I tried to quickly scan through. I don't know if someone made this suggestion yet. Can you put doors on your cabinets? We had open shelves on either side of our fireplace. I had my husband make doors for them. He made frames and covered the inside of the frame with cane. (we had to since they hold our tv components and I was afraid that they would melt down if no air got to them.) But, you can get tons of different sized cabinet doors at the restore or something similar. With the ones my husband made, I just painted them and put them up with regular old hinges. They look pretty good. I was going with a more natural/coastal theme. So, they work well in here. Oh! I was thinking. If you have odd sizes (like we do) you could just have lowes cut you new doors out of that mdf and paint them. Just don't get really super thick mdf. It paints like a dream with a roller and you could get the odd sized cabs covered. Melamine doors if you don't want to paint. But... you don't have to do all of your shelves. Maybe just the bottom half. It will break up some of the visual clutter. And, you can hide actual clutter (like we do!) which is really the main thing. :) Kim

Once you get used to that light, you will regret covering it. In the house I grew up in, my Dad sealed up a window in my old bedroom. It has been15 years now and I still can not get used to it whenever we visit. Natural sunlight is something you can't replace with anything from a home store. Just my opinion.

Busybee ... Thank you, I'll check that out. I can't believe I forgot my fan deck today. I carry that thing with me everywhere these days. Caminnc, I did cut the wall color 50% for the ceiling, but now that I'll be changing the wall color we'll have to see how the ceiling looks.

I definitely get the idea that the fridge wouldn't work to the left of the sink. But I think that maybe it's not as horrible as you might think =) Moving it there has a couple of advantages: (1) ice-stone-water-fire and (2) fridge is much closer to the public areas (great room, deck). There's still quite a bit of space for an 8' wide window (!!) and while the fridge would technically block some light, you have that huge swath of windows on the "top" wall of the GR to also keep things bright. Also, it wouldn't necessarily be a barrier to the GR - depending on your furniture layout, the main aisle of the kitchen aligns with the couch seating area - so you're not cut off. Anywho, as a fun exercise, here are the approx. views from the dining room and great room as well as the overall layout between the kitchen & GR. Obvs the 3D views don't have the angle wall so it looks a bit awkward there. Also, the island could be incorporated more as a prep space (small sink? trash? etc)