I'm curious too! What did you decide, Sophie? Allie

Your kitchen is actually pretty nice. The biggest sin it suffers from is lack of proper lighting. I'd focus on adding under cabinet lighting, an actual hood over the island as a focal point, and additional recessed lights before doing anything else. It will make a HUGE difference. HUGE. You might even enjoy the warmth that the wood cabinets bring to the space then! The next suggestion that I would make would be to purge your kitchen of everything that you haven't used in over a year and get those cupboards cleaned out so that 90% of everything that you have on the counters has a home behind doors. Take down all of those too busy decor items everywhere, but especially on the end wall and above the cabinets. And then before doing any long and involved labor job painting those cabinets or spending the 5K to have it done professionally, I'd just focus on changing the island a bit. I think that painting it the red of the wall and topping it with butcher block would work well whether you kept the cabinets as is or painted them. Start the cabinet changes there, and then stop and judge the difference made and then adjust any plans. BTW, the purple island looks like they used newel posts from a hardware store and then painted them and the cabinet to match. Even split newel posts will be about 1 1/2" thick for the small ones. With only 1" of overhang on your island, and you wanting to add things to it, I'd really recommend changing the countertop. I think butcherblock is a great suggestion for that.

lcskaisgir, Yes, I received my sample last week. Don't like it at all. I've decided that I'm going to do white both on the perimeter and on the peninsula/island. Not real fond of any of the Shiloh stains.I thought of doing another brand of cabinets for the peninsula/island in a stain, but decided against it. I'm going to do the Oxford door with 5pc drawer heads in Arctic White. I thought that the polar and soft white had more of a yellow hint in them which I didn't care for. I was originally going to do the Richmond door, but after looking at the Oxford door, I decided that I like the panel profile better on the Oxford. Just need to make time to order them. We've done everything via email and I want to go in to order them to go over every line on the order to make sure it's correct. Work is busy and making the time to order is difficult because of work. Pricing is at $7533 currently with tax and delivery included. Just need to make a few some changes so I'm guessing should change a little. Thanks for asking.

It all looks terrific. But then you know I like those colors -- very similar to what I used in our lake house garage apt. kitchen. It's nearly impossible to get accurate colors on a computer monitor, so this suggestion may be way off base --- but you might want to take a look at BM "Crown Point Sand" next time you're in the paint store. I think it might work out well for you. The olive branch looks pretty good, but I just thought I'd toss out another possility to you. Keep us updated with pics as your project progresses!