I think Dune matches the best in the picture (but pictures aren't the same as real life). The marble looks good, and very rich. Thebes is too dark, and it looks like Porcelain is too blue. I like the brightness of Papyrus, however, and think it's worth continuing to consider. Good drawing. I hadn't realized there was wall over the windows. That area was there in the previous drawings, but I had interpreted it as ceiling. Question: Is the bottom of the cabinet on a line with the bottom of the hood? Usually it's a lot lower. Looking at your nice drawing, I'm thinking it would look better either to tile the whole wall, or to stop the tile at the bottom of the hood. This can be done, but it's outside of my experience, so you'll have to ask someone else the best way to trim it so that it has a nice finish, and how to set the hood so that it's in the right place vis-a-vis the thickness of the tiling. Doing that with the wall color on the sides of the hood flare will give you a better horizontal illusion.

Hi Everyone! So nice to be missed. Thank you all for the kind words. Breezy, not in Europe, but you got the lack of internet right, at the most inopportune time. Meantime, I've been tackling some big projects. I'm always available by e-mail (through My Page). (Even during the big outage, I had my phone. ;) ) I haven't much to add. I don't have any appliances with clearance issues. What I can say is that my single when open 90 degrees has room to spare for removing the racks. The entire cavity is clear and then some. The measure from the edge of the handle to the inside of the door is 3", but the door overlaps the trim. The handle only protrudes about 2". I rarely open the door much past 90 degrees. If you have something big and heavy, you might want to use a barbecue mitt. The door of my toaster oven gets hotter, though. In ultra modern kitchens, they install these flush, where 90 degrees open is the only option, so it really should be adequate.

Hi Eleena, Amazing about the shout-outs. I never thought there were that many! I hope I didn't miss any. My lighting started with a big hate or three. Before this house I had almost always had fluorescent lighting in kitchens. The exception was a tiny kitchen in a college apartment which hardly had any lighting at all, but I was hardly ever home to notice. :) The old kitchen in the current house had 6" cans, and not nearly enough to light the whole kitchen. Edit: I had meant to say that I was also hamstrung by California law which limits how much incandescent lighting one can use. I had to have a lot of fluorescent and LED to justify just the halogens and my one incandescent hanging fixture that takes a very low watt bulb. Hate #1: Shadows and bright spots. Such things are find for "drama" but I don't want a dramatic house, especially not in a workspace. All the dark spots were depressing and I hated being in the old kitchen at night. Hate #2: Fluorescent light. Fluorescent is washy light that chases away shadows, and is certainly better than the too few cans, but the old style flickers, and because it's washy, things look a little blurry. I hate blurry worse than flickering. I go to great lengths to get glasses that correct my vision to very sharp, and I hate having it dulled by the light. Hate #3: The color of fluorescent lights. My eyes have always been sensitive to light and color (I used to consult on color design), and as a grown up who cooks, I just couldn't bear the 3000K light color temperature. Hate #4: Pocked ceilings. This is an aesthetic consideration. I have recessed cans all over my house because that's the way it came. The rooms are pretty large and don't lend themselves to lamps very well (tripping hazards), so they're useful. But I hate seeing the gaps in the ceilings. I kept putting off lighting. My contractor knows vast quantities of things, but other than making Swiss cheese of my ceiling and putting in a bazillion cans, he had no suggestions. I asked the Lighting Forum, where I was referred to the fairly new design studio that a local electrical supply company had. Where they also have lighting designers. I could see the products in installed settings, including kitchens. The rate for lighting design was very reasonable. And I lucked out big time, that the designer I hired there, Brian Brzycki, had just been through almost the same demands with his wife, so I got to piggyback on the research he did for her. What Brian designed for me was a combination of lighting layers. There are fluorescent lights to fill the room, but they're the new style very thin tubes, and there are a lot of them. They don't flicker much, and have the color temperature reduced to a sunshiny yellow (2700K). MUCH easier on the eyes. The downlighting over the island is too strong for me, and does flicker a bit, so I keep it dimmed, and only turn it on when I'm actually working on the island at night. The up lighting in that fixture fills the room. It's bounced off the pale orange ceiling, which mutes any flicker, and is very easy on the eyes. Most of the time it's all I use. Plenty of unshadowed light even underneath it on the island. That is, it's less light underneath the fixture with the downlights off, but because of the nature of fluorescent light, there's no shadow line, and it's just less light underneath, not dark. Certainly enough to measure to feed my sourdough starter, though I'd turn on the down light if I were actually making bread. Add to that, perimeter cans with glass diffusers, which defuse both hot spots and pock marks, undercabinet, color corrected LED's, dual cans over the clean-up sink, four halogens in the hood, plus several cans and LED's in the butler's pantry, and there aren't any unlit spots, no buzzing, very little flickering, nothing too bright for my eyes, but full light rather than anything dim. Brian more than earned his fee. So that's the how's and the whys of it. :) The only piece I chose all by myself was the little tulip pendant in the peak under the stairs, but it's just there for seeing into the understairs broom closet or using as a nightlight or decor. Hope this helps. This post was edited by plllog on Sun, Jun 15, 14 at 15:46

Plllog, I'm back! I'll try to keep this short. I signed in from GW to Houzz with my GW name, zone number, etc. and had the Harley pic there. When the avatars became iffy and I tried to comment I got a big white message that said "Sign in to Comment." Not wanting to give up on the KT, I signed in and tried to make a new page. I emailed Houzz several questions and each time they emailed my replies with itsuz being my user name. Actually itsuz is part of my email address. I finally decided to let itsuz be my user name if that is what it would take to get to the KT, and added a flower pic. By clicking on itsuz, the Sue_va page came up as it was originally, and the itsuz page is also there with Sue-va. I tried to delete the itsuz one, but it didn't delete, but it changed to Sue_va so they are both there. When I comment I don't know which one is "working." Doesn't matter to me as long as I can read and post. Again, I so appreciate your concern and help. That is the good old KT spirit. Just remembered something. I'm getting emails re who has commented on My Page. It says I have one now from charleemo on the Testing thread. It does not show there, and leads to a page with a picture like the one on my itsuz (Sue_va) page. ??