nepool, I love the picture in your first post. That door is beautiful and it looks so nice with the wood floor and the whole room. Are cased windows something a lot of people do? We have never had cased windows. Of course we have a window sill but not cased. Maybe it's a regional thing. Since you have stained trim maybe you can answer a questions for me. I am concerned that if I do all stained that it will limit paint choices in the future. My house has all white except the kitchen cabinets. I remember when we painted the kitchen having to find a color that went with the cabinet color (some stains have more red or yellow in them). My sister has stained trim and doors (in her words, ugly stained trim) and when she painted a room and didn't think about the trim and the dark blue doesn't look like she had expected next to the dark trim. I have a dark blue room with white trim and the contrast is striking. We don't even have a floor plan yet and these details are driving me crazy.

It has been a long while (don't think I ever posted final pics - I will in the near future .. kitchen is a mess right now... :-) ) Anyway, here are some pics of the hood I constructed from panels. The main 3 panel front is basically a cabinet door that I specified as a 3 panel door. I would have had to have someone construct the sides/box and have that painted to match by conestoga (which would have been really cost prohibitive for what I wanted). I think I achieved the 3 panel look I was going for though using panels ordered from Conestoga and cutting and constructing a box. Like I said, the front angled 36" panel (with 3 panels) was basically a door made to my specs. The sides were 3/4" plywood painted/finished to match from Conestoga (I cut these to get the angle. The front flat panel and top (under crown molding panel) were pieces of hard maple from Conestoga painted to match. The molding pieces were used to match/hide some of the edges and give it a finished look. They are light rail moldings from Conestoga I also ordered in the matching frosty white. I attached the 3 panel to the front so you can remove it (see pics) with some panel clips I ordered (see pics). The bottom of the panel rests on an angled cut of the molding and the top pops into the clips to hold it in place. Sides of panel were screwed into the adjacent cabinet and across the back by two stringer pieces of wood (bottom one was painted maple ..because it shows underneath) which is used to connect the whole box to together for stability. The other upper stringer, is a 2x4 which is used to carry the weight of the fan housing. This 2x4 stringer is lag bolted into the wall studs. The side panels of the cabinet were also screwed into this 2x4 stringer (again for stability prior to installation). Like I said, it is not ideal but passes the eye test if you don't look too closely - but I am picky (whenever you build something yourself...you are pretty critical because you notice everything). If I had the extra to spend, I probably would have had someone build it from scratch but this was my attempt to get the look while using all Conestoga sourced panels (to exactly match the Frosty White paint color and sheen). Being a medium talent DIY carpenter with limited tools, I would consider this to be an advanced difficulty job since it required pocket screws to get the panels connected in front and it was generally a PITA to measure, remeasure, connect the panels, trim etc all to get exactly 36" wide and get tight panel match lines (which I did with some tweaking). A real Carpenter would have a better time doing this and would probably turn out a bit better. Hope this helps someone.

I'm attaching pictures of the kitchen plan. I apologize for the quality. I cannot figure out how to convert this file so that can upload the pictures. I tried to enlarge them as the printout was so small and as a result the measurements are blurry. The north wall is 25'. The first 10' are the dining room and the last 15' the kitchen. I was planning on going with cabinetry all the way down the wall. As I mentioned above, when I had separated the dining cabinet from the kitchen, it just felt like a waste of space and made the spaces on either side of the cabinet look awkward. The first drawing, with the stove between two windows is what I was initially going with. After comments above, I'm rethinking this plan. I thought that I would not mind the lack of space between the sink and the stove, as I will have 3 other large areas of counter space (all over 4 ft), plus an island. I emailed the planner, and I asked her about placing the fridge where the dishwasher was, the dishwasher where the stove was and the stove where the fridge was. She felt that the fridge would look too bulky next to the dining room cabinets and supplied the other option of putting the stove next to the dining room cabinets. I'm not really fond of this idea, as there would still only be about 15 inches to the left of the stove. Actually I think this makes the counter space more broken up and choppy than my original plan. The other thing I don't like about this plan is that it has shortened my dining room cabinets by about 15 inches. I will have a 9ft island and the side of the island was to line up with start of the dining room in option 1. I would like to hear thoughts on placing the fridge closer to the dining room and the stove on the wall where the fridge is.

Hi - Pure White doesn’t have enough difference in Chroma (colourfulness) next to Origami White in order to appear crisp, when sat alongside. Also Pure White is quite a colourful white to be the trim, as well as the cabinetry colour. In an open plan room that can be limiting, should you wish to alter the wall colours. A more neutral white would allow more options down the line. Here are a few more alternatives,,,