Can you do just the top portion of the cabinets in glass fronts? I totally understand budget. Adding glass means adding lights, imo. So it all adds up.

I have seen several kitchens with 9' & 10' heights and cabinets that go to the top and they look great. Your kitchen is beautiful and love the hutches.

In addition to extra cost, I would have to put "pretty" items in glass fronts instead of the "junk" I need to store. I could stop the cabinet 1' from ceiling and just have the open space but it bugs me to pay the same price for a shorter cabinet to stack.

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I would go 10 foot of cabinet and 1 foot of moulding

9 and 10 foot ceiling heights yes, but you're talking 3' more of cabinets. I redid my cabinet layout where I have 10' ceilings and have broken my cabinets up with some glass to show you what yours would look like. I increased the ceiling height to 11' and put in all closed cabinets above the 42" uppers. Frankly I think it will overpower the kitchen.

In comparison here is my layout with 10' ceilings and glass cabinets above the sink. (Also the cabinets above the regular cabinets to the left of the fridge will all be glass.

Ditto CP Artist. If you're doing 11' I think you need some glass. One of my favorite pictures of an historic house has at least 12' ceilings and the cabs go all the way up. Top ones are solid doors. Bottom are glass front. If it's an option get them prepped for glass then buy the glass yourself. I got the glass for mine at lowes for under $30. That was for seven 30x12" doors. Taller than I think 42" you need to go to an auto glass place or an actual glass store. :P

Maybe look for pics of old Victorians? They tend to have high ceilings and cabinetry.

Here's a couple of photos that may help you visualize what it would look like.
The first photo is a kitchen with solid cabinets on a 10' ceiling height. You could add 1' of crown with some nice detailing to break up the expanse of the crown, as shown in the second photo. You could do this without the onlay and it would still be beautiful.

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Antiquesilver, who doesn't post any more, has 11' ceilings, with tall china cabinets. Pics of her kitchen in this thread.

Scroll down to Jill's post.. 10 ft ceilings

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2482954/upper-cabinets-to-ceiling-or-not-please-help

Another good thread..

http://ths.gardenweb.com/discussions/2579383/how-high-is-too-high

mythreesonsnc did it perfectly IMO

Yes, need a ladder!

Folks there is a BIG difference between 9' or 10' ceilings and 11' ceilings. If the OP were considering some cabinets with glass, then I'd say that she'd be fine with 11' cabinets since it wouldn't be so heavy looking, but she's planning on doing all solid cabinets. It's going to look very top heavy.

She will be having 36" lowers, an 18" space for counters and then she's going to have 78" of cabinets on top with nothing to break up the expanse of wood cabinets.

Again look at the two drawings I did and how the upper drawing appears almost to "crush" the lower cabinets. The balance is way off unless she can break up the uppers in some other way.

Mama said:

Antiquesilver, who doesn't post any more, has 11' ceilings, with tall china cabinets. Pics of her kitchen in this thread.

And if you notice, she used glass cabinets to break up the oppressiveness of solid cabinets.

The first picture Wilson showed looks spectacular but again, it's with glass cabinets.

cpartist you mention 2 drawings you did but where can I find the drawings? Thanks

You need a couple of glass cabinets with the very top be solid. Use 1' crown and leave room for library ladder.

The glass will make it not oppressive.

My parents had no glass in our 18' ceilings. To be honest, I feel like the pics with glass in add interest and make you look rather than a solid wall of cabinetry which sort of blends in. My vote would be no glass even if it were the same price as solid. We did have a rail horizontally at about 15 feet to attach our ladder too. It was a librarians ladder. I have just got off the phone to my mum to see if she can scan any old photos in and email them to me. She doesn't know where they are but if she does get them and emails, I'll post pics here. meanwhile, here are some pics.

High, non glazed but have a cubby hole detail which won't cost like the glass does and will break up the wall of cabinets look and you could have lights in there and will only need a few pretty things to display, so keeping costs down

High cabinets but glazed. I find them more full on visually. Not as restful. But included them for the height AND the ladder! Just like what my parents had!

Not to the ceiling but very tall nonetheless and to me not imposing

And finally, even in a medium oak and small corner kitchen, they still look great. And there's the rail again, which suggests a ladder!

I know I said finally but here's finally, finally! ( till my mums pics come through that is! Oh and I got the ceiling height wrong, it was 14feet not 18. Felt very high when I was young that's all I know!)

Everyone is focused on the height but the real issue is the overall room proportions, a too narrow room is going to make this feel like cabinet canyon. Just because you can put cabinets up the wall doesn't mean you should consider doing so at all if the room is narrow.

The kitchen/breakfast area is open to the family room so it isn't a narrow closed off room/space. It would be just one 13' long wall with the range hood and possibly continue down the wall in the breakfast area which is another 10' span but all the same wall.

Has the OP said whether the cabinets will be stained or painted? That's gonna make a difference.

I agree with cpartist. Look at her rendering of 11 ft. of cabinets to the ceiling. The bottom cabs look like squatty miniatures.

Do you have the option of more space between the counters and cabinets?

The cabinets will be painted white. Including more space between the counters and cabinets is not an option.

If cpartist took out the cabinets just above the kitchen sink (but kept the ones above those), I don't think things would look as squatty.

My kitchen will have the range hood on that wall with sink on the island. The range hood is about 4'6" wide and have cabinets above it and 3 cabinet doors on each side.

Do you need/would use all the extra storage? Are you fine with using the ladder to access such tall cabs? For me all that extra space would be wasted because I wouldn't want to get on a ladder that high to retrieve anything kept there. For someone else all that extra storage might be worth every inch.

Personally I wouldn't choose to build closed cabs to 11' ft for aesthetic reasons. But if I chose to buy a house with such a feature... I would probably think of it as unique, old world style in a way.

A few other options to break it up but not use glass.

I think any level of detail on the door helps. Notice the white cabs have exposed black hinges, the wood cabs have some sort of uniqueness to them. I think the bottom picture wins, though I think it's less than 11'. Would you consider a different door style for the bottom door (like in that picture?)

Here is an open-concept kitchen with to-the-ceiling cabs on just one side.

cpartist you mention 2 drawings you did but where can I find the drawings? Thanks

If you scrolled up the thread, they are both there. I made two comments one right after the other and posted two drawings. Here they are again. First is 10' ceilings with glass inserts above the sink.

This is 11' ceilings with no glass insert.

Notice how top heavy the cabinets feel without anything to break them up?

Somersetlass said:

My parents had no glass in our 18' ceilings. To be honest, I feel like the pics with glass in add interest and make you look rather than a solid wall of cabinetry which sort of blends in. My vote would be no glass even if it were the same price as solid.

I agree with you if it's a full wall of just cabinets. I think a full wall of just cabinets looks very smart and can actually make a space feel larger.

However once you put in counters it makes the upper cabinets feel like they are "coming down" on the lower cabinets.

maryle5 do you have a layout of the wall with cabinet widths? Also what type of cabinet's are you planning on doing? If you have a layout of the cabinets I could probably do an elevation like I did above for you to see.

I found a couple of pics - it's very hard to find a kitchen with 11 foot ceilings that does not have ceiling beams or a coffered ceiling.

This pic is 12 ft ceilings, but the cabinets go to 132" (11 ft). The designer states the lower uppers are 42" & the upper uppers are between 18" & 21". Notice that there appears to be fascia board or something between the two sets of uppers, in the area that they put the pole for the ladder.

You mentioned that you can't have glass because of the cost. Most of the pics of 10 ft & above have a hefty build-up crown molding. That can get expensive.

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Here's a much simpler one. This one is actually 11 foot ceilings. It looks like they applied moldings to the wall (soffet or fascia board) above the cabinets. You could apply more traditional looking pieces of molding.

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Somerset gave me an idea after seeing her examples of how it might be workable. If the cabinets are not stacked one on top of another, but instead have a "crown" or some sort of molding separating the two sets of cabinets, I think it could work because the horizontal "crown" then helps to break up the long vertical line.

Funny Romy just had the same thought as me.

My friends used to own a Victorian mansion with the original cabinets. I'm guessing the space was about 12'x15' and that the ceilings were roughly 14' tall. Two walls had cabinets to the ceiling. No glass cabinets. It looked awesome. The lower cabinets were quite tall. Maybe 40-45"? And the rest went almost to the ceiling. There was only a thin 2" or so of molding at the top. I wish they still lived there so I could get a photo for you.

ETA: They didn't have moldings between the two sets of upper cabinets but they did have a wider piece of plain wood separating both sets of cabinets. I'm guessing it was may be 3" wide. Cpartist's drawing reminded me.

Sure, but what is the kitchen layout? I think that has the most impact on how the cabinets will look.

I'm in the minority here, but I don't like the look of the 11' cabinets at all. They make the space like one giant kitchen cabinet, and suck the air right out of the room.

Layout is cabinets across back wall with range hood (with cabinet trim around it) which includes breakfast area, wall at breakfast area end has windows, wall at other end has 8' of linear cabinets including ovens/fridge, and there is an island that centers with the range hood and other side of island is family room

Oh boy, I'm going to have to agree that might look very out of proportion and top heavy if you take it to the ceiling height of 11'.

132" - 36" base cab - 18" or 20" countertop to upper cab space. So are we talking 6 1/2 feet of upper cabinets??? That's a lot!

If you are using a 42" for the first upper, you would have 34-36" left. Am I calculating that right?

I remember researching this when I was planning for my stacked uppers. The recommendation for stacked cabinets is about 1/3 over 2/3 for a balanced look. So in your case that would be a 21" cab over your 42" cab. If you did a normal size crown molding on top that would look very nice imho. I would think that would give you plenty of storage.

I did have this photo saved and it doesn't look too bad to me. I don't know how tall the ceiling is and they are not the 1/3, 2/3. It may be the ladder rail breaking it up?

I think I saved it because I was loving the cabinet color and the cow painting! Lol!

Rebunky you figured out why it looks ok. it's the horizontal band that is breaking up the uppermost cabinets from the upper cabinets.

I don't have a diagram of the cabinets but checked measurements and the range hood (enclosed in cabinetry with corbels @ each end) will be 5'6" wide which leaves 3'9" of cabinet doors on each side so I assume 3 doors. One end of the run ends in drywall which holds the pantry door entry. The other end begins the breakfast area which will have lower cabinets with built in desk (6" lower than lower kitchen cabinets but in a continuous run) and upper cabinets that stop at 8' high. Those uppers have a shelf area in the center and 4 doors with glass. I could probably make those solid doors then put glass fronts in kitchen 42" cabinets with solid doors stacked above. More like cpartist's drawing.

I personally would do two doors, not three. 15-21" doors are (from what I've read/seen on GW) ideal. You'll be having very tall cabinets that I think would look too tall and skinny with three doors, as they would be around 15" wide but taller than standard cabinets. 23" seems like a better width to me. Maybe CPArtist can mock it up both ways?

The 3 doors I mentioned is on each side of the range hood to fill the 3'9" space, not going up the wall. There would only be 2 cabinets above the countertop. The first would be 42" and then the stacked one on top.

I understand what you were saying. I'm talking about door widths. You have 45" on either side of the range. I think instead of three 15" wide (or narrower if doing inset or partial overlay doors) by 42" tall doors, it would be a nicer overall look to do two 22" wide x 42" tall doors. It would also save you money because it's cheaper to do wider cabinets as opposed to doing more, narrower cabinets. Does that make sense?

Got it. I think you are right about the width of the doors.

Before you make the investment in cabinets, you might download free SketchUp and mock up the space to check whether it feels right to you.

Enjoy the process!