I would paint the cabinets rather than staining them. Make sure that you create a flat matte surface to paint on so the paint looks good. Grey is quite popular and looks 'in style' right now. Light taupe is another possibility. If the cabinets are flat slabs, this will give a nod to the MCM feel with your planters. I would pick the wall colors that are similar, maybe 1 or 2 shades off of the same color sample on the paint chips. This will give you a visual expanse in a small kitchen. When you have done that, your visual interests will be your counter tops and cabinet hardwares. Painted cabinets and wall colors will create a calm and recedeing background for the counters and hardware. Fun and playful can come from accessories. Another fun and playful (inexpensive) way to update an old kitchen is to remove the doors from the uppers, paint the interior of the cabinets, then put colorful every day dishes in the uppers for visual interest. You have instant open shelving system which is quite popular right now. Do you have enough light coming into the kitchen? You may need to update lighting for functional reasons.

Lumen is the unit to measure light output. Use lumen or lux (light per area) and include all the 21st century options in the comparison. Expensive bulbs producing a lot of lumen per Watt last longer, require less power (less money to operate), and produce far far less waste heat (also saving you money since you don't have as many Watts of heat to cool down with your air conditioning). The type (colour) of light these bulbs produce depends on another unit you can learn to use too. There are many high quality bulbs producing beautiful light. lblue, 20th century incandescent bulbs will date you. People can feel the heat. Did you know that incandescent bulbs' light yellows as the bulb ages? And not all at the same rate. So, one of your bulbs will be yellowish and the one next to it will be a different shade. Very unstable. Also, the light they produce when new will look bad, once people get used to another standard. Get with the times. Get ahead of the process. hth

I am pretty spatially challenged, but I did just wrestle an 11 ft x 11 ft kitchen into something like submission, so I will weigh in here with a few ideas. First, what will dwarf everything else is your fridge. If you could install it so that only the front -- rather than the side as well -- shows from most vantage points, it won't loom as large. So, if you are willing to invest in replacing your windows and moving some plumbing, some variant on this might work: The lower cabinets next to the fridge are pulled out to match its depth. The windows above the sink and DW would be any array similar to those of laurainlincoln (with higher windowsills) or jenwrens (sills to the counter), both of which yield an enviably large area of glass. (Please note that I am pretty vague about the entrance to the kitchen from your 48" hallway. You obviously need a certain entryway width, but it could be achieved in several ways by messing with the fridge wall and the end of the range set of cabinets.) Looking from the DR, people would see the peninsula and either the end of the cabinets flanking the range or, if you prefer, a counterdepth wall. I too took down the wall between my modest kitchen and the DR. My kitchen is very different (yes, I would sell my soul for a lovely run of windows) but from the DR it does show the peninsula and the end of a run of cabinets, with no wall. Your peninsula would be longer and better looking; mine is truncated by a boxed-in chimney and shelves that were added to it to the depth of the countertop. Hope this stimulates the germ of an idea. Cheers. Here is a link that might be useful: laurainlincoln's windows to die for

Update on the transformer and dimmer issue. The retailer sent a 60 Watt transformer to test with an ELV dimmer instead of the magnetic one. It's tiny, smaller than the dimmer and much cheaper, like $65 instead of $200 for the 150 Watt transformers. We got the package via UPS on Monday (not Next Day Air when sent on a Friday) and the lights worked fine but the dimmer did not work. The transformer was installed in a wall space near the ceiling. Today they disconnected the transformer and installed it all a different way, with the transformer installed behind the dimmer/electric box. It all seems to work with the exception of one bulb that won't fully dim. I'm just glad we have lights finally. They will install the kitchen lights once the additional 3 transformers arrive, which should be tomorrow.