Thanks for the ideas... Mom2reese; I love the C.P. kitchen! I'm a bit worried about all the business of butcher block with the "mottled" marble. What do you think? I also love the idea of stainless IF i can get it in my budget. I do have a local tradesman who can work with me on this... i'll have to check out his prices. Bill, good pic... that gives me a good visual w/ the dark countertops. My very first plan (before budget cuts) was to go with black granite. I'll have to check out the laminates, I hear they've come a long way. Justnot martha; I know exactly which ikea laminate you're talking about ... i have 9 slabs in my basement which has about 80 linear feat of cabinetry in it :) (we bought the ikea out & the salesman was snarky about it, but i guess he'll live :) any other suggestions anyone?

I'm in the process of finishing maple cabinets for my kitchen. We bough the cabinets unfinished. I've used pre-stain to avoid blotching, but maple is very dense and it barely took the stain, it came out much lighter than planned. Actually really like the color, even thought it came out as a happy accident. I'm planning to use dark granite counter tops. You can make your cabinets darker by applying wipe on stain to tone the color darker, and change out the counter-top, that would make your colors pop. I would not paint my maple cabinets, as you said you can always paint it later. Either way use oil based stain or paint, the finish will come out much much nicer.

Polyblend grout renew is available at Home Depot. It comes in about 40 colors and cost about $12 a bottle. You would probably be able to do your whole house twice with one bottle. I helped a friend do this to their kitchen sink tile and floor tile (using two different colors) and the stuff was fabulous. It really improved the appearance of both dramatically. Better yet, the grout is no longer getting dirty like all the old grout used to. If this had been available (or if it was available had been widely known) I suspect we would all still have tile countertops rather than granite… be sure to follow their prep instructions...as it is drying it looks very uneven in appearance, don't panic, when it is dry it's very solid color.

From your photo this looks like a protective coating or some cleaning product was applied to the honed finish, possibly being the wrong kind/type? Joseph is right, I wouldn't remove these, you will cause yourself more trouble. Honed finishes are not very forgiving either, so not sure what the real problem is?