You sound like a kindred spirit - I'm going through the same exercise. I do everything except the plumbing, but finding the right cabinets to stay out of divorce court is proving to be the greatest challenge. :) I'm just below the NH border in Essex county, so we've probably looked at a lot of the same resources - plus I just finished putting in a complete new kitchen in my son's condo in JP. I used RTA cabinets from domaincabinetsdirect.com for him, but I'm looking for an upgrade for my own kitchen. You might want to look at an inexpensive design program called Plan3D - let's you do reasonably accurate layouts with a minimum of learning curve and pain. I'm looking at Barker and Scherr as possible options for RTA cabinets, and iEuro, Cabico, and Dynasty for manufactured lines. The jury is still out. I will tell you that it's going to be really tough to find durable boxes and doors with attractive cherry veneer at the price point your looking for. If you have the time or interest perhaps we can collaborate.

:) Yes, the exterior is ugly. I'll grant you that. We suffered from previous owners (circa late 1970s is my guess) and their desire to do asbestos tiles siding over the original. While I'd love to tear it off and put up new siding, there's not much reason to other than curb appeal, and we'd rather put our money into the interior and living spaces. We do have plans to paint, replace gutters, and we are replacing attic windows. Eventually we will replace all windows. Attic was replaced in 2010. Sure, the exterior isn't flashy and lovely and definitely won't win awards, but it is what is and it's what we've got. Maybe historic home isn't the best term, but it would be the terminology used in our town to describe our neighborhood and our house, for better or for worse. It's really what's inside in the interior that we like, along with the location and overall features of the home. Our home has all original oak floors, quarter sawn oak pocket doors and trim and 5 panel doors all original to the house, a huge chapel bench in the foyer that is built in, and none of it has been painted. Sure, it's not a grand historical home, but those are rare in general, and there's probably only 3 or 4 like that in our town. What is rare is the fact that we have all original woodwork, plaster walls in good condition, a few original decorative leaded glass windows, and a gorgeous brand new finished master suite. We have a 5 bedroom 3 bath house with a finished basement family room and playroom, plus a patio. In our town, that is a very rare find. But with all of that, comes the crappy original kitchen layout and back porch/bathroom hack. What we discovered when we looked at homes 6 years ago is that there were FAR worse. Mold, scary DIY electrical, refrigerators that couldn't be opened, and absolutely terrible upkeep and maintenance. It was bad...really bad. So when we found our house, trust me when I say this, it was a total steal and we loved it. Except the kitchen. :) Trust me, I get the rebuild idea. I get it. I'm sure many of you see this and read this and think, "Money pit! Run away!!!" :) But not all of us can or want to tear down houses or replace absolutely everything. If we actually tore down our house and rebuilt it, it would cost more than 2-3x the current value to rebuild it with the same quality and materials and finishes. I appreciate all the warnings and suggestions to consider that, but it just isn't going to happen.

That looks like “frass” from carpenter ants. They’ve been establishing a nest in your ceiling, chewing into the insulation to do it. Whatever material they find up there, the frass will resemble that. You can try tapping the ceiling to find a void and spraying some foam into it. Then spread a lot of ant bait around so they don’t survive as they move to a new spot.

Here's our latest and greatest that draws on several of your great ideas. This is way better than what we were going to do! We would love your thoughts on optimizing cabinet and appliance layout in this space! Some decisions we have made: We are going to shrink the first floor laundry room and stub in for a second floor laundry for next year's second story remodel. At that time, the smaller laundry would convert to a pantry. We are opening the wall into the DR ad using that space for the kitchen. We are not adding windows on the left wall of the kitchen (would only see the side of our neighbor’s home, north side of home so we would get no direct sunlight) but will invest a little more in lighting to compensate. We will partially wall off between current DR and LR and use either french pocket doors or barn sliders for office separation. We don't want to block off any of the current windows along the back of the house and will do a little window shuffling to fit best use (the boring details - swap multiuse and DR windows so multi use stays current height but 1' narrower to center, DR 1' shorter to fit over cabinets). We aren't going to make any changes to the FR layout or the first floor half bath. We have spent a bit of time looking at appliances and are sticking with what we had previously picked - 36" induction cooktop, wall oven/MW combo. Not (yet) replacing our fridge or DW. We’ll have space for small to large dining table in the multi-use area for us or future owners if desired (current plan shows 1 table in two different configurations). Here's the current plan - We'll probably shorten the island 6" to give 48" to cooktop and 45" to 1/2 bath corner. Also, my original measures post with DR was off by 5", corrected here.