Last week we had wonderful weather - 70's during the day 60 and even 50's at night. Beautiful. One more day of 90 degree temps the weatherman said and then we too are expecting some rain and returning to fall-like weather. Yesterday it was hot but I decided to prune the branches of the mulberry tree in the orchard. They naturally want to arch and these particular ones were nearly to the ground already, felt like driving through curtains when I was mowing. All this growth this year by the way. It was a volunteer and grew to be a tall tree and should have been cut down but I kept letting it go. Birds love the berries! I used my electric pruning pole saw that can reach 10', I thought my shoulders and neck were going to kill me today but I feel good. Too hot to haul the debris to the brush pile tho. I got ripe tomatoes just not a boatload like usual. I'm cooking and freezing them whenever I get a dozen or so.

Well, I've been over to kitchens and got a bit of advice. A couple people are urging me to knock down the wall between the kitchen and DR and put in an island, but I suspect you Old House people would scream in agony over that one. :-) Based on their input and yours, I'm now thinking along these lines: -Keep the chimney. That'll avoid having to spend on a new furnace and water heater for now. They're perfectly functional, just not maximally efficient. -Surgically remove the sink cabinet but leave the others in that plane. Slide a range in there (assuming it's a 30" opening; didn't measure). Use that exercise to see if the boxes can be removed from the wall. They do have backs on them, so I'm not sure it's a lost cause. -Move the doorways to the center of the room (no one has yet given me a good reason not to other than it's a lot of work) -If we can cleanly remove them, take down the cabinets over the existing range spot and relocate to the window wall. -Buy new base cabinets for along the window wall -Build new wall cabinets to fill in the rest of the window wall, matching/mirroring the relocated ones. -Add shaker trim to the old doors and maybe drawers. I've found some reasonably priced unfinished RTA cabinets at kitchencabinetdepot.com. I'll carefully prep the existing and paint the whole shabang in some creamy white color. FWIW, I priced out all new cabinets at Lowe's and they came to about $9K, $1500 of which was trim. The same set of cabinets from KCD (no trim) is $3500. So theoretically, with some elbow grease and used appliances, I might be able to pull off the kitchen for $5K, even with all new cabinets. But I'm determined to meet the challenge and be as tightwad as possible on this, so I'm going to try for maximum re-use.

Thank you all for the comments and great suggestions! Originally I had moved away from the idea of white walls as thought it would be too much white with the cabinets as mtnrdredux said. Having now seen some of the Navy and white combinations (thanks bronwynsmom) I am however changing my mind. Particularly having seen the below picture. I would then like to get a pine farmhouse table, re-waxing the top and painting the legs white to match the units and cottage look. My only issue is working out what shade of white as there is so much choice! I think I need something with some colour in it so not too much white but obviously not too dark. Think I will have to get some pots to test although will be expensive at ã3.99 a tester for Farrow & ball! does anyone know if there is a cheaper place for them?

I think you're making the right choice to use the 42". If you search Houzz for hoods between windows, you'll see many examples where the hoods go to the window frame, including chimney hoods. This is different than a chimney hood between cabinets where you need breathing room. The tile in that photo shows up beautifully without breathing room. I love the bold, open design of it instead of fussy mosaics or subways. The one thing I feel strongly about is hinging the counter cabinet on the right so you have easy access to your cooking ingredients, but then I saw you have two doors on it in the drawing you posted in that thread. I don't think a single door will look too wide and it may help simplify that wall. There's so much going on there as it is.