"Do you have a preference between solid wood or engineered? Or is it just a cost decision?" Lynn, It's not a cost decision. There are pluses and minuses to each side. With solid, it's typically installed (nailed or stapled), then sanded and finished. You get a monolithic appearance, the floor can look solid. Downside? The cost of finishing on site, as well as the time required to do so. Should you need to refinish years down the road, the floor can be resanded several times before you hit the tongue in the wood. Every house I build has whole-house hydronic radiant floor heat. Some woods move more than others, engineered is typicaly a better performer over radiant than solid. With engineered, the wood comes prefinished. It can go down with staples or glue. It's generally thinner, and due to the ply structure it has a thin veneer of "show wood" that to refinish is normally screened instead of sanded. Prefinished woods typically have a bevel on the sides of the boards. Some manufacturers have larger bevels, some have virtually no bevel. That can affect the appearance of the floor, as the bevel bothers some others it doesn't. Also it's prefinished, so once it's installed, you're done. No sanding, no staining or urethaning. You can get some great looking wood species in prefinished that just are not available in solid. Normally because the wood grain is too wild, or the wood too expensive, or too unstable. Using a veneer instead of solid makes it possible to use these woods as flooring. Prefinished is usually thinner than solid 3/4" thick flooring. Some prefinished it's better to glue them (Bostiks Best) instead of stapling or nailing them. Prefinished can also have a better and more durable factory finish than what can be attained with an on site installation and finish. Lots of variables, and cost is just one of them. If it's DIY, then prefinished is much easier. If hired out, figure the cost of the flooring, the installation and the finishing (staining if required and urethane). Ease if installation? Prefinished is easier? Cost? Can go either way? Predictability of the finished look? Prefinished, as what comes out of the box is what you'll get. You need a good sub to properly sand, tack cloth, stain and seal unfinished solid hardwood. Take a look at Kahr's hardwoods. I just did a house full of Kahrs, nice stuff.

The disadvantage to all these goodlooking hoods is that they don't capture air. The hot air rising from the cooking area. Consider capturing air. And doing so in a way that increases your impression of space. We also have low ceilings (94.5 inches) in a galley kitchen and wanted a wall hood that would not feel massive / use a lot of the visual space. I'll use your thread to introduce my solution, and at some other time I'll put it all into a new thread. It's a small space, landlocked. We figured we'd make it feel big and open by not having any upper cabinets above one of the two counters --- just backsplash and open space above it, using a horizontal mirror on the wall to increase light from the adjacent space and that window about eight feet away. We removed most of the dividing wall between the kitchen and the adjoining windowed area. Above the cooking surface we felt we needed a structure that could hold the slide-out hood we would design. Reading arbordomus' thread from last January gave us both this idea and the other idea described so far, i.e. increasing visual effect by having something attractive over that other counter. Both a technically valid hood solution that took the space it needed, and an over-the-sink solution, light and airy. For the hood wall, a basic low-cost customizable solution was a wall of three 30.375" high Ikea Akurum boxes, with frosted glass doors and fluorescent light bars inside. Light comes from the horizontal base plate on the bottom: you replace each cabinet's OSB floor with a shelf designed for this purpose. The shelf has lighting in it. Then I did the same with each cabinet's top panel, and got more light. Then I added extra fluorescent bars with warm light bulbs to counteract the cold sameness of the IKEA fluorescent light shelving; I put these behind the cabinets, after first pushing the cabinets out from the wall (using spacers) and removing the cabinets' false backing. It's great to have two kinds of fluorescent lighting: a linear sum of white lights. The impact of this white light is WAY more appealing than either one all by itself. It's white light with increased "complexity". The fan is an inline FG6 from fantech.net. It's suspended from the ceiling. Neoprene rings prevents the fan's normal hum or vibration from going straight into the wall of the duct and traveling down the duct. (It's so quiet it probably wouldn't need the neoprene.) The fan is eleven inches in diameter. Eleven inches is available when I install the wall cabinets at 53" height -- and that happens to be pretty much at the "industry" norm of 54" height. In your case you could go with the 15" Akurum wall cabinet and save a lot of money. The fan has a six inch duct. I had the duct turn down and change shape to fit into my wall's stud cavity. A standard duct adaptor / transition piece, readily available in a large hardware store, turns the duct ninety degrees downwards and changes the 6" round duct into a 3.25" deep by X" wide rectangular duct. Here is where I had a guttermaking shop make another adaptor to turn the corner and transform into a wide wide rectangle for me since my wall studs are 24" O. C. apart. This big rectangular duct comes out of the wall at a 45 degree angle under the wall cabinets,at 47.5"- 53" above floor level. I cut this last angle myself since I had the metal shop just make a long straight rectangle and I didn't know yet what distance it would travel; also, I didn't know the precise height it would be installed at, near the ceiling. The filter fits in here. A wall switch gives me three speeds. I tried a few variable speed controls but they cannot match power factor so they create a little hum at low speed, which is not acceptable to me since low speed operation has to be silent for me to accept it. Summary: Blower motor : invisible since it is in an 11" header box above the wall cabinets. Duct: invisible since it's inside the wall. This increases your options for space / visual effects in your wall cabinets. Filter: under the wall cabinets at the mouth of the in-wall duct. Glass pullout: under the wall cabinets. Remember the goal: to increase the visual impact and the impression of space. A header box overhead holds three recessed 50W 12VDC 12.5 degree spotlights shining onto the counter. I removed the magnetic transformer from these recessed halogen cans, and installed a single electronic transformer instead, because I couldn't stand the hum from the magnetic transformers. Each bulb shines onto the counter while also highlighting the wood frame around the frosted glass panels of the wall cabinets. These glass panels are lifted to open, not pivoted out. The lift mechanism is Blum Aventos HF with 104 degree angle stop. The advantage is space and visual effect (again). The wall cabinet doors slide up and fold up. No opening sideways. If you get 15"h Akurum boxes WITH a lift up hinge, you'll save a lot of money and hassle time compared to my 30"h box. The overhead halogens are in a piece of the header that extends far enough out overhead to put the halogens directly above the front edge of the counter. A portion of the header 7"h extends 11" out from the plane of the wall cabinets. This portion was built in a gently curved shape; again to increase the visual impact. When the door panels are lifted up, the halogen light shines through the frosted glass to the counter below. - So far so good. Next step is to finish making the filter (baffle or mesh) and the official sneeze-guard / canopy / grease surface. I got this far by taking my time, so stay tuned and read my next post about this, in six months from now. The filter could be baffle or mesh or both combined. I have stainless steel that I can cut to any shape, and take to have welded together. As sneeze-guard / canopy / grease surface, I have a clear, not frosted, tempered glass plate that I intend to slide out and tilt down on a slight angle. The underside of the wall cabinets will hold the supports for the slider mechanism. Note that this is already made of tempered glass -- but in addition to this I intend to use more glass to make the whole air capture area even more fireproof, cleanable and clean looking. On the wall, I'll cover the drywall with perhaps one entire piece of glass, or epoxy grouted glass tiles, perhaps with some mirror pieces in there. 53" above floor is below-eye level. A glass pullout slider puts the airstopping canopy's front piece at a sneezeguard height and angle. Making it be able to tilt downwards too, solves a number of air flow problems common to ALL the kitchen exhaust fans we see in the market today. Consider how to stop your grease-speck laden air from rising and escaping the capture area. Solving this problem with a high-space visual effect will give you both what you want and what you need. h.t.h. -dr

There is an art to doing a refresh, especially when you really want to gut and start anew. Regarding your style preferences, everyone has her own idea of what French Country is. It might not be right for your space, and it might not match the architecture of your home. Traditional kitchens are also so detailed they look best when there's sufficient room for the busier elements to shine. Although you have a large enough space, your kitchen seems to be concentrated in one corner of it. That might make both of those looks hard to achieve beautifully in your home. How would you feel about a contemporary kitchen like Christine40's above, perhaps with a few Traditional or French Country elements added in? Here's what I'd do - others have recommended some of these options already: 1.) Paint the cabinets. Right now your kitchen is the wood equivalent of a jeans suit, and that won't change even if you do buy stainless appliances. If you paint the cabs a white (like Picket Fence White below, Ralph Lauren paint) or grey the granite will look fantastic, and the white appliances won't stick out quite so much. That'll give you the option to change them out when budget and time allows (and your Dear Husband is on board). Picket Fence White 2.) Remove the micro hood, and replace with a more modern under-cabinet range hood. 3.) Replace the table and chairs with a narrower rectangular table and bench seat and place chairs on the other sides (per cheify76). This is the Boulangerie table from Restoration Hardware. 4.) Paint your walls a pale green, blue, or grey - based on the colors I see in your granite, that admittedly, I can't see very well. These are Ralph Lauren paints. Montauk Driftwood Whisper River Rapids 5.) You already have can lights (maybe re-take some pics of the granite when these are on?). The other fixtures are easily changed. Over the island, you might like the industrial pulley, or clemson double pendants from Restoration Hardware: And over the table, perhaps RH Foucault's Orb chandelier 6.) Backsplash. Change it. Maybe glass subway tile all one color? Maybe a mosaic? It all depends on your other choices... Good luck! More info from you, and better lit images of the granite will help GWers be more creative when it comes time to choose colors.

Thanks all. I think I really am looking for something simple, not outstanding and something that will blend nicely without shouting, "Look at me!" Subtle is best in my book and I think the countertop speaks loudly enough. I couldn't think of or find any other "colors" or "textures" beside the darker gray that would do just that. It was late when I posted so I forgot I had pictures of the tiles, duh, that helps huh? I think the minimalist idea but not harsh and stark and cold is what this kitchen needs. I wasn't thinking in terms of feminine just with so many darks I didn't want it to appear at first glance that many men lived here, (although three out of five do!!). They really could care less anyway, just strive to make the mom happy. What a blessing! Anyway, try to imagine a 7x20 tile laid lengthwise with about 1/8 in tiny bit deeper color grout. Now what do you think? Without the tiny tiles inlaid. Remember: Place them lengthwise in your mind and keep in mind that EXPO uses flourescent lighting and I have lots of overhead lighting plus zenon undercabinet lighting. Thanks again!