Hello. I know I'm coming to your kitchen party late, but your kitchen is very close to what I am thinking of installing. Maybe you can answer a few questions? I have almost settled on the Cambria Buckingham, but I am worried it will make the kitchen too dark. I am having cabinets made, the stain will be very similar to the cabinets you installed. My floor is a white/off white porcelain tile (existing). I don't have can lights, only pendants over the islad, sitchen sink and light from west facing windows. I would love to know how you feel about your backsplash a many years later? I am thinking of using a plain subway tile, but worried it is too plain for the gorgeous Cambria. Thanks for any help you can throw my way!

Thanks - and I was planning the white perimeter uppers and lowers with a darker quartz counter top ( i like the darker charcoal -matte finish- on top of the white cabinets)and the light gray island cabinet with marbled quartz top. I do love a dark gray cabinet but I have a small kitchen and worried it may be too dark. We are a family of 5 with three messy kids - although they are getting older and less messy lol. Ill have to look at the stained gray - i just dont like to see the grain of wood in cabinets. This island below has the pendants I will do (I'll do 2 smaller Hicks pendants). I like the look of this island and top and the white cabinets with dark quartz in lower pic what do you think?

Hi McGlaze, Yes, I have Cambria Smithfield quartz. It looks white from a distance but when closer you can definitely see the veins. The veins are subtle and that is what I love about it. Nothing too overdone. Looks very natural. I have since added a white 3 x 12 subway tile from Home Depot with white grout and it looks great. The quartz and tile updated my older maple cabinets which I didn't want to change out due to cost. Regarding your greige color question, my wall paint which you can see a small portion of is Benjamin Moore Elmira White and is definitely greige. I don't know how it compares with the Sherwin Williams Moth Wing but maybe you can get a swatch of both and see what works best for you. I just picked up my stools which were reupholstered with a Bone white (greige) soft vinyl and they go well with the quartz. My stool metal is a lighter gray in person than reflects in the picture so it picks up the veining and the fabric color does not clash with the gray veining. I have attached pics. The phone/lighting affects the color of the stool fabric and makes it look lighter than it is but it is bone/greige and is a nice contrast.

Carl wrote, in part: "... we are at the tail end ... " Sorry that you missed the note somewhere that the entire kitchen as a system needs to be defined before buying anything and particularly before defining cabinets and cutting duct paths. The kitchen system has to include both the hood system and the make-up air system. Both of these can (in some cases) be relatively non-complex, but one has to analyze air flow requirements and components that achieve them in order to know what to buy. I can recommend parameters that will achieve sufficient air flow in most cases, particularly including hot oil cooking. These are the same as recommended in myriad topics here over the past decade or so, and should have been reviewed when thoughts of kitchen ventilation first occurred. High school math is needed. In summary, for capture the hood has to overlap the rising and expanding (i.e., conical) cooking plumes that are emitted over the surfaces of pots and pans. A 10-degree angle to vertical may be used.* Side cabinets should aid capture and allow a small reduction in hood width. Cooking odorous stuff in the cooktop center can help. Front-to-back "depth" has similar requirements, except that for wall placements, the wall acts as an extended capture boundary. So ideally, for a 36-inch cooktop, that may have front pan edges at 18 to 20 inches from the wall, a 22-inch or greater hood depth is desirable. The 3-inches each side is desirable. Note that the rising plumes are also susceptible to cross drafts and turbulence from human movement, so bigger than the cone limit is better the higher one sets the hood base. For containment, the air velocity entering the base aperture of the hood has to be high enough to ensure that all effluent is entrained into the flow that goes through the baffles. This varies with the plume velocity, the volume under the baffles, and general configuration of internal reflecting surfaces. I recommend 90 ft/min across the area of the hood base, and this translates to 90 CFM per square foot of hood entry aperture. For blower rating, the fan curve of the blower has to be accounted for vs. pressure losses (air friction) of baffles, hood transitions, ducts, wall or roof caps, and of course, the make-up air (MUA) balance vs. house pressure. As alluded to way up this thread, a factor of 1.5 times the required containment flow rate determined from the paragraph above may suffice if the MUA is sufficient. Duct diameter should keep full power flow velocity (duct CFM/duct sectional area) in the range of 1000 to 2000 ft/min. MUA I will defer for now. If you will edit your word salad into paragraphs I will look to see what questions I missed answering. ______ * The plume is actually a distribution function that varies with moisture and grease content, pan surface temperature, and whether the heat source is induction, gas, electric coil, hot coals, etc. 10-degrees should be sufficient to balance the wider plume "rays" against their more easily entrained lower upward velocities.