First of all, congratulations on your new house. The kitchen space looks really fantastic. It has a lovely island and it looks to be open to a living space with a beautiful fireplace. If it were me, I would choose stainless steel range and fridge and either try to sell the dishwasher as well, or wait out it's death before replacing. My oak kitchen (darker, not golden) had bisque appliances and I slowly replaced them with stainless steel. I really like the crisp, cool, contemporary look of stainless with oak. But I also think black or white can be successful. Your kitchen has a lot of warm neutral tones, so I think the stainless would look great, and it sounds like you prefer that as well. Don't be afraid to take your time making your new house fit into your style. It's ok to have one (or more) mismatched appliances while you're saving up or waiting for its demise.

To mry193--YW, mry. Go ahead, take the plunge! Easy for me to commit you to all this agony, eh? :-) It is hard,sometimes, but it's fun, too, and so gratifying when you get something right. But that's the thing, as in cooking or buying a blouse we think is going to be absolutely perfect with "those" slacks...no matter how much practice we have, we all make mistakes now and then. We get "it" home and it doesn't look right, even if we have years of practice and have successfully executed color schemes before. So I say, don't be intimidated, jump in and when you mess things up, you can do what I still have to do often enough (even after thirty years, two apartments, one rental, five owned homes and probably, counting renos, a couple dozen color schemes): repaint or change the shower curtain. :-D What are you picturing in your mind's eye? What kind of colors do you see in your dream scheme? To hoosiergirl: Ditto your agent; you built a beautiful home, and I love the way you put everything together. [For skeet, if you see this and look at hoosier's pics, the very first photo I saw had a good example of the visual linking. Look at the way the finish on the door on the left side relates well to the floor color on the right, even though the wall colors are different and there's a different (carpet? rug?) color between the door and the other room's floor. So, even though the two areas are different, they're tied together with the same undertones and similar finishes.] To hoosier, again--That's a lovely kitchen, and you seem to have done a much better job than I have in using what look to be almost the exact same colors/tones (as nearly as I can tell from pics) in our kitchens. Aghhhh! Help me, hoosier! LOL I agree with you. We built this house not quite four years ago. The hardest part was picking the paint. I'm happy with a lot of the house, but so far I've repainted the kitchen twice, and as I noted above, I'm having to do it again. I hope I get it "right" this time! I was happy to see your cabinet color used with black appliances. That's what I have, except for the cooktop and fan (SS). I am struggling to get some cheer/energy in this room. The main difference is that I have the wooden cabinets on the perimeter of the room and the (soft) white cabinetry on the island. Do you have decent natural light in that kitchen? Mine's okay until about 2 p.m., then it gets dreary. There's a LOT of wood in here, with the cabs, the plank floors (a little darker than your tile, but the same reddish undertone), and a farmhouse table. There's a lot of warm painted furniture (chairs, pie keep, a linen chest), but it's still a heavy room. The walls were originally some kind of off-white (maybe...BM Ballet?). I thought it would be nice, because of all the (Early American) colors in the furniture, but, no. I think the white had too grey a base. Then I hand-mixed a soft green that looks close to the same hue as yours, except a bit lighter. I thought I liked it, but it became draggy as the weather got greyer. I also used matte, and maybe that was a problem. So...now I'm going to try a warm white (something like BM Navajo or Calming Cream) in *eggshell* on the walls) and a lighter, warm gold (like Marblehead Gold or Dorset Gold) on all the doors and trim. Like your house, there's a lot of trim/millwork. The palette on this floor mostly comes off of BM Philadelphia Cream/Guilford Green/Palladian Blue/Goldfinch. That's a beautiful fan hood, btw. Maybe warmer metal finishes would help around my kitchen. Anyway, nicely done!

Before/after videos online so I wouldn't have to post so many pictures. (First two of grandson, skip to videos 3 & 4) Https://vimeo.com/user12732009/videos 1. Experimented (Mar. 2013) inside one door; days later it passed scratchtest. Eight months later cabinets like new. I had all materials from previous project so cabinet project cost nothing. 2. Removed doors, drawers, knobs, very light sanding outsides only, very little ebony stain, one coat semi gloss poly clear coat. Took 4 days, 3. Bought and stained oak molding for soffet, light oak, then ebony; perfect match. Cut scallops off the over-sink trim, and tossed the railing on hood vent and soffet. Spent money on labor and material to finish project. 4. Blue storm laminate FX180; large pieces were costly but I had no expensive corner cuts (so no seams), saved $$ using plain edges, more realistic anyway. PS got moving packet from postoffice and used the included Lowes 10% off coupon (on countertop). 5. A friend removed and repurposed old countertop (no removal or dump fees). 6. Designed my backsplash and had it put over old laminate back splash. Large tile over stove was $300 display, I paid $50. Plus I saved on glass tile that would have been used instead. My kitchen isn't as dark as it appears in videos. Hubby was very repentant for yelling that I would surely ruin the cabinets. Here is a link that might be useful: none

Your ideas are possibilities, Funkycamper. We talked about doing glass over the beadboard, too, but I do wonder if it would look funny.(?) I also wonder how successfully we could blend "real" beadboard with ceramic beadboard. That's part of why I was considering transitioning to a totally different medium behind the range, so that it wouldn't be real and fake right next to each other. Thanks for your vote of confidence! I revel in all of the possibilities, LOL, it's making a "final" decision that's tough! Thanks for sharing the tile you got, iroll. Since you did the beadboard only behind the range, I'm curious what you did elsewhere. I don't think crackle snaps or pops for DH, unfortunately. I found some gorgeous (or so *I* thought) crackle tile by Enser. DH response was "Oh, yuck! What's wrong with that tile?" So much for that, LOL. Your question of how much the eye "needs" is a good one, Rococogurl. I don't know. I love color, and I like neutrals, too. I'm not sure how much my eye, or the eyes of my family can handle. I also know that I love to change things around, so committing to a color feels a bit constrictive. I get you on the difficult appliance choice. So glad to hear that your final decision is made! You must be relieved. I was talking to a friend whose son works in China. He said, "Mom, life is so much simpler over here!" She visited him and saw that they don't have much kitchen to speak of, they wash their dishes in the bathroom. She questioned his idea of "simplicity", but he then explained how if they need a fridge there are only 2 choices at the store. A big fridge or a little fridge. That's it. There is no agonizing over which thing to choose. I don't care for the medallion/mural in the picture I shared, either. I didn't associate it with a certain era, necessarily (says the girl who just put her 1997 Chevy van to its final rest...) but I think I'd tire of the same picture back there, day in and day out. My daughter and I were talking about how we can't wait to turn the calender to see the new picture each month because we're tired of the old one. So, no stone murals for this household! : ) I don't mean to be a tease! ; ) Let's put it this way, right now I feel like I'll be as surprised how this kitchen looks as you will be, if that's any consolation. I plan to post pictures, no worries! Thanks for sharing the picture of your beadboard tile combo, diymom79. Both my mom and my MIL have the vinyl beadboard in their bathrooms and love it, too. MIL has hers with the wide plank look. It's very pretty. I feel like I'm at a beautiful beach cottage when I'm in there. : ) I picked up some fabric samples today from a local store. They are quilt fabrics, so I don't know if they'd be a good choice for curtains, but they do give me an idea of how the colors work with the cupboards. Fun! I like them both--Oops. One is light colored background with blue flowers, and the other one is a black background with pink and cream flowers with green leaves. Maybe I could make both summer and winter curtains?? I need to go to the city to find decorator fabric, but the weather isn't being very cooperative for that endeavor. So, if I must, I'll stare at the cotton samples for a few days. Here's a picture, so that I'm not teasing, LOL. This post was edited by laughable on Fri, Jan 30, 15 at 23:10