1) Personally, I do not think all of the hardware has to match in finish. I have mixed chrome and brushed nickel and stainless in the same room. Personally, I prefer them to be in the same "family" (ie: silver colors), but that's just a personal preference. 2) I do not think that hardware finishes have a strong impact on whether a room looks dark or light. I believe that paint, floor color, countertop color, and vanity color have a much bigger impact on how dark a room feels because they fill up the space. 3) If you really like the contrast of dark wood (and/or dark granite or something) with the white, go for it. Consider using a light colored wall paint to keep the room from feeling too dark. I love the striking contrast of white and dark wood. 4) What other finishes would you like to mix in?

BKO was a typo I made in a thread that seems to have caught on. I meant to say TBO (totally bathroom obsessed) but there was a two year old pulling on me, and I hadn't slept, and BKO came out instead. For some reason freaks who are TKO seem to understand that BKO (which makes no sense) means Bath LOL I have mixed finishes in all of my rooms (because I'm BKO AND TKO LOL) In my master bath I have antique gold knobs and gold tone lighting (antique stuff from the 1920's that I restored). The lighting also has browns involved in the design and the faucets are all ORB. The towel bars, hooks etc are all ORB as well. All of the finishes are what I would call "warm" in nature and the colors flow. Chrome would look terrible in that room. In the kitchen I have a SS countertop, fridge, DW and TC. My sinks are SS and the faucets (bar, main and pot filler) are all chrome. My lighting is a mix of antique pieces which have both aluminum (or antique pewter color) and a soft gold highlight on them with amber shades. My stove has both silver and gold on the handles (Lacanche) and my knobs are antique pewter. My other counters are granite with amber running through it prominently and the backsplash is amber as well as the glass in the cabinets. So in that room, I am mixing both gold and silver (warm and cool) tones. In the family bath I have a mix of chrome and brushed nickle. The faucets are chrome, as is the toilet handle and then the other pieces are brushed as are the knobs. The powder room has gold or brass fixtures and knobs. I hate having everything exactly the same except for the most modern of rooms (where that uniformity becomes important in taking individual elements out of the design). So the answer is....LOL you can probably do anything. :oP Does that help???

Just an update...We are still working with Home Depot on our cabinet order. I guess there really wasn't any rush on that 10% after all! We modified some things, taking some things away and adding others. Price went up about $285 based on our changes. And, now I find out they will only give me up to $300 toward the "free" sink base ($502.01)...The Lowe's guy never said anything about an "up to" limit. So, Home Depot sent the quote to the "bid room" (corporate) to see what kind of deal they can authorize...We'll see what they can do. I still have $11,500 in my head, so hopefully they can stay at that price. With such a large order, I would hope so. A couple hundred bucks probably would not make us walk away just because we have spent so much time and energy on this already, but staying at $11,500 would just make me feel good. :-) We started thinking we could do the cabinets for $8500, but then we got caught up in quality (solid cherry wood doors, dovetail drawers, thick shelves, etc) and convenience upgrades (soft close drawers, super susan, etc), so then we ended up just hoping to keep it under $12,000. Our whole budget for the kitchen is (was?) $20,000 including cabinets, counters, backsplash, wood floors, new refrigerator. Not sure if that is realistic anymore. Thankfully, DH is a handy guy and we are DIYers! Although, with one 2yr old and another one baby on the way, DIY is losing it's appeal...Looking forward to putting this project behind us and enjoying the house! By the way, we added a second super susan to the corner cabinet that was just going to be an EZ Reach with 2 stationary shelves (addl $350), increased the size of another cab by 3 inches (addl $25), got the stainless steel tilt out trays instead of the plastic ones (addl $100), added a base filler we needed ($25), and added a tall scribe molding ($25). However, where we saved some money was switching the 27" and 30" "Base Pots and Pans" (BPPS) cabinets to "Base 3-drawer" cabinets. Saved us about $100 a piece. The BPPS cabinets come standard with undermount ball bearing glides so they are more expensive than the Base 3-drawer which come standard with sidemounted glides. However, since we are upgrading all our drawers to undermounted, soft close anyway it made no sense to get the "BPPS" cabinets. They were charging me for the drawer glide upgrade on all the cabinets anyway, so really I was paying for the upgrade twice on those cabinets. Unfortunately, with both Lowe's and HD, this was something I noticed and had to point out. They should really know that. I also had to point out that getting furniture plywood ends on one cabinet ending being about $10 cheaper that buying the wood veneer skin for that cabinet. So, it helped to get familiar with a line and get lots of quotes so you notice these things. Because of these savings, we were able to add that second super susan - Yeh! If anything I've said here raises any flags for anyone reading this, please let me know. We might finalize our order on Saturday if the "price is right!" Thanks again.

I actually used it on some built-ins near our cabinets. I am very happy with the color match! The price (and availability) on the paint though? Not so much! The ultradeep base urethane in semi-gloss was $92/gallon with a contractor discount... If using on a wall, I would probably skip the urethane base trim enamel to save a pile of money.