Just wanted to chime in and thank you for this thread, nutmeg. I've been searching for that "perfect" neutral for my kitchen and, after painting it the wrong color last year, I'm back on it now and this thread really helped. Just picked up samples of: -Tobacco Road (I have admired this one for a very long time, but it may be too green for the space) -Whole Wheat (pretty sure this will be the one, but I like choice ;-) -Macadamia (this one may be too neutral for the space) We'll have to see, I'm going kicking and screaming against going too green... I have a dark green ceramic tile floor that I'm just not crazy about, but it cannot be changed right now so I must embrace it to a certain extent. The floor and the lighting (the big obligatory florescent - ick! - another thing to be changed later) are creating havoc with my walls ;-) and the color there now (Valspar Cottage Linen) is too neutral and not dark enough. I do love it in my studio (next door), however, so the excess paint will be used - it's what I call "tuxedo", plays well with black and white. I'll let you know which one I choose...

'However, I would really hesitate to remodel the kitchen without first coming up with a plan for the entire house and making sure your kitchen plan fits into that.' I'm having the same issues with the kitchen remodel. Right now I feel like we are in a holding pattern for what to do with the rest of the house. My mom has been in slowly declining health for about 5 years now. In the last 18months she has lost a lot of mobility because of her knees and hips. Its our hope that she will be able to stay where she is, which is a 55+ apartment building. My sister lives with her and is able to do the harder things like grocery shopping etc. We would like to take the 2 unlabeled far bedrooms and bathrooms and make that into a nice size master suite with a walk in closet and large full bath. However with my moms health it would be necessary to have her on the ground floor and those two rooms would be for her and my sister. The interesting thing about this addition is it was put up for the specific purpose of being an assisted living facility. Because of that it has its own furnace, basement (hence the 2nd set of basement stairs), water heater, and front entrance. Its like we have 2 houses. We hope to integrate it better with the master suite with full bath, taking the 3/4 bath making it a 1/2 guest bath, and eventually pouring concrete in the addition basement (its still a dirt floor) and putting in a guest area there with full bath. We also plan to remove the 2 1/2 baths between the school room and craft room and making the craft area bigger for my loom. I do have a concern about the 12" drawers - once you add the drawer sides and hardware, you have very little usable space. And a bit more prep space between sink and stove would be wonderful. I'd move the range to the right at least 6". The cabinet above the fridge got my attention too. Can you put a taller cabinet there, so there isn't so much space between fridge and cab? We were able to work with the girl for about 40min just putting different things into different areas. The cabinet she had on the spec was just one to show where ones would fit. It think she had placed a 15" high one there but it would fit an 18" without issues. She printed out about 12 different layout ideas for us (she looked young an bored until we showed up) so she said lets just play around with stuff for some ideas. I only had one smaller drawer next to the stove which I asked for as a spice rack. I cook a lot and would love a spice drawer near the stove. This is another layout she had. I didn't post it at first because we had to do some exploring :) This is an idea that a lot of you had about simply moving the kitchen. It would require opening the wall between the dining room and toy/library room. We made a hole in the drywall to see what this wall was like and found that we could remove it, or at least open it significantly. We would also be removing a strange boxed off area in the bottom left corner that was an old chimney that was never fully removed. We just need to repair the floor here and we would have a nice rectangular area about 15' by 24' to work with. The girl who was helping really hoped that this plan would work. I did too :) This window above where the sink is needs to be replaced. We would likely put a bigger window in at regular height. The stove shown is bigger... my dream stove really which would be a range/griddle with a double oven. We were still working on the layout on this wall so the over fridge cabs were not put in. This layout will also give us room for a nice center island. We didn't put much over by where you see the ceiling fan. Its where our dining room is now. We would likely leave a table there and have a buffet hutch on the left wall to showcase my grandmas china. We were still thinking things over when another couple walked over and asked if there was anyone to help with a door sample. We said to go ahead as we were taking a lot of her time.

Although I like your art and it’s message, I don’t think you should hang it right away for the following reasons. Where you want to hang it will just bring attention to the different door casings and the speakers. I do think you need some furniture rearranging in the room because looks like furniture is pushed to sides and walls of room and there nothing centered on fireplace, which is the focal point. You mentioned you have further plans to change a few things in the room, so I think you should wait and do it all at once, so everything comes together like it was all planned/designed that way. Being a heavy piece, you will need some good wall anchors as you won’t likely hit studs, so you need to be sure this piece will stay there. I realize this is not answering your question, but just my thoughts to encourage you to think about the room as a whole, not just one wall at a time.

Kats737, we love the butcherblock for food prep. I do a lot of cooking and the kitchen is small so the butcherblock island with sink is the surface I use for cutting, baking, etc. The other counters are pretty much filled with kitchen stuff, coffee stuff, onion basket, dishrack, etc. These counters were laminate and served well for almost 25 years but now has some problems. What has spurred us on to this remodel is the water/wood problem. The drop in sink has created a perimeter of mold and when hubby checked under the sink lip, the wood has rotted. After a lot of research and questioning of vendors as well as our contractor, the consensus is that even when precautions are enacted, water rots wood! The only iption was to forgo the sink and we both decided in a small kitchen where we often cook together the 2nd sink was really helpful. I decided on the leathered Silver Pearl granite, our fabricator picked up the slab yesterday. I don’t like the look of a mottled polished granite in a vintage kitchen and I would have much prefered soapstone but my main goas in the premodel were maintaining the vintage look while making upkeep as easy as possible and the soapstone care made me nervous. (I have to say the laminate did fit the criteria of carefree). The leathered granite is very muted and with only a sealer applied is more of a soft charcoal rather than a harsh black. So we have decided to keep the maple but edge the prep sink in the island with the granite. The other counters will be granite as well. I have seen photos of this and can’t say I love the look but in the end will have to compromise esthetics for practicality. Our fabricator doesn’t see a problem with shimming as necessary to even out the surfaces. The prep sink is at the end of the island facing the big sink/counter area so I am hoping there will be some visual continuity between the granite surround and the counters. Also for practicality’s sake the sink is an undermount so visually the sink will have a smaller profile. I have thought over this pretty carefully and decided that “can’t teach an old dog new tricks” applies to us. That maple wood surface is so practical for our kitchen habits. Here is a photo that sort of shows the result but in a modern kitchen. And a photo of the sample granite with our butcherblock. i will post a photo when the kitchen is finished as I spent hours looking for one that would approximate our kitchen. Let us know what you decide and post a photo of your kitchen now if you can.