I forgot to mention above. Our costa esmeralda is honed, not polished. So it's not shiny at all.

I prefer the stainless or nickel. I agree ORB is a "trend" and you may be changing it down the road. The rest of your kitchen sounds so timeless,I would take the timeless choice of chrome or nickel. This is what I seem to see in magazines, etc. Of course, this is also my preference so I may be biased!

It doesn't matter what color your appliances are. It'll look fine either way.

The big question is why you're letting some guy mess with your vision? I think that the dark of ORB isn't the best with the light of Costa Esmeralda. In fact, all of your finishes are breezy and light, so ORB doesn't really make sense in your design. It would look fine, but your original plan makes more sense.

Size is a different matter. Are you talking about using the very long, narrow Euro style wire pulls? People often get them so that they'll be just a few inches shorter than each cabinet door or drawer, and mount them all horiztonally. Just a margin of a couple of inches on either side.

Positioning is a little tricky with shaker doors. Ordinarily, one centers the hardware in the frame, but that might put the bars too high below the counter to make that workable. Best to measure what's comfortable so you don't rap your knuckles. As long as they're a quarter inch above the inset, and the same placement on all, they'll be fine.

Are your drawers slab front? Or are they also inset panel? That will make a big difference. Do you mostly have drawers in the lowers? Or mostly cabinets?

I believe we are going to do stainless or nickel. While the "contrast" sounded like a neat idea, it would only be for short term before we got tired of it and went back to our original plan. So onward with the original plan!

Yes, I believe the pulls we're thinking about are generically called "euro" styled pulls.

As for the drawers, can you explain to me the diff between slab front and inset panel? I'd have to ask my wife, though I suspect at this point in time she probably has forgotten now. I would say we have a mixture of drawers and cabs.

Thanks!

Slab means it's just a plain front panel like a slab of wood. It wouldn't have the shaker stiles and rails, or molding for lack of a better word. Having the drawer fronts match your cabinet door's shaker style could be considered inset panel. This is also sometimes called a "5 piece drawer."

I agree with not choosing ORB hardware. CE is a lovely granite. I'm looking forward to seeing your kitchen installation.

Oh then we are not doing slab front panels. They too will be in the shaker style. I guess we have inset panels then. There's just so many terms being thrown out when going thru these things.

I'm looking forward to seeing our kitchen as well! =P All the appliances are here (hood and micro/convection over is installed -- everything else is waiting). The cab boxes are in. The fronts are not here yet. Waiting on installation of granite and tiling as well.

My GC said we'll be able to move in by the 24th of this month! Let's hope so! (Then again, we're SOL if not since we notified the landlord that we're moving out!)