We did stained concrete on most of our floors, and are very happy with it. Did a lot of talking and research to find someone we felt we could trust. Try to find someone with a good library of photos of their work, and of course check them on the BBB website. In regard to the light color, I've never really seen a light color on concrete. I think the nature of the material lends itself better to a darker color. Also, all the contractors we talked with used Kemiko, and all agreed you can't quite trust their color chart. Everything usually turns out a little darker than shown, I think. I cleaned all the concrete myself before hand, shopvac'ing, cleaning up water stains, etc. The stain guy did 2 coats of acid stain, followed by 3 coats of sealer. Everything has to dry between coats, will take 2 days, with no one else in house. We used Malay Tan, which came out more of a deep brown/gold color. Maybe this picture link will work. Not a great picture, but may help. Here is a link that might be useful:

Right after I posted this message I called around trying to find spanish oak gel stain and I cant find it anywhere. So I guess onto plan "b"... painting, I was really wanting to gel stain so that I could skip the priming step. So now my question is: have any of you distressed furniture pieces in black? If so will you share your pics of it and tell me how you did it? Also are there any other gel stains that look black?

I don't have any good pictures. My DH has to build the banquette plus probably the table. These pictures are 18 months old (been working on other parts of the house) but you get the general idea. I did a simple subway cream backsplash - went to over 6+ tile stores and lived with 10+ ones for over a week. Who would have thought there were so many "creams". Here's one with a little bit of the wall color (BM hawthorne yellow) trying to choose tile - it rained for a week so we never could see it in sun light

Thanks again to everyone for responding. We had not considered a white island, but that is something to thinks about. Wow, kalapointer, thanks for posting the pics of your cabinetry. The colors are very close to what we were thinking of. We're beginning to back off the dark cherry, though, because of worries about its darkening further -- with only one window (and a large skylight), our kitchen might not be as bright as yours. We're not sure. Cabinet buy says cherry darkens, but maple yellows ... editionk, you're right, kpasso's kitchen looks very similar to ours, it's about the same size, and it's laid out almost exactly the same with a similar size island! It's very helpful to see those pics. And in answer to your questions: (1) Do you have a pantry / larger food storage somewhere that I don't see in your layouts? Yep -- in the second picture you can see a door beyond the fridge. That's the door to the utility/laundry room. The pantry is to your left as you go through the door :-) (2) Have you considered changing the door/drawer on the left of the stove to a bank of drawers? Ditto on the one on the left of the sink. Hadn't thought about that. I think the only three-drawer stacks now are next to the dishwasher (for utensils) and across from the sink on the island. (3) You mentioned dark areas/shadowy areas in your house. A dark red cherry finish in a kitchen with just one window might feel too dark. A few glass uppers can lighten the look a lot along with the right paint and backsplash. What are you thinking so far for those elements? We are planning glass uppers on all the upper cabinets around the sink (two to the right, one to the left) and there are 1-foot cabinets on the wall across from the sink that don't show up in these renderings but that also have glass uppers. We were going to do glass uppers around the range as well, but decided that was too much. (4) Will you have a microwave? I think I see a TV in the layout, but no micro (unless it's in the island). Yes. The microwave will sit on the counter in the corner under the TV. My husband doesn't think it's safe to lift possibly heavy hot dishes from a raised area, and I see his point. (5) I expected your door style would be Craftsman considering the renderings and your description, but the Merillat door style is quite traditional. The cherry Paprika color is nice, is that what you're considering? I think that is the name of the color. It does seem to be pretty dark when you look on their website. I am not sure what a Craftsman door style is, but the cabinet design guy has mentioned Shaker style a few times. It's a bit too plain for our tastes, though. We are also considering Kraftmaid cabinets. The frameless drawers are appealing because they have several inches more width for the same cabinet size. But the design we like would be about 35% more (!) than the Merillat Classic because not only is Kraftmaid more to start with, the design is much fancier, including curved wood on the face of the cabinet door. I can't remember the style name and it doesn't look easy to find on the Kraftmaid website. I wonder if those fancy doors would overwhelm our smallish kitchen anyway.