Miffy - what cabinets are you looking for? Your whole perimeter, a perimeter and island, just and island, uppers and lowers? And what price for that amount of cabinets is reasonable to you? Have you already priced them at Home Depot and/or Lowes? What kind of price did you get there? I guess it would be more helpful to know what you are looking for. The price on my cabinets for my island that I shared above included the Kitchen Designer's cut (that's how she gets paid) and the cabinets are 10'x3' (or maybe 11'x3'). Soft close drawers were standard. That also included custom posts/legs on the 4 corners, door panels on both ends, furniture bases on all except the working side, 4 glass drawers with inserts inside (to put real stuff behind the pretty stuff showing in the glass), and a paint color I chose from Sherwin Williams that they matched. They also made the front panel designs bigger on the drawer fronts so my cup pulls would fit. Can't think if there was more involved.

Oh my gosh, Holligator! You've still got the island sketch! I'm still planning on the cafe table, and I think with this island design it will work out well. I don't know if you recall, but you all also convinced me to add the back door to the porch, and to separate the fridge from the freezer so that the fridge would be convenient to the sink and stove. It made for some tense moments trying to design that wall of stacked cabs, but the carpenters came through with some really creative ideas there. And having the door has already been great. I can't believe I was set to skip that. And thank you, thank you for the link to tsdiver. That's the one I was remembering, but couldn't find it. I'll print out those pics as ammo when I go talk to soapstone people. I can't imagine anyone finding that island anything but gorgeous. Lavender Lass, that's a beautiful picture. It calls to my inner Victorian. I thought about switching to wood for the island, but I like the way the wood looks with the sun coming through the windows, and I love the idea of soapstone across from the stove for both baking purposes and for landing hot pots. Holligator has given me confidence that I can make the soapstone work. Dretutz and Irishcreamgirl, thank you for the kind words. I think you're both right that its the floors and maybe the fireplace stone that seem to want a deeper color than cream. I keep coming back to the word "muddy" but that's not accurate, I think maybe muted is better. I'm going to check out BM "honeymoon." And Irishcreamgirl, I've been hoping to work those floor in somewhere forever. I'm also hoping to put the pavers on my front porch to continue the herringbone theme.

Jmc, thank you. I will take a photo and post it. There are grooves in the bottom. Our cabinet guy was not thrilled with doing sliding cabinets, as he never had before. I saw them in an historic home and liked them a lot. Our cabinet guys are quite high end and I never thought to specify, but the grooves are plastic; in the historic home they were metal, fwiw. As for the cleats, it sounds scary to permanently affix them, but then I thought about it. In my old kitchen, i had the holes in the side so that you could move them, and never did in 9 years. My old kitchen had glass front cabs, but I had sheers inside on a tension rod so you couldn't really see the holes. This time, my DH pointed out that, since our cabs are glass with no fabirc and sit on the counter, you'd really see all those holes. I am very happy with our cleats. I just worked with the carpenter and my dishes to pick the placement. Come to think of it, I could have just copied the distances between shelves from my old kitchen .... I am so happy with our cabinets!

A lot of good advice here already. Ikea is a tricky store, we often installed Ikea for our customers in the past years. Good for rental properties, I would not put in my own home. To me, you get as many quotes as it takes you to meet the person who can deliver good design to you. Even though the quality of cabinets is very important, great kitchen is about good layout and great hardware options: drawer-based systems, swivels, hardware that makes hard to reach places accessible. We offer all of the above, so if you wish to check out some of the top of the line hardware options and design, you are welcome to stop by our showroom and meet for a FREE consult with our designers.