Thank you again -- have been sharing these responses with DH who is just tickled to hear them. He is mighty tired at this point but all of your praise has energized him to start thinking about that island . . . Answers to questions Kaismom -- you're correct -- when we moved in to the house the lowers were too shallow to house contemporary appliances so we had a carpenter pull them out but we didn't rebuild them in any fundamental way. Inside they were just big empty cubes. Now we have pullouts and more useable storage in less space. Theresse, we totally dismantled the cabinets. We built the two class cupboards from scratch using old wood, and we reused the old leaded glass doors. You can see in the before photos that in the original uppers the cames did not align with the shelves. Just one of those little things that always bothered me. We fixed that! We used doors from above the old cooktop to make the new lower cabinet on the far left-- these had to be taken apart and resized. The sink wall, not visible in this photo, is new build using old wood. For example, DH made a panel for the integrated dishwasher using a center panel (cut to size and framed) from an old door we bought at salvage. The doors under the sink are original but had to be made smaller to fit under the apron sink. So, most of the time even what we repurposed had to be remade to fit the layout and the appliances. Only two of the cabinets on the other side of the room were left as-is, just refinished. We also took out an old doorway (door was long gone) and built an eyebrow arch that matches the contour of the arches in other rooms. We added crown molding and floor molding out of old gumwood as well. We kept the Lightolier tracks but replaced the old cans with new MR16 fixtures. We kept the built-in refrigerator (we put this in about 15 years ago, building an enclosure) but gave it new steel panels. We kept the pot rack! We kept some of the original hardware (latches and hinges) but added new pulls. Thanks again for all the comments! They are helping us gear up for the final spurt!

Thank you. My first meal will probably be PB&J, because we'll be all out of money. Actually, DH does most of the cooking, so I'lll have to ask him. Michelle - this is Jacob from PA. Thanks for the compliment. Everything went very well, and the install was flawless. Since we were 2 hours away, we only went there twice, so I was a little nervous until I saw the cabinets. Unfortunately, I will have to wait until tomorrow to take pics of the kitchen. :'( If you have any questions, don't be afraid to ask. Good luck with your project in the future. Lori

@Andrea I dug through my photos and found this one which is a pretty good representation of what it looks like now (though pic is from 2013). We actually don't have horizontal grain except on those long drawer fronts which you see in the first photo up above. We've been very happy with our Plato cabinets and they have held up very well. We also redid our bathroom with Plato cabinets. They have vertical graining all in line and I've also included a photo of that. Hth!

Ok it's not complete yet....the doors were installed backwards so I haven't completed knob install. The trim is still in progress as well. The cabinet glass was blown for us by a local glass artist. They appear to be easy to see into, but thats the camera flash talking. They're actually pretty thick and chunky so you can't see the toilet paper and early pregnancy tests quite this well LOL A close up of a small drawer with a gold pull. They're all sea shells of one type or another. The sink (notice how well orange goes in this color scheme): How brave are you? My brown tiles come in a fabulous ivory tone...they'd be WONDERFUL with granite counters, or the quartz in a cream tone: Everyone says the tiles look like leather in person. The ivory and tabac (my brown) are both lickable delicious in person, and they'd actually be great budget back splash tiles at 12.50 sq ft (they come in 24x24 tiles). I think this shows the wall finish pretty well. I was trying to mimic the travertine, but not an exact copy. We have so much visual texture in the room that I kept the "Stuff" fairly basic staying with chocolate, latte, cream and white. This is a construction pic so the tiles are dusty as heck, but you can see them better here than on the tub deck...they look like leather (croc): I'm going to use the ivory in a kitchen someday for a BS. And for fun...honey onyx. What? You can't see the onyx? Ya we don't either. The baby, dog and cats all prefer it be covered with pillows so they can sleep and play up there!