Too funny! I'm in Vancouver as well and just finishing my white uppers, rift cut oak lowers, kitchen. Similar vintage house. We have new white oak quarter/rift floors everywhere on the main floor, but went with a darker ceramic floor tile in the kitchen. The oak of the lowers works well with the oak floors in the adjacent dining room. I think the darker tile floor works to break things up a little, in a good way. The counters are madreperola quartzite, with a taupe that picks up the tones of the wood, and greens that pick up the tones of the kitchen floor. Plain white subway backsplash that closely matches the white uppers. Overall, really happy. Hopefully I'll be posting pics in the next week or two. Having seen it, I can reassure you that the combo of white uppers and white oak lowers is gorgeous. You'll love it.

Under the appliances I ran the plywood only to where the legs of the appliance are and put flooring up to there so that the legs rest on the plywood and the edge of the appliances overhung the flooring. You really do not want to put the flooring down now as it will take a beating when you install the cabinets and appliances. Putting the plywood also gives you the opportunity to level the floor which makes installing the cabinets so much easier. Instead of leveling each cabinet you can shim the plywood to level in 8 foot sections, much easier than doing the cabinets in 24"-36" sections. You can chalk your lines on the wall off from your level floor and install the wall cabinets first so that the base cabinets are not in your way.

This old thread was just linked in another post. Yet another thing on my mind today... Our KD currently has no toe kick on our island. I think it will get used on one side or both for prep, so I don't think this is necessarily a good idea. It initially had something to do with the end panel, since we're having two back to back cabinets on the island. But I think most people do, so that shouldn't be an issue. One end will be seating and the other can be flush. But the two long edges should have toe kicks, I think. I began to question this once I saw that not having a toe kick cost an extra $55 per cabinet x 4. Plus, I believe with this look that molding is run around the entire perimeter, and THAT's the stuff that adds up cost-wise. As we've been considering this, DH and I have both tried prepping at the end of our existing peninsula, and I don't think not having a toe kick would be bad. And we have two, exploding Australian Shepherds that make me think less toe kicks could be a good thing overall. So many decisions...

I have a slab on grade house, with a kitchen sewer drain that comes out of the slab approximately 6 feet from a wall. The sewer vent used to go straight up from the drain, but we removed the wall, and now want to extend the peninsula to the wall that is 6 feet away. I want to put a kitchen sink right on top of that drain, and run the vent through the base cabinet over to the wall, 6 feet from the drain. The drain appears to be 2", and my plumber tells me that he cannot run the vent pipe horizontally more than 5 feet unless it is above the kitchen sink. California does not allow an AAV. Any creative ideas to solve this? Can I run the P trap towards the wall and hook up the vent at 5 feet and then reverse the drain back to the sewer drain in the floor?