was to figure out which light countertops would look nice with our natural maple cabinets. HOWEVER, the options opened up when we decided to take the plunge and stain our island a darker color. We picked up some stain and I think our favorite is red mahogany. Zodiaq Cygnus Pearl really stands out with that (and stainless steel hardware). I have no idea what we'll do for the rest of the kitchen. We might- just might- think about staining the rest of the kitchen cabinets a shade or two darker but I'm not sold on that. That would be a serious pain in the you-know-what and I doubt dh would go for it. We're also going to change out our undercabinet lighting to something more effective (Xenon pucks). Thanks again for all your input. Hopefully in several months I'll be able to post an updated photo and maybe next year I'll have yet another updated photo with the rest of the kitchen! Astrid

Young-thanks so much. Glad you like it. I was worried about pulling it all together. Stuck on the splash though as I am still trying to tie in all the elements into the splash.I think I want to have the tile a little darker than the uppers and to warm enough for the red birch. lukkirish-Wow you did a great job. I really wanted to see just how busy the mini versalies pattern would be. So that picture helped alot. Now I know it's too busy for me. They also have a large versallies pattern. But now I wonder if even that would be too busy for me. Brick may be best. The mini was more interesting on the board sample, but a whole backsplash I think is a different story! Here is the large: http://www.tileshop.com/product/productdetail.aspx?familyID=651&recordID=5035528 Quite a bit of difference in size. I have considered just a neutral tile but I feel it does nothing for the upper cabinets. So still undecided on having color or neutral.

Cream cabinets with a glaze is very hard. I can do two things. I can paint over Squirrel's existing photo and dial down the opacity so the wood shows through (or else it just looks like cream rectangles) OR cut and paste a real photo of cream cabinets. (but that's hard to get the right angles) This is what I mean... Just painting with Ben Moore Cut and Pasted photos of cabinets online I tried to make extra crown on the painted ones but the cut and pasted photos were too hard to get crown on top. I'm sure Squirrel would have whipped this up lickety split. I still have lots of learning to do! Sigh!

Thanks for all the suggestions. I will definitly go ahead and paint the sidewall of the pantry white. My wall color is also very light but I can tell the difference next to white. It will probably make the soffits look somewhat close to the cabinets anyway. I spent this evening washing all the cabinets I could reach. I'm already sore. This is going to be good exercise for me.