catkin, will you make the shelf 10' long? That gives you a good reason not to buy the ready made shelves, but it also and more importantly will match the counter length and break the 20' wall width into two areas, giving a sense of closure to the openendedness you might now feel when viewing this 20' wall space. I think your kitchen counter taking half the wall width is a good clue in this word picture. Have you considered buying the same material as the counter top? A ten foot stretch of something similar to smoky topaz laminate, "... a dark sort of charcoal color with muted taupe and black mottling..." or maybe even another whole piece of counter top that you cut down to become a skinny shelf. Since the wall is grey, any color will work, with industrial brackets or any other kind. Without seeing it, I'd say I'd go for a 6"-8" narrow shelf, at 10"-12" above the counter. Thus, at this height and being narrow, it won't cast shadows -- (Assuming you have light overhead shining down onto the sink and counter! -- and since it's a landlocked kitchen you must have lights!). With a mini shelf, you can still put something on the wall over the kitchen sink to look a bit like window (psychologically, an opening) -- I'm still figuring out how to do this on my sink wall !! The idea came from arbordomus. (His post is http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg012014495340.html "Small kitchen, big success") and you can see his over-the-sink solution in the first big picture. The solution to missing a window in the kitchen is to hand something reflective over sink. Like a landscape picture, or a mirror, or highly reflective frosted glass snowy white tiles, or... In my kitchen, we have no uppers on this wall. It's a 14' wall of which 7" is in the kitchen. No wall cabinets, so it's a complete wall, continuing uninterrupted into the adjoining room area (and to windows ten ft away). A similar situation to yours. Right now it's a blank slate so we are thinking through an infinite variety of shelves, tiles, mirrors, picture hangings, etc. johnliu has drawn a few examples of a miniscule shelf : you can see his "secondary shelf" in his photobucket file if you follow his link he posted in my own thread: (pic#5 but once you're connected to his photobucket files, scroll over to see also pic#20 for the false window idea on the sink wall): Here is a link that might be useful: post#5 in

We have one window on each side of the soon to be range wall. The windows are in but nothing else is except frame for custom hood. Our sink will be in the island. Here is a pic of the windows as is: I am a firm believer in putting a window anywhere you can!! You won't regret it.

Forgot to say that kitchen cabinets will all be Ikea - and not the shaker version but the more modern Abstrakt line so even though the house is old (with crown molding, etc.) doesn't mean I don't like contemporary or should I really say modern. And given contractors and designers have told me in the past, this house will be a "teardown" given the neighborhood, we are remodeling to please ourselves and (probably) not for resale.

ncamy, I've been trying to think of who has leaded grass transoms, but haven't come up with anything for you. I thought of trailrunner (hi Caroline!), but I knew that hers aren't over sinks. Do you remember anything else about the kitchen you are looking for? warmfridge, the sink came with our 100 year old house, although I think it is from the 20s or 30s. We re-used it when we did our kitchen addition. She's got character, yes?