Aloha! The kitchen is mostly done and at the end of the day we ended up with Glacier White Granite! When I went to reserved my stone, all of the pieces of the honed arabescato that I liked where gone. I wasn't inclined to spend all that extra money and settle for one that had large dark spots all over it. I also wasn't thrilled with the selection of polished, for the same price. Then I found a slab of polished Super White at another stone yard that I loved and was so proud of myself for picking a stone that was a $1500 savings over the arabescato. Then the fabricator called me to let me know that the slab wasn't big enough for the whole kitchen, so I would have to pay another $1000 to finish the last 15" piece of counter. That was my final sign. I gave up on the marble and started all over. I found a slab of Glacier White that I loved, and it turns out that it was snatched up 3 days earlier. Feeling burned out, I finally found a slab of Glacier White that I didn't hate and that became our counters. At the end of the day I went from wanting my first love to settling for something I didn't hate. Sigh. The final sting was that the fabricator didn't tell me when he was templeting (I thought he was going to let me know, because he said that I could come down and help decide), so the parts that I didn't like ended up being the most prominent. Unfortunately, that has been how our entire remodel has been. Even our contractor has been shocked at how many issues we've had. I have definitely been schooled by my kitchen. :-) (The worst was having to rent a concrete grinder and personally grind down a hump in my floor that the self leveler didn't fix. Worst mess to clean up EVER!!! I actually cried that night.) Now, having said all of that, and having reached a temporary stopping point (still need to tile and deal with some minor issues), I've finally had some time to stop being mad at my kitchen and really enjoy it. And guess what - I really like my counters! I love that I don't have to worry about my husband leaving wet raspberries and other gooey things on my counters (because, yes, he still does). And, yes, they do end up having things stacked all over them all the time, so they are not a glowing and pristine focal point. They are my work horse counters. I love my deep undermount sink that these counters allow me to have. We stayed pretty close to budget. I would say that, after tiling, we'll have spent about $16K, but with that low budget came A LOT of extra work and frustration. All of our cabinets came from Ikea. We used 18" fan cabinets and stacked them to achieve our 36" uppers and then ordered Scherr's custom doors to go over them (Scherr's was fantastic to deal with). I do not, however, recommend the stacking method. It made it so hard to plumb and level with our fantastically out of square ( and sloping walls) u shaped kitchen. One thing I can't recommend enough is edgebanding our Ikea cabinets with Fast Edge wood. We painted the edges of the Gnosjo cabinets dark, so you don't see the white through the doors. Even where the white doors go. Once we trimmed out the cabinets, I used wood putty, then primed and painted the trim and cabinet edges and everything looks so cohesive. Also love our new LED pot lights! I have so much extra light in the kitchen and I love it. We did lose some natural light taking out an east facing window (that faced the neighbors window about 8 feet away,so we never pulled up the blinds), but we also gained a lot more cabinet space. Living in the gray NW, I don't get much natural light most of the year anyway, so I find that having the extra electrical light is a lot more helpful. Some things that I'm mixed on... The Ikea Gnosjo cabinets are crazy finger printy!! Someday I will find the time to clean them properly again, but they are very streaky in the meantime. My dark gray Marmoleum floors feel fantastic on my feet, but they show ever single crumb known to man. They were also very tricky for us to install. I won't go into details, but let's just say that every demonstration on the web showed them being installed in an empty square room. It was also really hard to get info online about the click together tiles (what kind of underlayment?) and the instructions were obviously translated from another language and didn't always make sense. The prior kitchen looked decent from a distance, but it was falling apart and quite dysfunctional. I love the functionality of my new kitchen and the ikea cabinets (with lots of drawers!) are fantastic. I love my sink and I love that my floors don't have missing chunks and holes all over. I do miss the over the stove microwave (now we have one in the pantry), but our gas stove was just too hot for one and our third microwave was failing. Now we have a hood that is actually vented outside. All in all the kitchen is a huge improvement. It could use a little color, so I've been tracking down some aqua accessories. We are planning to do white subway tile with light gray grout for all wall surfaces within the next few months. Sorry for writing a book to your small question! :-) DJ

Wow - thank you for all those suggestions (and for taking the time to try to help me - what a great place this is)!!! I like the Sedona Trail best of those, I think. I've been staring at my sage coral and my gold flake granite all morning also. I just don't know how to know if the "black" will be too dark. The floor and cabinets will be lightish, and the wall will probably be a cream-based color as well, so maybe something dark would provide a nice contrast? Or should I keep it all on a neutral palette? We've lived in a kitchen with painted cabinets for 10 years (well, technically they've only been painted, white, for the last 5 years - they were a dark walnut before that), and only because we really couldn't afford the oak upgrade at the time we gave our kitchen a facelift. DH really loves the look of nice oak cabinets, and I really do too - though I did briefly consider a cherry-type stain rather than the natural oak color. So no, I don't think the solid color would be an option for us. I wish I had software that would allow me to put everything into a virtual room, including exact colors, and then see what it looks like! What about two different counter colors? What if the wall with the cabinets had the sage coral or sedona trail, and the island had the gold flake granite (the black-ish); or vice versa? I don't know if this matters in the decision-making, but in case it does - when entering the kitchen (essentially on line with the aisle between the wall and island) the "view" into the great room includes a 12'x12' window complex, and it's a south-facing wall, so there will be a lot of light coming through there, likely reflecting onto/off of whatever countertop I choose...especially on the island, but the wall of cabinets also, since there is no south wall to the actual kitchen at all. The west side of the kitchen (to the right, in this scenario) has no wall either - just a couple of support beams, and then the family room is beyond that, with a fireplace (and tv above) and two large windows on either side - so again, a lot of light in the evenings. Not much option for morning light - the east wall is solid (cabinets in the kitchen, and just a small window high up in the east wall of the great room). Love to hear more ideas based on this further information - and thanks again in advance!!!

Oooh...nice pics everyone. Alexamd, your kitchen probably is the closest to mine as far as lighting goes and that granite doesn't look too dark at all. I like your backsplash too. Is that slate? I received my 12x12 sample of Cambria Bradford on Thu. My daughter (who never likes the same thing as me) actually liked it too. I took it with me to 2 more granite suppliers Fri so I could compare granites to it. All the ones I've liked are pretty dark. I gave my layout to a fabricator to get a quote on sapphire brown just to get an idea on the granite. Unfortunately, there aren't many places here that handle Cambria anymore because the company won't allow anyone in NC to fabricate it but them (in their facility in Charlotte). Presumably there's not enough money in just measuring, templating and installation to make it worth the local guys' time. I ordered a sample door from Scherr's yesterday. I should have done that a long time ago. I'm hoping it will darken up faster if I set it in the sun.

>>A local "green" cabinet builder cites: "particleboard will deteriorate when exposed to water, it is more susceptible we use to dents and tends to sag when carrying weight long-term. As a result, she says, cabinets made with particleboard won't hold up as well to the wear-and-tear commonly experienced by kitchen cabinetry, and may have to be replaced sooner". I beg to differ with this statement. As I and others have pointed out before, it is the QUALITY of each and every material used in cabinet construction (or any carpentry) that matters. No manufacturer I know of uses particleboard for kitchen cabinets without applying a veneer of some sort. It may be wood, or laminate, or melamine - and what matters is the quality level of that veneer. Not all veneers are the same in quality and durability, any more than flooring materials are, or even plywood for that matter. I have Kraftmaid frameless cabs bought in 1989 and thoroughly and totally tested in a hard-usage environment - I love to cook and I don't baby anything I own. I bang pots around, slam and lean on cab doors with all my 200-plus pounds...basically giving them no mercy. I adore these cabs, with high-density particleboard cores, laminate exterior and high-quality melamine interior. I put dishes away soaking wet without a qualm. Everything cleans with a green scrubbie and a spritz of Windex. We had a six month-long slow leak in the sink cab and there was no substrate damage at all, just a very slight bubble to the melamine interior. One of my Lazy Susan base cabs had a loosening hinge on the bi-fold door. I'd always thought particleboard couldn't be redrilled - wrong! My handyman filled it with quick-setting epoxy, redrilled the hole, and it's been fine ever since (going on over 4 yrs now). No shelves have bowed - I have lots of experience with particleboard, since we own thousands of books and every single one of our 24 full-height 36" wide bookcases are made of the stuff, either veneered or just painted. Some of the bookcases are thirty-five years old and have been moved six times now (and also gone through two earthquakes). They are also loaded with art books weighing up to 85 lbs per shelf and can handle it without bowing - the trick with particleboard is to not exceed 32" in width without center support. High-density particleboard, when properly veneered or painted, is just as durable as 3/4" plywood. But it IS heavier, definitely not as easy to shove around or move by yourself. We have bathroom cabs made of 1/2" plywood billed as "all wood" - the stuff is flimsy, wobbly and hideous. I'll take high-quality particleboard with a good veneer any day, and know that it will last many decades without any more need for care than an "all wood" cabinet does. And please, I don't believe the inference that particleboard falls apart in water but plywood does not. I've watched plenty of interior plywood scraps disintegrate in the sun and rain - they simply delaminate, and turn into thin crispy layers that can be broken apart with your fingers. Oh, and my painted particleboard cabs? They are painted with latex paint, and I scrub fingerprints and dirt off with a wet sponge - no problems. Only marine-grade plywood can withstand water, and no company, big or small, makes cabs out of that stuff! This is the reason, BTW, that all flooring mfgs now require this stuff to be used as subflooring or you will void your warranty (something DIYers need to be aware of); they know regular plywood does not stand up to water and thus changed their warranty language to specifically exclude it.