I know there have been threads about sources for inspiration. They were helpful to me. I thought it might be helpful to share some of my sources as some of them were not primarily kitchen resources.

One of the greatest sources of inspiration was pure serendipity. We had decided to keep our gumwood cabinets and were working on our layout and trying to figure out how to repurpose them. But I could not visualize the room and was not happy with any of the materials I was looking at. I kept bringing home tiles and other materials that were pretty in an of themselves but just didn't work. I just didn't have a "concept."

One Sunday we were in the sunroom and my husband spotted a young man outside taking photos of our house. I went outside and we started talking. It turned out that he was studying architecture at college. He himself lived in a Tudor revival house not too far away. He had learned that the architect was Leander McCoord and he had then began a study of McCoord's work and signature style. He proceeded to identify about 60 houses in our city that were designed by McCoord. And he had now identified my house as one of them. I had known that McCoord was the architect as I had seen his name on the old blueprints that were left in the house. But I had not been able to find out anything about him. Chris, the architecture student, came back and showed me his entire file. I loaned him my blueprints so that he could augment his collection.

About six months later Chris was the lead at one of the houses on the annual Historical Society Tour. This was a gorgeous Tudor house also designed by McCoord-- full of detail. This was a mansion while my house is a cottage. Chris invited me to be one of the guides on the tour and in the process I got to spend time in this house and study its details. The owners had restored it so lovingly and respectfully. They could have enlarged the kitchen (it was characteristically, for a house built at that time -- late twenties -- quite small) but they kept it as it was. They had materials custom fabricated to match tile and other items they found in the butler's pantry. Everything they did was so respectful of the original. I came away from that house with a much better understanding of how I should approach my own kitchen, even though mine was decidedly more of a humble cottage.

I think that one of the great blessings was having the time to figure out what we should do. It took several years.

Other sources of inspiration (among many others):

Axel Vervoordt -- Timeless Interiors

Walda Pairon -- Interiors with a Soul

Bobby McAlpine's kitchen in Architectural Digest

Keith McNally's Kitchen

Websites: Belgian Pearls, KitchenLab, Plain English Cabinetry, Cook&Cook Cabinetry

The New Bungalow Kitchen

Bungalow Kitchen

Cottage Living --Kitchens

and of course Garden Web

So, did you have any sources of inspiration that were a little outside the mainstream kitchen sources?