No, I wouldn't mess with that kind of activity. It will cost you and there is still plenty of oak, even though the remaining sections don't encroach-they are in visual space with the kitchen generally. What needs to happen is you proceed with a kitchen and forget about the oak. When the kitchen is done, if the oak 'works" or can be easily altered to work then you will probably get to it when you recover from the kitchen. If a thorough eval of the oak reveals it can't really be made to work with the kitchen , then money will be spent to remove or drastically alter.. People are offering suggestions about the oak but this is not a part of the kitchen enough to be a driving force in your kitchen goals-huge amounts of money will be spent on the kitchen-get going on that as a priority for now. It seems like you are going in circles a bit-thinking of what you want for a kitchen-then looking over at the oak-worrying about it then going back and changing the idea of the kitchen, then rehashing remarks about the oak and if it's what you want anyway....I suppose you need to go through this process until you are tired of it. It will be nice to see some progress on the kitchen....words like "vibrancy" and "pop" won't get you to a finish line.

My search took several weeks but when I found homehardware4less.com, it was complete. The final choice was by Emtek-Trail Pull in Satin Nickel and the quality is superb. Hefty, beautifully polished and comes with two pairs of screws in case your doors/drawers are thicker, there will be longer ones for you. The pull on the cabinets look like plain satin bars but they are more substantial looking then the plain bar pulls seem everywhere. I put them on dark gray/black cabinets and they match my appliances perfectly. The best part.......they were about 25-30% less, even with shipping. Here is a link that might be useful: homehardware4less.com

It just screams "McMansion!!!". And "lottery winner!!" Why are you building a new one? The suburbs in the mid-Atlantic are filled to the brim with houses just like that that people can't sell for any price. New Jersey is overflowing with them, as is the Main Line and Montgomery County suburbs of Philly. And, seriously--what's with the powder room backing on to the "grand room"? The minute a guest flushes the crapper everyone on the other side of the wall will hear it. Not cool. That belongs out of sight and sound--off the kitchen/mudroom/laundry. This is a real schlock design from some web outfit cranking them out for a quick buck. And don't get me started on the Palladian windows and that enormous, out of scale roof.

Whitewashed wood often turns pink or ambers. Because wood tannins get pulled through and affect the finish tones. And wood is photoreactive. Light changes it's color over time. Plus, different trees will have different mineral content from different growing condition, and that affects both changes that wood goes through. Just look at all of the older 80's whitewashed kitchens that are pink and yellow. That's reality after just a couple of years time. Uniformity in wood color is impossible without tinted clear coats called toners, that masks the wood grain. Thats considered a low end production process, because the whole reason to use wood is to see the grain. Slight variations in color are what let you know that it is real wood. And it will still be photorective. Even if everything starts out the perfect whitewashed shade, over time, maple ambers and will no longer be white. It's wood. You can't stop wood from behaving like wood. To get the perfect shade of whitewash, most Euro makers will use laminate or a high tech multi piece thermofoil. It's more durable than wood as well. The cabinet retailer should have set those expectations from the beginning. And all of the missed tries should have given you pause to research and find that out on the front end. What they never ever should have done is string you along for 2 years. They owe you a refund. And you get to start over. Take that opportunity to change your parameters. Look at lines that do that finish as a standard and not a custom finish first. There will still be variance and wood aging issues. You have to decide if the way that it will look in two years time is what you want. Because that's the far longer look than fresh white wood. Or, change to the laminate that will always be the perfect color.