I have seen just about everything: beams left stained wood, beams painted a vibrant color with a white ceiling, beams painted white (or gray or other neutral) with a colorful ceiling, beams painted one color and ceiling painted another color, both painted same white ... I think the thought process really depends on the rest of your kitchen. What are your tastes, how much fun do you like to have? Some decorating styles have more of a tradition of it than others, but there's definitely room to make it up. Another consideration may be the rest of your house, and your site. I live in the city, where many people's ceilings are visible from the street as people walk by a little lower than ground level. I can't see into most people's rooms, but I can see many people's ceilings! So someone who has an interesting medallion, or beams or a mural (lots of artists in my area) is a pleasure to see on a cold walk home. If you have, perhaps, a siting area where you can see a portion of your kitchen ceiling out of the corner of your eye when you are sitting, then it might be nice to have an interesting ceiling. Something to consider.

You wrote: "the ones going across the old ceiling (vs. yanking them out), " What you wrote stood my hair on end! It is very likely you can not remove the horizontal timbers without your house's structure being compromised. Those beams are most likely doing a whole lot more than just supporting the ceiling and the attic floor. They are connecting the sides of your house. Before you even think of this, please hire an architect or structural engineer to assess it. Given the age of your house (1840) and location it seems highly likely your house is a timberframe structure. Those horizontal beams are ESSENTIAL in timberframe houses! The lower ceilings in older houses are one the characteristics of the style. You can expose the beams, but not remove them. After they are exposed you could cover them, but it would be a lot of work. In buildings the age of yours they might be hand hewn, and attractive, but rough. Many people find the old timber look very appealing as they shown the hand-made nature of the structure. The other issue is that once you have a room with such a tall ceiling (going up to the roof rafters) you will kake it very hard to keep warm at "ground level" as all your heated air will go up, far above your head. Even with good roof insulation (can be done, but does present some other technical issues) keeping warm downstairs will be a challenge, unless you have something like radiant heat in the floor. When the house was built, and every bit of heat was from logs cut, hauled, split, stacked and loaded, by the occupants they knew that lower ceilings were warmer than soaring spaces. MOlly

i like the look of the 'encased' stove also - just not that close to the actual stove. i'd feel too closed in. it's good you put up the blocks to try it out for a few days. i've seen them where the 'side walls' are farther away - like to the end of the counter to the left of your stove and maybe 1 cabinet more to the right of it. somone did that on here - the spanish kitchen - and i loved it! but she had a BIG space for her stove. but again, everyone is different. i don't like closed spaces or heights. I think i'd also move the double ovens over to the end of the other counter run - to the right of the sink. you'd have the island to mix and put things together, then just turn around and pop it into the oven. if making cookies you could pull them out of the oven and slide them onto the counter top behind. pop another sheet of cookies into the oven. and just have a counter run to the right of the fridge too. i think it'd look more open in the area by the door on the left of your stove area if that wall wasn't floor to ceiling cabinets/appliances too. it looks a bit congested in that area.

I know that there is a lot of discussion about the location of laundry rooms. I grew up in a house with the laundry room right next to the kitchen, and that was fairly innovative for the time the house was built in our area where laundries were typically in the basement or in a room near the garage. In my own places I've had to put laundries in two of them, the previous owners used a common laundry facility or the laundromat. I have had three different locations 1) off the master bedroom in a large walk in closet 2) in the kitchen 3) in the basement (currently) In each case location was dictated by where it would fit best. I think there are pros and cons to each. In the house I grew up in, while laundry was done regularly by my mother, when I was little there was a baby sitter who also got paid to iron because everything in my house got ironed at that point. Later there was a cleaning lady who did sheets towels and blankets as a part of her job, and as my mother became increasingly disabled it was good to have the laundry off the kitchen because she literally came downstairs in the morning and did not go upstairs all day long if she was home alone, her mobility was very limited. So off the kitchen was great, she could do laundry next to the two rooms she spent the most time in, the kitchen and the library. (The cleaning lady also set the ironing board up in the library next to the laundry room so she could watch TV while she ironed, which took hours) When I had mine in the master bedroom closet, honestly it was very convenient, but on the other hand things rarely ever got fully put away, because it was all right there, dirty clean, everything. For me it got sort of disorganized, and if I wanted to iron shirts or something, I didn't want to iron in the closet. So I dunno, that location was okay because the laundry was done where it was generated but it became very disorganized for us. In the kitchen, the benefit to this was you had to do it and put it away, and you would rarely do a washer load and then forget to put it in the dryer or to start the dryer. Other than that I did not like it right in the kitchen. Ours will currently stay in the basement because the rest of the house isn't laid out for it to go anywhere else but I don't think it will bother me too much. If I was able to put it anywhere I would probably put it in a separate laundry room near the kitchen if my house was big enough to do so. For us the current convention of having it closest to the bedrooms was not optimal for us in terms of keeping things organized.