Cleats are attached to the ceiling for the molding to be fastened to, and nailers to the tops of the cabinets. If you omited the nailers on the cabinets they can be screwed in place from inside the cabinets. You may need some bar clamps to hold the wood in position as you run screws from inside the cabinet through the top and into the wood. You can try and hold it tightly in position, but watch out if you drive a screw into your hand. I anchor cleats to the joists if they line up correctly rarely seem to though. :-) Molly anchors are also suitable if coupled with some glue (I like a polyurethane here) as long as you use a nail gun to set the nails. The moly bolts tend to work loose if you use a regular hammer from the repeated blows when driving the nails. The single sharp blow from a nail gun will not disturb things as much. If you need to use apile of molly bolts a setting tool works much better than the screw expansion built into them. The tool grabs the screw and pulls on it as you work a trigger.

I want to thank all of you for responding so quickly. The KD came up with the design, we found an independent contractor (MISTAKE) who agreed to work in conjunction with the KD and do the install. When this problem cropped up, he said we had hired him to hang cabinets and that is what he has done... We had called the KD to come look at the install. She said her installer would have caught this before it reached completion point and brought it to her attention. After reading your responses, we contacted the KD. She has agreed to fix the problems. She will order the additional pieces required fix the issues. I am happy that she agreed to do this. Thanks for posting the links, pictures and suggestions. It helped us when we talked things over with her. You guys are the best. I was reading all the posts and getting inspiration from the forum posts when we were looking at cabinets, granite, sinks, faucets, the whole enchilada. Our cabinets are Omega Brookside Cherry(nutmeg), oak hardwood floor golden/honey finish, faucet Delta Leland, granite Brazilian sand, backsplash will be almond travertine with slate and frosted glass accents. We used both knobs and pulls, Amerock Padma in pewter finish. Again I want to thank all of you for being my guides through this. I didn't ask, but read, and took my inspiration from your posts.

I'd consider simple blinds everywhere, with no valances, and only doing the bottom two-thirds of the tall windows. If you don't have small children, you could even use a bottom up on the tall windows so that the stack would be at the bottom when open. For color, if you are looking for a warm, barely gray, neutral, you might want to look at SW popular gray cut down 50%. It's a nice neutral that has some life to it, changing moods in different lighting throughout the dat and works well with almost anything. We used it in our old house and are using it again in our new house. To be perfectly honest, I don't see undertones well when selecting paint and after lucking into it in the old house, I was pretty sure it would be safe in the new. Even though we had used it before I still painted poster boards and moved them around the new house at different times of day to be sure it would work.

I'd do the opposite of what everyone is suggesting here. I'd put the sink under the beam and move the dishwasher to the left side. Then above the sink I'd do no cabinets at all. Then I'd extend all cabinets to the height above the fridge(42 or 36 or whatever it is you want). This has a few advantages. One, you get a much longer run of useful counter to the left of your sink. It also moves your utilitarian appliance away from the door. Even the prettiest dishwashers are.....dishwashers. You also can add some nice lighting above the sink, and it leaves some open wall space to do something flashy with backsplash tile. You also end up with no cabinets anywhere near the beam, keeping it from looking like any sort of interruption to the eye.