Pros: Roomy kitchen Open to other rooms Cabinets look like they're in good shape Workflow is pretty good (Ref --> Sink --> Range --> Table) Nice classic door style Sink and DW are not right across from the range, allowing more than one person to work in the kitchen at a time Aesthetically, what's "dating" your kitchen... Partial overlay cabinets No hardware Upper cabinets that stop before the ceiling + plants up there No crown molding Sink (top mount, primarily) Tile countertop Countertop wood edging "Cropped" corners Refrigerator doesn't look "built in" Functionally: Island is really too small for sink...the sink overwhelms the island and you have no work space on the one side at all. Overhang is really too shallow for seating behind a sink. I'm not sure the color of the cabinets is bad, I think it's just the color and material combinations that are making them look dated color-wise. I wouldn't worry too much about the partial overlay cabinets if you fix some of the other things...like a simple crown molding and maybe add undercabinet lights and a simple light rail. I wouldn't go too elaborate on the backsplash, I think simple would work better for this as well. I think a window seat as mentioned previously or a banquette bench replacing two chairs at the table would add space to your kitchen and allow your island to be lengthened a foot or so. But, since the window does not look like a bay or bow, I suspect it would be expensive to convert it to a window seat w/o taking up more room from the kitchen. ... [BTW...I thought you might want to know that McAfee Site Advisor has a warning about your photo hosting site: In our tests, we found a small fraction of downloads on this site that some people consider adware or other potentially unwanted programs.] Here is a link that might be useful: Automated Web Safety Testing Results for livefilestore.com

Hello Friend! Thank you for the call-out: I would've hated to miss this thread. Did the Festival affect you? I bet you avoided Yorkville like the plague! Too many photogs snapping your photo, asking about your kitchen .... auchmedden, ci_lantro and malhgold all said exactly what I was thinking -- I still love (and vastly prefer) the "original" stool (the brown leather with chrome legs), and their shape echoes your Parsons armchairs without being matchy-matchy / twee. My concern (based on my imagination) about white stools is that it would make your space look a bit like X, Y, X, Y, X, Y -- you know, white, brown, white, brown, white, brown. I really like the way the white is the ultimate wall, highlighted by your to-be white-ish grey Parsons chairs, picked up again by the lighter color of your family room sofa. The eye travels around your great room (the combined family room and kitchen) without taking an extra (and in my mind, unnecessary) stop at the white stools which would, in my opinion, just detract (detract from the beautiful stained island, detract from those magnificent pendants [because instead of going up, the eye would go down to the white stools], detract from the overall vision your kitchen is). Now I'm not in your real room, and I'm not going to live there (although it's so beautiful I'd love to!), so clearly everything I've written is worthless in light of what you and your husband think. Oh wait, I do want to add that I think with the dark brown stool the chrome legs are actually necessary in addition to being quite pretty -- they help keep the eye moving, they help subtly differentiate the stools from the island, and they keep the subtle modern touch going (without screaming LOOK AT ME! I'M MODERN!). I am really excited for you -- you have come so far, and I'll be better about checking for your threads when I visit this forum! xo

Venting to the outside is not generally a code requirement as far as I can tell *I am not an expert*. Where I live, even a recirculating hood isn't required, so long as you have a window that opens in the kitchen. Induction/electric ranges I haven't seen any requirements to vent to outside, but for gas, there seems to be a bit of a question... e.g. if you have a "commercial" style range vs. a "standard" gas range. So, the code requirements *might* be different for different heat sources where phamm lives. Grease/fumes notwithstanding, I was wondering just about the code requirements for outside vent, as well the safety issue with gas. If there were more stringent requirements for gas, and venting to the outdoors isn't feasible, a move to electric/induction might be worthwhile. I realize however that outside venting *may* provide better removal of odors/grease... although I think a lot of that depends on the distance to the outdoors as well as the capacity of the exhaust fan. For what it's worth, the best outdoor venting I had was the downdraft. I think it captures the grease/fumes/steam before it has any opportunity to disperse. And it was a lot quieter that the over-the-cooktop hood I had installed for a through-the-roof scenario. I have no problems using a recirculating hood now, as they have improved a lot, I prefer to do my cooking in the oven, and I don't use very much oil in cooking... but of course that is not the situation for everyone! When my current smoothtop electric cooktop dies, I am going to go with induction :) If you haven't watched the youtube videos of people putting newspapers/paper towels on the induction cooktop, deep frying food, then throwing the newspaper/paper towels away revealing a perfectly clean surface, you might want to!

In that case, if you are completely happy with the way it is set up, I would see if you can find the funds to reface or change the cabinet doors at the very minimum. But if your dream is a better, larger, nicer kitchen with better infrastructure as well as look, I would honestly wait and save. I've gone the road of minor improvements in a subpar kitchen before and it's been money to the wind. But if you are dead certain that the kitchen works great but could look better, then see if you can swing new cabinet doors or refacing.