My kitchen is similar, although instead of black countertops I've marble and our island (base) is black -- but it's still pretty close. We have a v. sheer grey-blue (BM Pearl River) on our walls. I think the "classic kitchen" scheme can handle any color: in my mind's eye I can easily see tangerine walls, taupe walls, chartreuse walls, celery walls, chocolate walls, cream walls, fuchsia walls, lavender walls -- I think anything you want and which will make you happy can be done beautifully with your white / black kitchen.

I have a kitchen's worth of Ikea Lidingo patiently waiting to be assembled and I'm (hopefully) going for an old world look. At first I was going to paint the doors a cream color and then glaze them, but the prep work was enormous. On a whim, I took a door and painted a light line of Minwax Polyshades (a one step stain and polyurethane finish) around the moldings using an artists brush. It doesn't look half-bad against the white door, and so far the Minwax accents appear pretty durable - I can't scrape or scrub anything off, but of course this is not a true test of kitchen durability. I guess time will tell (I'm a short-cut kinda gal...) Other things that I'm attempting for the "look": - several glass doors - lotsa crown molding (painted w/ BM simply white & glazed w/ the Minwax) - building a plaster-look range hood out of drywall. - adding corbels - adding furniture feet - modifing a cabinet frame to have a plate rack on the bottom and a shelf for display on top. Ikea does have a plate rack cab but it's a double rack and doesn't work for me. I'm just going to cut a bunch of wood dowelling to fit the cab. Wish me luck :) Dawn

Thanks for the links and pictures! The contrast level in cotelehe's quartersawn oak kitchen is probably what we're looking at; love the name of the burnt sugar stain! The other kitchens are all gorgeous, but we don't particularly like our yellowy red oak floors, and since they're throughout the house and not going anywhere, we'd like to contrast them and not be too close in tone. rjr, those birch cabinets are stunning! I love your top cabs with the glass doors, and the shaker-y doors really highlight the wood choice. Swimmer, I'm glad that my desperation can help you too!

I have natural cherry cabs with cork floors and only southern light with no windows on the east or west, too. We went with a mix of soapstone and cherry butcherblock counters. I'm not really familiar with the Caeserstone colors so I can't really help you there. You can find some pics of my kitchen here in a thread where I swore to post finished pics soon and here where I posted pics of the modified cab for the MW drawer. I am so very close to posting finished kitchen pics that I can almost taste it, but it'll have to be after Halloween because my whole house is covered in dungeon walls and lit with red bulbs.