Great thread. I've made many mistakes over the years. When I needed drapes for 5 very tall and wide windows, I thought I would save money by making them myself. I ended up buying 30+ yards of a synthetic moire on sale at a chain fabric store, along with drapery lining, and after making up one panel, found that even with lining, the light coming through the fabric made the color brighter and kind of gaudy. The bolt is still in an upstairs closet, and I found 96" crushed voile panels online that I like very much for about $20 each. Lesson: keep it simple. A couple of years ago, I hired a local designer mainly to help me choose paint colors and advise on accessories/tweaking. In the master bedroom, I had some custom green silk drapes that I never liked that much, and she talked me into spending the money to have them interlined and a printed fabric border added, along with custom shams with the same fabric. I had already spent $2000 on the drapes, and now I spent another $1000, and I still didn't like them. I took them down, and they and the matching euro shams are in the closet in the guest room. I put up natural linen-look semi sheers from target, and I like them better. Lesson: keep it simple, and don't throw good money after bad. We weren't using our formal dining room much, and the same designer suggested moving the dining furniture into one end of our large living room, and making the old dining room into a den and the old den into a home office, which was really needed. Since I wanted to replace the old LR sofa anyway, I moved the den furniture into the living room and had a custom ($$$)sofa made for the new den. It was not a huge space, and we tried to keep the sofa scaled down. When it arrived, the fabric was gorgeous, the style just what I wanted, but the seat depth was so shallow that it was not very comfortable. I had also slipcovered the old den chairs to go with the new sofa ($$). I ended up moving the new sofa to the living room, where it was more appropriate for perching ladies than lounging TV viewers, and now none of the colors I had chosen (with help paid for by the hour) for the LR and new den would work. Plus, the newly slipcovered den chairs (on swivel rocker bases, I love them) don't work that well with the old sofa color. Fortunately, I hadn't painted yet. Lessons: Don't buy furniture without sitting on it. Choose paint colors after you are certain of your fabrics. Don't let your designer talk you into stuff you don't really need. Keep your major pieces fairly neutral. The worst was the master bath update. I had chosen tile for the walls and floor, and the tile vendor gave me a couple of names for the installation. The guy with the higher quote was very highly recommended but I went with the other guy because he said he could also do some other work I needed done. Even though I had a gut feeling I was making a mistake. He did a horrible job on the tile, broke my toilet, and disappeared. I had to buy more wall tile and pay another contractor to replace it, and I'm still stuck with a bad job on the floor. Between the cost of doing the job, redoing the job, and buying a new toilet, I could have had the better contractor do the job, and replaced the vanity and sink as well, and upgraded to a better tile. Lessons: A jack of all trades might be a master of none. Go with your gut. Ask contractors for their license numbers and CHECK IT online with your state to see if it's in effect. I've made more, but these are the recent highlights, LOL. I feel better having confessed them here.

I was on a searxh fpr a grey granite, too. Took Dh with me 2 different days. (Have white cabinets, but I didn't want a dark counter top. Have that now and can't stand it- too often I'll find places missed during clean-up that I couldn't see). He was SO much help- he picked out Blue Bahia. Yep, most expensive granite they had. Plus I didn't want blue. And we have a long countertop (133") without anywhere to put a seam that would look right. I finally went with my sweet wonderful DIL- we found granite heaven! OMG, they had some beautiful stuff (stuff I was afraid to even ask what level) Some turquiose slabs with true gold veins, another one called Blue Sky (I was almost willing to go blue for that one- truly the color look of the sky with puffy clouds). Found 5 we liked, took back DH & DS, showed them ONLY those. We ended up with Parisdiso Bash. It was meant to be. It's even long enough to not need a seam on my long counter. Keep searching for what you LOVE. When you see it, you'll know it. Angels will sing, you'll be doing the happy dance and you won't feel the least bit worried about your choice.

I agree with the recs to paint the black band under the sink, as well as install a microwave vent over the stove. While I think the suggestion to continue the tile up is great and would make a great visual impact, the microwave is eating up the limited counter space and you have no venting over the stove. Microwave vents are not very popular here, but they are definitely common enough in small kitchens that you should expect it not to put off potential buyers. As for the conflicting comments about how painting killed your resale value etc. - people are really jumping to a lot of conclusions. From the pics, your finish looks good, and you say it looks great in person. I think plenty of homes advertise themselves as having "freshly painted" cabinets. Whether or not this will affect your resale is HUGELY tied to your local market. Look at houses for sale/sold near you. This gives you a good sense of what buyers expect to see. Some areas really do make their kitchen renovation money back in resale, if buyers expect to see a very updated kitchen. In other areas, it is easy to over-improve your house too much for the local market, and you can never make that money back, given what buyers are willing to pay in your neighborhood. Even the comments about granite are making a lot of assumptions about the norms in your neighborhood. IF your market supports a more extensive rehab, you would not need to buy all new cabinet boxes due to the Akurum issue. There are several reputable online sources for Akurum doors, like Semihandmade and Scherr's. But they will run you more than Ikea, which was already an expense you didn't want. So definitely look into what kind of kitchen remodel your market demands, if resale is your priority.

I have a friend who is a cabinet installer and knowledgeable about woods. Wood hardness is measured in Janka strength, the higher the number the harder the wood. Brazilian cherry is actually harder than both oak and pine heartwood from 100 years ago. B. cherry is 2000, Red heartwood oak is 1250, heartwood pine is 1225 on the Janka scale. That's the strength required to imbed a steel ball in the wood. Janka strength higher than 2500 is terribly difficult to saw and used in few applications. That's why Brazilian cherry has been so popular. It's downside is water staining and it's propensity to show ground in dirt, light scratching. Your aged hardwood salvaged pinewood is I'm sure spectacular and doesn't have the downside that my B. cherry did. My cabinet maker friend said that the tile we used is nicest wood-look tile he'd ever seen and he primarily installs in new custom homes. Sure it doesn't have the warmth of my old wood floors but looks like it came from a barn and it always looks CLEAN. There are trade offs with every flooring choice. Everytime I'm away from my house for a few days I walk in and look at the floors and say WOW. I love them as I'm sure you love yours.