My kitchen is nearly done too! I think it's fascinating how couples push and pull their design ideas together and come up with lovely compromises. sparklekitty, I would never have guessed your kitchen was a yin/yang kitchen. It is gorgeous and cohesive.

In my situation, the kitchen & addition were all my ideas. I asked my husband his opinion, but he always agreed with whatever my decision was. So either we have the same tastes, which is quite possible, or he is just letting me create my vision unimpeded. I do know that he likes wood tones rather than painted. (Don't all men?) And he doesn't like a lot of flowery designs. I have neither of these tastes in decor either. On the one hand, that has been awesome, but on the other, it's put a ton of pressure on me to make all decisions. (The one area that he did voice an idea was to create some berms in the side yard, which had been torn up from this addition, but the details, he left to me.)

I am the cook of the family. My husband is very helpful in the clean up zone. If my husband were the cook, maybe he would have more say...but he isn't.

The struggle of compromise can lead to very beautiful and interesting designs, although I am imagining it is a horribly frustrating process. Maybe my husband knows this or maybe he just really likes everything I've done. (Patience and compromise are not on my virtue list!) He says he likes it all, but I have to pull opinions out from him. Sometimes I do wish he had some passion about it, but I suppose it all works in our relationship. However, I do get to caress my leathered granite and ogle my handmade tile in peace and there is something to be said for that.

I am curious to read what others have to say on this topic...

I was lucky, my husband let me run with the kitchen and he got the home automation system (it helps to have something else to distract them). He questioned me on the 2 DW and 2 tapmasters but he LOVES both now.

Doonie, what you wrote is pretty much exactly my situation to a T. I alone picked out every aspect of the kitchen but ran everything by DH to make sure he liked my choices, or to have him help me decided on things. He's been great, and he's excited. Not as excited as I AM. I'm the weirdo who stands in the empty kitchen at night with the tape measure, measuring blank spaces of dry wall imagining where everything is going to be. Who spends hours upon hours looking at random kitchens on the internet, even though we've already planned our whole kitchen out. I just love doing it!

Regarding our styles, I'd say over the 17 years we've been together his tastes have kinda of been influenced by mine. I don't like overly flowery things either. He's always happy with the stuff I choose. I wonder if he'd choose it himself if he had to go out and pick stuff for a new room. I do know for a fact that had I wanted a white kitchen he would not have allowed it. Maybe if I made it a mostly white with some other colors and mad contemporary he'd be ok... but he's not into white kitchens. I think they can be very nice! I've seen several here lately that have made me a white kitchen believer.

I am the cook. DH is my sometimes Sous chef, and he cleans up after I cook. We did not have a DW in the old kitchen, we're gonna have one now. That's pretty exciting! We moved the sink to a new location but kept the same sink size. 21x16. Small, but it always worked for us in our smallish kitchen. Just the thought of the new sinks sends me into fits of giggles.

I'm lucky there hasn't been a struggle to find a way to meld two peoples different tastes in design. I can't imagine him being like, "honey, I want a traditional kitchen". So I guess he likes contemporary/modern, too.

@sparklekitty, yours is pretty much what our planning process is like---an evolution. I'm also the cook in our house (although DH is the designated dishwasher and thus has strong opinions on that) and am also the "planner" in a more general sense, so I end up being the one with analysis paralysis. He's good at looking at two things and making a quick decision, which is a good thing. He doesn't have opinions on too many things, but the few that he does have are pretty big ones (e.g., no powered/plumbed island and must keep a door between kitchen and DR, which both had huge impacts on layout). Otherwise, his wish list is pretty short, so we're including everything from it: TapMaster, broom closet, deep single sink, linoleum floor, and maybe one or two other things that I'm forgetting. And we, too, have a house that defines some of our kitchen plan and style (and budget!), for better or for worse. And a giant dog, who has been a big factor as well simply because of his size (and the size of the bags of food he goes through). It's a very iterative process, in part because we've stretched it out over many months.

It is interesting how both of our views have changed since we started planning our kitchen in January '09 (!), though. Originally I was the big white cabinet proponent, and he said no way. By the time I finally started coming around to wood---he'd changed his mind and wanted white! And I was just looking through an old post from a couple years ago for some info the other day and found that I'd written something about how he'd said no way to taking down a wall, which we're now taking down---I didn't even remember that he'd ever been opposed to that. I'll also periodically go off on a tangent about some gadget or other and its merits, only to be scoffed---and then a week or two later will hear DH telling someone else all about the merits of whatever it was. :)

So I guess that's all to say that in a project where multiple people are actively involved in the planning, I think it's normal to have the result marry different ideas and views. Ours isn't the kitchen I'd plan all by myself, but maybe it will be better in the end---a little of everything! (And DH has also had some ideas that I would never have thought of, too, so credit where credit is due!)

I'm the lady with the stained/white kitchen deal. DH and I have been married 30 years and DIY'ing for 20 of that. And I don't mean a little project here and there, I mean things like building garages, barns and additions to the house.

Most people are amazed at how well we can work together, and how we've gotten to the point that we know what we are best at. I now do all the layout and design - but I need is expertise on how something is done. Like if I want a 6' opening in a wall, he'll tell me how many jack studs I need, and what size header I'll need, but I decide how long to cut the boards and the assembly sequence. I'll give him a cut sheet and he'll give me a stack of cut lumber, then I'll mark and lay things out and then we'll work together on assembly.

Where I made a mistake with the cabinets was not fully understanding how important a white kitchen was to me. DH and I always try to determine how important specific things are to each other, and work from there. DH has admitted the actual color of the cabinets isn't all that important to him.

In writing this, I realize that things like paint color, or finish are things we normally consider inconsequential to the big picture. DH knows I'm better at interior design than he is, and I know what colors he likes and does not like.

The whole problem with the cabinets came about when we decide to switch the species of wood we were using to make them. If we had purchased the cabinets, I have no doubt they would have come painted. Something changes and caused us to rethink an already made decision and at this point DH and I are both simply worn out by it all. We'll take the summer off and hopefully be refreshed to finish things up with the temps cool down.

I'm not sure "co-design" is the operant term. Co-evolve? Co-hallucinate? Co-riccochet? or Zig-zag as a tag team?

We've been married 40 years. This is our third project on this house. It's DIY with DH being most of the Y. I started this one with a hope for a really distinctive muse, to make this former little postwar Midwest tract house look like the oldest house on the block, a Swedish farmhouse that had been here for a century and a half. I really thought I could do it. But this was my dream only and at a certain point in the planning I abandoned it. We now have a "cute" addition at the front that does make the house more symmetrical than previously but the only thing I can do to it to make it mine on outside is to work on making it look slightly mod, slightly quirky, and NOT like a craftsman bungalow or other tract house pseudostyle that's popular right now and that DH sees and hears about from construction trades friends.

"Death of a dream" is one of the comments I made on one of the threads. I have conjured up and destroyed so many visions for this kitchen that I blush to remember them all. The one I see now is, for better or worse, the one I'm gonna live with for a couple more decades. Or more. I guess it's okay. I have reserved the opportunity to buy appliances at a later date and hope that living with the space will make it more personal as time goes on.

I was trained by my mom from childhood on how the wife of a strong personality works behind the scenes and tries to assert herself and occasionally wins. DH would tell you that this is my design and my vision. But if I kept a running list of his "wins" and mine, he would be surprised to see how much influence he really did have--a great deal, I assure you, starting with how he and the designer ganged up on me regarding windows and where the range would go and how the ceiling would connect. Once he and this guy and other structural experts he consulted had set up the parameters, I just worked within them; but I also made a lot of choices knowing that I _could_ have chosen things that DH dislikes, but would have felt terrible about doing it. I could have made many choices to spend more too, but I know that this would be counterproductive for the marriage, starting with very different wood cupboards that were much more elaborate and much more expensive but would have given me a thrill to own and handle daily. This is not my kitchen, despite what he says. It's our kitchen. Money and practicality and the infrastructure were more important than my whims.

I do wish that we had made different decisions about flooring. I really should have had cork for my health --we talked about it from the beginning but the idea went byebye at some point and he chose wood for kitchen and tile for lobby and hallway. My feet, legs, and back will always remember that compromise. No, that concession.

I wrote here at GW at one time about how I had misunderstood his tastes at some strategic times. Trying to get him to commit to "I like that, I dislike that" was very hard, but then once I'd make a choice or at least an inclination, sometimes the judgment came down surprisingly hard against it. Often this was when I was trying most to please him, leaving me very confused. I no longer pretend that I can predict what he would say he likes or dislikes. The damn 50 cent porcelain floor tile I picked out from a remainder pile that we used in lobby gets praise from him over and over. Whodathunk it? And once we committed to that, then my box of other samples quietly got put into a closet because they were wrong with it. And that caused a chain of other decisions that are now "cast in cement" so to speak.

We compromised by me picking everything and dh agreeing.

No, actually I knew he wanted wood cabinets (not painted) but he didn't care about layout or color or materials or appliances or hardware at all beyond "How much is it?" and his choice would always be the less expensive option. Always. Saving money was important to me as well, but a few times I intentionally showed him my choice next to one that was decidedly more expensive, so he would pick what I wanted.