Okay, so I know there's an old thread on this, but it seems to have fallen victim to Mysterious Vanishing Thread Syndrome and I can't get to it...after a lot of hemming and hawing I think we're back to stacking our upper cabinets again. We have 9' ceilings, and I'm trying to decide between 15" on top of 33" or 18" on top of 30". (Can't do 12" over 36" because of an alignment issue with the cab over the fridge...complicated.) Regardless of height, all of the doors will be 16.5" wide (with rails/stiles surrounding that as they're flush inset face frame cabinets).

Does anyone have any photos to share of stacked cabinets where they know or can make educated guesses at the dimensions? I know in general that the 18" cabinets will look more square and the 15" more rectangular, but am having a hard time visualizing it beyond that, and have only been able to dig up a couple of photos.

Also would love any thoughts on 30" vs. 33" for the lower row---the idea is that we'd like to be able to reach everything in the lower cabinets, and the uppers would all require a stepladder. Seems like even with 30", we will barely be reaching the top shelf (my uppermost reach is maybe 69"-72" max) so maybe putting the extra inches in the lower isn't that critical...?

Thanks!