We have hickory cabinets - they are *knotty* hickory, though - sounds like you don't want that style? They do go nicely with our tropic brown counters...The guy that installed them commented that the wood is *very* hard - about the hardest wood there is, I guess. Made putting the doors on (screws) very difficult. But the hickory is gorgeous and unique...we got our cabinets from a custom cabinet maker in Monroe, WA.

Scrappy, these are from Blue River Cabinetry. If you google them, they are the first one to show up and located in Fredericksburg, Indiana. . .and the white kitchen on the front page will blow you away! Don't even *think* about looking at the pics in the galley, they're enough to make you hate your NEW kitchen. LOL! Sewmuch, I also considered maple, but I was told that dark stains on maple can sometimes show up blotchy. Between that and the grain of the hickory. . .well, you know which direction I took.

Wow, that's really cool. I love that they are hand made. I know you said you don't want dark, but if it were me, my first choice would be to go with a tone that is a close match to your doors and trim. The reason is because you already have one wood tone in your floors, another in the trim and doors and yet another with the cabinet and I wouldn't want more variation than that. If you absolutely want to do something different, pecan and maple are lighter and very pretty tones.

Be careful with a cream/yellow/orange based counter top with that cherry. The cherry stain is VERY red...as in BLUE-RED or blood red. Taj has a STRONG yellow pull. You could possibly get a big clash. Your instincts with the TILE for the cherry cabs is PERFECT. The blood-red cherry LOVES a very CRISP white (crisp = blue). To maintain your sanity and to cool off the kitchen, you might want to stay in the crisp whites. A yellow or cream based counter can work but the crisp white floors will not sit well with the counters. You will want to go counter top shopping and floor-tile shopping at the same time. Personally I would leave the slate and start the rest of the home's flooring where the slate ends. Even if you find a 'wood look tile' for the rest of the home, the slate in the entrance is fine...and a white tiled kitchen floor is just fine. These areas are allowed to 'stand alone' as design elements. If you tile the kitchen in a DIFFERENT tile (as in a marble/travertine look) you can have your wood look tile run everywhere else. This is not a problem. That way you can have your cake and eat it too. A house this size can have multiple floors....so long as the REASONING/location of the flooring is justified. If you must jack out the slate (be prepared for a tough slog on that one...stone is laid in a different manner than tile) then replace it with the same kitchen flooring tile. Get your bathrooms in the same tile as the kitchen. This way you can change flooring while still maintaining a sense of 'flow'. A house that is tiled in the same MARBLE LOOK tile becomes VERY formal. A home that has hints of 'marble look' tile but is covered mainly in wood-look product has a homey feel that has been upgraded (marble always produces a high-end feel). So it comes down to how you wish your home to LIVE. Do you WANT a marble palace feel, or do you want an upscale residence that is ALSO a home for a family? As for the wood in the formal dining room, it has already been repaired with a patch that is NOT matching (I'm assuming the 'blue room' is the formal dining room). For me this is a big distraction. The former owners tried a patch but did not match the cut...maybe even forgot to match the SPECIES. If you keep the hardwood, you will need to redo the bad patch. And at that point, you might as well rip it all out and go with wood-look tile.