I think it depends on how much you want to be in control and how much control you want to relinquish to others--both have pros and cons. When we redid our master bath last year it was my first experience using a designer so I was clueless about some things, as much as I have always enjoyed design. We picked things out swiftly, just going to one or 2 places she recommended. For example, for the counter she took me to the stone retailer she uses. He had a small showroom/warehouse with samples and I picked my counter from there. I had no idea at the time there were massive stone yards with hundreds of granites, etc...For the tile, I found an accent tile I liked and just went with a coordinating tile the woman at the tile shop recommended to us. And I just used the contractor she worked with. Well, the job took way too long (2 months) and have found out just now with the kitchen reno they did the plumbing incorrectly. Do I like my bathroom? Yes. Is it love, love, love? No. I am using a contractor for my kitchen (we couldnt have done much with it layout wise unless we wanted to tear down walls and neighborhood just doesn't warrant a major overhaul). Contractor also has design experience, but after bathroom designer I didn't want to leave one "stone" unturned. I went to every stone yard and tile place within a 25 mile radius. I didn't want to be in a position to make decisions or pick things out in a few minutes or just from 1 or 2 places. I did use the kitchen cabinet place he recommended and the owner, my contractor and I spent an afternoon at the house going over every cabinet, which features, etc...Some people prefer 10 choices to 1,000 and are happy when a designer says "here are 5 floor samples I think will work" and you pick one. I wanted to get a broader scope of everything available, then choose for myself. I am using the fabricator my contractor recommends. I did all the appliance research myself--with a lot of help form this forum. With an infant, a designer might be the way to go if you are in a hurry to get things done. But I would do some legwork on my own first to get a sense of everything that is out there so you aren't making hasty decisions.

You could probably save money by having new, standard depth cabinet boxes made and painted and then paint and re-use your old doors. Doors are the most expensive thing on most cabinets. I think that you need not worry about the black on your range "clashing" with your light backsplash. First of all, if your granite has any black at all in it, it will marry the cream and the black tones. Second, consider all the kitchens on the FKB that have white cabinets and black counters. Do they clash? Are they eyesores to you? You say you have the same stainless & black combo on your dishwasher, which will tie in with your range colors, too. Finally, if you are still worried, you can make the black even more harmonious by bringing in black touches here and there - say a stone mosaic design on your backsplash with some black onyx or glass tiles worked in, or perhaps some other black touches around the room, like lighting with black metal parts or a black utensil crock on the counter near the cooktop. Welcome to the "E-ticket ride!"

Thanks! Yes, we do plan to mix framed and frameless. I absolutely want framed w/inset doors for the uppers to match the house aesthetic (Arts & Crafts)---originally we'd planned to combine that with frameless lowers, but now the numbers are looking like it may be a mix throughout. However, one of my inspiration kitchens has exactly that so I think it will work. The main challenge is that we'd planned to do Ikea for anything frameless and custom for framed since uppers and lowers would be distinct styles and not need to match, but now it's looking more and more like we should just do custom across the board with all the mixing and matching. So much for our creative cost-savings. :) @bmorepanic, one thing I'd thought of doing with the uppers on that stretch was a 36" upper to mirror the 36" rectangle below, and then a bookshelf upper for the balance of the space (since cookbook storage is missing from the kitchen right now). Uppers will be at least 13" deep (need that much to clear our plates!) and possibly 13.5" or 14" depending on who makes them. I think I liked it better when we were doing Ikea and I didn't need to worry about measurements on all of these!! :)

Thanks for all the nice comments, everyone. It's nice to get confirmation that we're not crazy! Flowerlady and Shades of Idaho, don't feel too badly about that thing on the patio. I bought it as an unfinished, unassembled furniture thing at Menards about 10 years ago for about $100. I was in a huge hurry to assemble it so I just slapped it together, not realizing that things like drawers are supposed to be checked for square. Then I proceeded to finish it after seeing Martha Stewart do it. I didn't realize I could pick whatever color I wanted so I literally did it exactly like Martha, same colors and everything! Then I waxed it. Ugh, it was ugly. Anyway, the drawers never worked properly because they weren't square. It was irritating. Three people from Freecycle were no-shows (I'm done with Freecycle ... it's too infuriating), so it went off to Goodwill. Maybe someone can redo the drawers to make them work, but I feel for them dealing with that wax. @ Krycek, those little gable doppelgangers (I love that term for them ... wish I had thought of it!) were the bane of our existence. They caused these miserable flat spots in the roof where snow and ice would collect. My husband had to go on the roof every time it snowed or else we'd have major leaking. No roofer or insulation person could overcome the issue. It wasn't a huge problem until we moved in because the house was mostly used as a summer residence until we came along so there wasn't such a temperature difference inside in winter because they had the heat on a minimum setting. For everyone who mentioned that horrific finish. It's all over the house with the exception of the kitchen. We thought we had plaster walls, but it turns out it was plaster applied over drywall. I can tell the room they started in because the swoops are super close together. They did it AROUND all the light fixtures, making them very difficult to change out. We painted the guest bedroom first and in a 10x10 room went through two gallons of paint! It wasn't primed (or painted for that matter) and it just sucked up the paint. And every one of the tops of those swoops had to be done with a brush because even the thickest roller wouldn't cover there. I'll so happy to be rid of it although we'll still have it in the back room, downstairs bathroom and hallway. @ Traceee- We've actually lived in this house for eight years. We always knew that we hoped to stay in the house forever if possible, but at some point we'd need a second bathroom. We thought we'd address that in the future, but having to deal with the leaky roof situation advanced the plan a bit. We're not living in the house right now, although we were planning to. We moved our bedroom downstairs (to what was the master when we moved in, but we preferred to have our bedroom upstairs and additional living space downstairs) and were going to stay there for all other than the one or two weeks when a portion of the roof was missing. But again I was apparently being optimistic, and completely underestimated the disruption to the rest of the house. They had to rip out the back of the pantry to get the abandoned chimney out and now they are going to run all the electrical, HVAC, etc. through there, so the kitchen is a mess. You can't get to the basement from anywhere but outside so you spend a lot of time going in an out of different doors. We are fortunate to have a family cottage nearby that we can stay at so we figured we'd just get out. There is limited heat at the cottage though, so hopefully we won't be out here much past mid-October. Estimated completion date is the first week of November, but one of the last things that is being done is the deck, and certainly we can be in the house while that is being constructed. I think some of our neighbors are surprised that we aren't adding more. In addition to the fact that we are hampered by shoreline and floodplain zoning issues (and therefore it would have been very difficult to add-on out), not to mention budget, we really love our small (1,700 sq. ft. if you include the finished part of the basement) house. We will still have the smallest house in the neighborhood, but I think as far as value goes, we'll be a little more competitive now. The sagging floor thing was not a complete surprise as our contractor sort of suspected it. The fact that there were no headers over the downstairs windows WAS a surprise. I don't think adjusting for that has affected the budget ... just temporarily slowed them down. The scary part comes this week when they try to tie in the new roof to the old roof and we try to correct the sagging roof over the living room. I'll breathe a sigh of relief if we can get through that part without any expensive surprises. With these old houses (built in 1938), you just don't know what you're going to find.