I would agree that matching the cabinets to the dining room would be too much. Wood that is all the same just blends in the background. Your cherry will look more lovely if the kitchen is something different and vice-versa. Different wood tones together is normal - especially because these will never be "touching" (I think you have to be more careful to make sure floors and cabinets don't clash.) If I were you I would go to the cabinet place and forget about the dining room. Open your mind - consider all they have in natural or stained wood - and pick something you think is beautiful and go from there. If you want something lighter, consider maple natural or with light stain. Cherry is always beautiful, but a little more expensive, but try natural or other tone that you just love. And oak gets a bad rap but with the right door style and finish, the grain can be striking. Good luck.

Don't know what "Docusate" is, marcolo, but does it help with a tooth ache? What can i say but that your grumpiness is rubbing off on me. :-) Still, I stand behind my sentiment including my frustration with the posts on GW both from nervous would-be owners and the peanut gallery that seems to encourage the mindless pursuit of some imaginary definition of perfection. This from people who - based on the collective set of their sentiments, statements and photographic documentation don't see that their own endeavours in their activities fall far short of achieving "perfection" - and understandably. The end result with the goading is more in line with bullying than holding a standard. That recognition to me came in a post that I saw from someone here many many years ago. Poster and her husband were doing a large remodel or a rebuild. It was a complex project as they had to attend to myriad issues, surprises and unexpected plan changes, so she said that they just asked the soapstone fabricators to do their best for them with the best slab they could give them as they couldn't add attending to slab selection and counter layout for fab to their plate. They said they preferred a movement-y soapstone of whatever variety and then left it at that. Well came counter installation day and they were nervous as they were going to be surprised. Well, you can guess what the average GWian reaction would be, right? Horror at the selection. Horror at the portion of the slab used. "I would have wanted this piece over here and that piece over there". "This horrible patch of pale gold in a stream of cream should have been cut around ... ". "I've been gypped ..." Not so. This couple said that they were excited but nervous about what they'd get. She said - and I'll never forget this - "we were left speechless. It was even more beautiful than we'd ever imagined." She loved the slab selection; she loved the counter layout the fab picked from the slab; she loved how it appeared in her kitchen ... If you looked at the stone in her kitchen - it had a thick band of white in a dark soapstone and it was easily what the populace here would be doing a collective double over and regurgitate yesterday's dinner over. I was moved reading her post because it was as much a commentary about the beauty in the vagaries in the much vaunted natural materials as it was an instruction in the how the right set of eyes and mind can appreciate said material. That it is done in the whole and not in scrutinizing the minutiae. Now, I'm not that easy-going to be sure and I have had no end of opinions about how wood or stone grain should zig vs. zag (minimally), how trees should grow their branches (symmetrically), how rose bushes should arch etc. But this lady issued the best instruction by personal example about how to appreciate nature. It governed my own ideas about regulating the tightness in the reins on my counter selection - at the time I was trying to figure out if I wanted a particular engg quartz or a black granite ctrtop. I decided that if I was going to go for the granite (that I'd convey to the fabricator what I generally wanted) and then let go and really prepare to be pleasantly surprised. It isn't to say that if you say "I like natural stuff" that you don't get to have an opinion about whether you get a carrera or a statuary or a black granite or a blue quartzite in your home. Really it is more about the fact that once you've realized the key characteristics about what you like, if you need something that zigs exactly the way you see it in your mind's eye and zags just the way you see it, then you are not looking at the right material. The best posts to my mind are the ones who delight in the surprises in their natural materials and the ones who delight in the perfect symmetry and perfect matches achieved in their engineered materials. Anything else makes me feel sad as I feel the poster made the wrong material selection. Madeline, this isn't to say anything to you other than that you might honestly prefer a different class of material - maybe it a man-made but maybe it is a different marble, as others have said. Calacatta with thick veins is more the norm in what I've seen than not.

Charming house, and I'd want to keep the character. After much research, my daughter ended up with Anderson 400 Woodwright double hung windows for her 1950's house. She did 6 over 6 instead of 8 over 8 because her openings were a bit narrower than usual. We also looked at Marvin Integrity, but Anderson had a few features we liked better and were a bit better looking to us. They are wood on the inside but clad on the outside for no maintenance. It's a nice looking product. Of course, if wanting all wood, then Marvin makes a nice one. None of these are inexpensive.

I think you need to at least post a sample of the green. I am not a lover of olive green but maybe what you are planning will be good. Do you have red tile roof ? You might want to think about green and that roof it can conjure Christmas quickly.