Haven't checked here in awhile~ glad I did michellemarie- Our trim is all knotty alder. I went and looked for the stain, it was a dark walnut stain. I am very happy with all the appliances. My only two regrets, I still regret. The fridge isn't that big a deal, but I really don't like the low microwave. I didn't want the Danze bridge faucet. I liked the look, but thought it would be a pain to clean around. DH won that decision. No big deal to clean around. Glad we got it.(don't tell him though ~ (: The walnut countertop is pretty durable. Just have to remember not to put anything hot on it, like we can on granite. I don't think I'd like it in my whole kitchen, but for the island I love the way it looks. Good luck! Will be looking forward to your pictures. jojo, I will email you a link to better pictures

Thanks everyone.......As one who just got out of the blue, ha! when we moved here 7 yrs ago , I haven't really wanted to jump back on the blue bandwagon totally. I was ahead of the blue phrase with blue & white toile wallpaper in DR in my last house and LR sunny yellow with blue and white accents BUT who knows.......might change around to that again. FC blue & white small checked custom drapes are still upstairs packed up. This new blue seems more of a grayed blue to me though.......almost like a spa blue. Out here on the lake, it is freezing cold in the winter and hot hot in the summer. HOuse is facing west right into the sun all afternoon in the summer and cold wind comes across the lake in the winter blowing straight onto our front. The blue seems like a chilly color to me sometimes but it may just be the direction this house is facing. Am loving all the websites and checking them out........thanks everyone for your helpful info and websites! Bonnie

This topic stressed me out a bit since we are the middle of work opening our kitchen to the dining room in our 1906 house. I'm already worried about whether everything will turn out ok. We thought a lot about this, though, so I'll weigh in. I apologize for the length - brevity may be the soul of wit, but it apparently is not my strong suit. We moved to our current 1906 Arts & Crafts house from a Victorian farmhouse which had the kitchen isolated from the dining room and living room, separated by a bathroom. We found it hard when we had people over since they were either crammed in the kitchen without enough room to participate in the cooking or they were way at the other end of the house. We saw that we had a pattern of having people over in the summer when we could congregate outside by the grill, but not much in the winter. We have a very close community of friends and we enjoy sharing meals in a very casual, family sort of way with kids playing, adults talking and cooking. We also found the dining room more difficult to use for everyday meals. Additionally, it was not possible to carry on conversations when in the two spaces or moving between them for setting, clearing etc. I enjoy cooking, but also like interacting rather than being isolated. When we decided to move we were looking to resolve this split and have a more connected common space. We saw many houses (and almost bought one) with family room additions connected to the kitchen which left unused living and dining rooms. These rooms had become merely somewhere to walk through, heat and cool. Some had little or no furniture in the abandoned formal rooms. We realized that we did not really need this redundant space. There is an excellent book by Sarah Susanka (Taunton Press), The Not So Big House. It talks quite eloquently about using space in an efficient manner. I personally like having one place to eat all meals. I like eating at the dining room table for just the reasons mentioned in posts above - slowing down, sitting on a chair instead of stools, in a space designed for eating, around a table (preferably round) which facilitates a relaxed, shared experience. The truth is that since we do not have servants, we often need to go back and forth between the spaces. Houses at the turn of the last century were often built to fit a more formal way of living which placed servants (even modest homes) or the women of the house out of the way while the hosts entertained in formal rooms. They were also built prior to the use of refrigerators. When we moved into this new-to-us 1906 house it had a (tiny) butler's pantry for staging serving, while the refrigerator was crammed into the food pantry in such a way that required near-contortionist moves to get a carton of milk. The only storage was open to mice or around the corner in the butler's pantry cabinet. Counter space was limited to the two drainboards of the 1950's metal sink. This was not the room of efficient post-work cooking and cleaning, much less any pleasant shared time. One of us would quite frequently get trapped in the pantry by another trying to get something. The rest of the first floor of our beloved home showed signs of the revolutionary changes that were happening in houses at the time, shifting from formal double parlors to more flowing open rooms with wide framed openings between them. I am in Oak Park, home to Frank Lloyd Wright, though our home was part of a far more modest working class development. It is stunning to see the differences among the different houses being built during the first part of the century. As central heating and radiators allowed rooms to open up, a social shift away from formality and toward more relaxed, real connection was also under way. Now that the social and technological changes that have transpired over the last century have ushered in a time of shared cooking, I welcome kitchens and floorplans that facilitate that. There are other times in history and other cultures today in which the communal kitchen holds a significant place in a community. Our new kitchen provides inward facing space where people can prep around an island. In our open floor plan I envision friends and family cooking and talking together, either within the de-cramped kitchen or between it and the dining room next to it. We are also concerned about creating something that respects the house's history, fits in with the architecture and creates a sense of two spaces with different but related activities. The disfunctional pantries were ommitted in favor of refrigeration and dish storage near the new dishwasher (uses less water than hand washing). We removed the wall between the kitchen and the dining room and are replacing a portion of it with shallow (12 inch)cabinets that create a partial division and open to both sides. There will be a 6 foot visual opening on top,stepping in to a 3 foot walking space at the bottom in a sort of key hole shape. As much as we love the big pocket door in the large opening between the dining room and the foyer, I doubt that we will use it. I just can't see part of our family sitting in the living room smoking cigars while another part of the family or servants quietly set the table out of sight. It has been a delicate dance trying to mesh the eras. We are having a duplicate of the missing original built-in hutch along one side of the dining room built, but it will have some wood doors in place of the original glass to house some less aesthetic items that have no other storage on the first floor since the one closet was turned into a WC in the 50's. We got a picture of the original at an open house across the street and noticed gloves and scarves displayed where china and silver of another time once shone. Life is not static and it seems to me that a key component to navigating the ever-shifting impermanence is to be flexible. I cross my fingers hoping that my ideas about homes and people actually work out in this re-working of our lovely old house. I do not disagree with any of the prior posts, I just wanted to add some thoughts.

You can use magnets on some stainless--my frigidaire will hold magnets. How much the finish shows fingerprints and smudges and how it is to clean varies. My frigidaire refrigerator and range don't show fingerprints badly and are super easy to clean--quick wipe down with a damp rag gets the looking pristine again. My Bosch dishwasher is a whole different story. So if keeping the appliances looking clean is your concern, it is possible to get stainless that is easy--easier than the old textured white appliances I have had in the past. If you just want a vote, I'd go stainless. I don't love stainless (we have it because I do love induction cooking and at our price point, stainless is the only option). But my mom has black appliances and I really dislike how they seem to loom and suck the light out of what is a fairly big space.