Have you checked the Finished Kitchen Blog? You'll see some great ones there. I love Cali_Wendy's wooden valance over her sink. You can do a search for it below on this page or use the more reliable Google search if you can't find it here. There was also a thread not too long ago about WT (window treatments) in the kitchen. You might search for that too.

Don't mean to hijack the thread but I have the same question as OP. The house has (sort of) transitional style. The current moulding is very traditional and clashes with my contemporary streamlined kitchen. Contemporary works in the house as long as it is not "stark contemporary", iykwim. But I am having a very hard trim finding a trim and a wall tile wouldn't work for me, unfortunately. Please keep the ideas coming!

Sigh. Yeah. It would be great. I can get 20' in the kitchen by demoing the laundry, I suppose, but I have to wash clothes sometime :) But I'm planning to take out the walk in pantry because at 3' it's pretty useless. Okay, seriously, the most cooking I ever did was in a tiny kitchen with a tiny fridge, three small, lower cabinets, one of which was the sink, and a shelf. There was also a tiny table and a two ring gas hotplate on a cart thing. It was rural, abroad and not much prepared food (i.e., box cookies, bottled salad dressing, etc.) to be had so I made *everything* except the bread. (Yes, you can bake on a gas ring!) The cupboards mostly held the dishes. The shelf had the spices and staples. I'm stopping because it's not a very interesting story. The point is that, yes, you can survive with a really small pantry. What you have to do is adapt the way you live. Is there someone else in the house (garage, barn, wherever) where you can store bulk items? Can you live without them? Can you store papergoods in an underused vanity cabinet? Do you use a lot of canned/packaged/bottled pantry items daily? Can you make do with only having one or two of any particular item, and go shopping more often? Figure out how you use your pantry, what you want to keep there, what you've been dreaming of keeping there since you've been dreaming of cooking in the new kitchen, and you'll know whether the size will work for you. One thing you can do if you need absolute storage rather than superorganized storage is go against the fashion and get plain shelves instead of pullouts. That'll give you an extra couple inches on each shelf. If you're not good at organizing cupboards, however, so that you always know where to lay your hands on the tomato paste and the kids know exactly where to find the peanut butter, pullouts might be more useful than those extra couple inches.

Apologies to the regulars on this board. I've linked this about 1000 times, but here goes again.... Build from about 5 years ago. Integrity with wood interior. Click on link. Marvin Intergity Windows new build.