Thank you! I gather that most think it looks odd.. and should be removed. I should have mentioned the way the previous house was... the house was built in 1937, and the one side of the arch was a porch, with door way into the kitchen. These are the original lath and plaster ceilings, nothing has been lowered at all. There is an attic access in the ceiling, and we were just looking at it today. Okay.. DH will win this and we'll remove the arch, which I really liked! That said.. I also really think the cabinets that go to the ceiling, although... I do like this kitchen layout too. Claudia, thank you! I love it too, and the pictures look much better than real life! LOL.. the kitchen and wallpaper is 20 yrs old, and it shows. It is going to be a bear to remove, but it must come down! No real way to enhance the arch.. it will just look un-balanced. (IMHO)

I actually have the magazine because I was thinking neutral. But true neutrals don't look great in our house, they turn gray due to the insufficient natural light. So in an attempt to brighten up the place we went with light colors in the LR and KFR, BM gentle cream and 1/2 F&B cooking apple. I previously posted day-time photos but the colors didn't come out right on those. These photos were taken in the evening (pardon the mess from removing the old corner cupboards): One paint coat only so far, so they might get a bit darker after the second coat. I can't say I love that cooking apple, but DH and the kids do love it and really want to keep it. It is a very happy color without being irritating but the problem I have with it, it is so "clean" that I am afraid of glazed cream kitchen cabinets appearing dirty. It would look great with white but I don't want white. I can totally relate to what ttodd said about very light off-white colors not being as rich as you hope. In this case the kitchen is right next to our "formal" eating area so I do want to end up with a rich cream which looks great in the evening. However the kitchen has no windows where the cabinets are going (dead corner) so there isn't a lot of natural light during the day (which is also one of the reasons for going painted and not dark wood) so it can't be too dark either. After looking at paint chips again, I am not even sure the dining cabinets and the kitchen have to be the same color, the lighting is very different. Any ideas?

Hi Erica! I can understand your concern. These kitchen remodels don't come cheap! It sounds like you will have beautiful cabinets and a beautiful kitchen, which is really exciting! But it can come as quite a surprise to find out how much things really cost. And then sometimes you can feel like others are nickel and dime-ing you to death. But...let me share a couple of things that might make sense to you, so you can move on from the sticker shock and actually enjoy your new cabinets. :-) I run my own business as a free lance writer and editor. For editing, I charge $30 an hour. What I do first is have a one hour consultation with my client, usually at a Starbucks, unless they don't live in the area, in which case we Skype. I then take their paper, article, dissertation, book, whatever...and do whatever it is that we have agreed I will do. There may be questions or reasons to communicate during the process. If it's a short phone call I usually don't charge, but if I have to spend a lot of time on the phone or reading/writing emails, I do charge. Most people are fine with the whole process (it's the industry pricing and procedure in our geographic area), but some not so much. One of the biggest concerns people have is that I cannot give them an up front total cost guarantee. This is because, until I get into their article, I don't know how much of a mess it is and how long it will take to fix it. I can give a kind of wide range very general estimate, but that's about it. I always give my clients an option to pay for a certain number of hours and then I will stop at that time and the client can decide whether to continue on with me. So maybe they only want to spend $90. I will spend three hours editing and then stop. I give the article back to the client and then they can choose to proceed or not. Most people are a pleasure to work with, but there are exceptions. Some people act like $30 an hour is highway robbery. At the Starbucks, I can tell they're indignant that I don't buy them a mocha. They equate what I do with being a secretary and don't think I should have a living wage. They don't consider that I buy my own health insurance, run through a computer every couple of years, and pay for continuing training in editing and style. Nor do they consider I have 13 years of higher education and that what I do is a very specialized skill and I am very good at it. They're always happy when their article or book gets published, but they still don't fully appreciate the role my editing played in getting that publication. Fortunately, 90% of my clients are wonderful and appreciative and understand how important my editing was for their article. So I think these cabinet guys have felt underappreciated in the past, that what they do has not been valued for the highly specialized skill that it is. To work around that, they offer "free installation." But they have to make their money somehow, so they charge more for the materials in order to provide free labor. It would be like me offering "free editing services" but then charging very high prices for printer ink and paper, or a "service fee" for emailing work to them. The other thing I'll say is that my cost for my kitchen remodel will be much greater than it would be if I could DIY it. I used to be a great DIY-er and still am at heart, but I have pretty severe rheumatoid arthritis and basically DIY is a thing of the past for me. So I'm really glad that I can hire skilled experts to come into my home and make it beautiful for me! Hanging cabinets and installing sliding drawers, hooking up the new garbage disposal and putting in new lighting are all skills I don't possess, but I'm happy someone does! You can also think of it as helping to support a fellow American and that's a nice feeling, to know that a family out there can pay their mortgage this month because you hired them. :-) Anyway, that's just my perspective. You are perfectly entitled to have a different viewpoint. But I do hope this helps, at least a bit, so you can really enjoy your beautiful custom cabinets! Have a great day! :-)

Your question is the thing we struggled with the most when picking things for our house. I wanted wood grain cabinets but felt like having a different color wood floor would be ideal to stay away from what we perceived as the "log cabin" look. We decided on a natural hickory color for the floor and medium brown for the cabinets with white quartz counter tops. It looks right in my head but my wife and I are both still anxious to see what it will actually look like. Everyone else has said to hire a pro. Our builders have a interior designer that goes over the selections with each buyer. The trouble is our "style" didn't match hers. We are confident enough in our choices but we would have never hired out that work to another designer. From a cost side but also I don't feel confident enough that they would be able to help me get the look I was after more than I was anyway. I don't know if that makes sense at all but there was a lot of doubt and second guessing. There still is. I think you just have to think about it long and hard try to be sure of yourself. In the end, styles will change and you'll repaint and change carpet and whatnot. Good luck.