creekylis-I was in the same conundrum as you and couldn't find pics for the life of me. It was so hard to picture how it would look but I took the chance and I am happy that I did. I went from a very dark kitchen and everything in my house is dark stained wood and there is a LOT of it! The PO was a finish carpenter(carpentress) and it shows. I love stained wood but enough was enough. These pics are of the only item besides the fireplace that is original to the room. My DH would not let me swap out the windows and therefore the conundrum was created. Please ignore the two different tiles on the ledge-our reno is still incomplete. The large bow window replaced a slightly smaller one that literally took a hit in the demo and had to be replaced(i should have told my GC, who is my DB to have another accident over in the corner windows, too :I am happy the way it turned out in the end, but alot of angst over this decision. Good luck on making yours. Unfortunately the pics at photobucket are much darker than on my monitor and maybe if i e-mailed them direct to you it would show better? If you'd like send me your e-mail and I can do that for you. HTH Here is a link that might be useful: Painted Wood Trim w/stained windows

Hi, hobokenkitchen Guidelines are just guidelines, and my husband and I never have felt crowded with the aisle and dimensions that we have in our kitchen -- true we each have a body mass index under 25! But things feel efficient in there: we can easily turn from one line of counters or from the range to the island without taking more than a couple of steps, and the 24" square island utility sink is easily accessible from both sides of the narrow island, from the prep counter against the windows and from the range on the interior wall. The refrigerator/freezer doors are not 36" wide, either, so it doesn't swing too much into the space, and even when the dishwasher door is fully open (on the window side, to the left of the island utility sink) it is possible to sidle around it. I think my only concern having lived with this arrangement for over a year is: it will be interesting to see how well the cork floor holds up over the years, because we really do cover the same territory on that floor over and over. So far no sign of extra wear. But I have extra cork tiles saved! Good luck to you, and thanks to CoCo for supplying those links. lynn

We have a similar set-up (see below) and decided to go with a granite ledge and frame out the window in wood. Our cabinets on that run are also a creamy white, but we had the window frame painted white-white, just like our door frames and the molding in adjacent rooms. As you can see, we have not yet put in the backsplash (some stone tile TBD when I feel like making more decisions). My plan is for the backsplash tiles to go up to right under the cabinets (18"?) and then carry that over at that height the remaining few inches to the window frame. I don't think I want to carry the tile all the way up there, since I plan to put up some little window treatment up at the top anyway. Once the backsplash is up, I will likely have the window frame repainted to match the cabinets (like the molding above the cabinets). I suspect that will look better than regular white, though, frankly, it's not really that noticeable right now. By the way, I also got sick of the remodel, primarily because of all the things that were done poorly and needed to be redone, so I just took a break for several months (mostly the decorating part, which had stopped being fun for me). I even had to stop my daily GW habit because everything house-related was such a downer. The break was good for me; I now feel ready to get back on the horse. Good luck with the remainder of your remodel.

My ceilings are around 99" to 99 1/2 " tall. I used 45" high, all one piece upper wall cabinets....hung 53" from the finished floor. That is one inch lower than the 54" standard. I used a 3/4" ogee light rail. I like that it's a tad lower and I have no problems with my counter gadgets fitting. My quartz tops are 3cm which helps me gain about 3/8". Here's the math: 99.25" ceiling less 53" (where the bottom of the wall cabinet hangs" less 45" (height of wall cabinet) which left me a 1 1/4" gap at the top. I used a 1 7/8" high crown molding on my INSET cabinetry.....so the crown filled the gap and covered about a 1/2" of the top rail. Here's my kitchen photo, still unfinished. I'm waiting for my painter friend to slow down so he can paint my kitchen :-) I did the smaller uppers for a more vintage, old house look to match my 1930 Colonial. Kompy