We have to put in our cabinet order on Thu and and I am hoping to finalize a few things.

Here is our current kitchen (more pics in the link below) with the crazy recessed lighting above the island.

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This is the door style and finish we are doing - Kitchencraft Lexington door in millstone. It’s an off white with a subtle brush stroke effect. We are planning to do the island and/or the desk area in the espresso finish.

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Picture of espresso cabinets in our master bath

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What do you think dark island or dark desk area or both? I haven't picked the countertops yet but I am hoping for darker soapstone like tops on the light cabinets and white stone counters on the dark cabinets.

I am still finalizing the layout. The one thing I am realy not happy with is the island shape/configuration. I think I'd prefer to have an island with cabinets on each side facing the sink and fridge wall and seating in the front only and not the side (where the fridge will be). I'll post more about this later.

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Here are some more drawings:

This elevation shows the wall with the rangetop/hood and wall oven/ speed oven. Do you like having the cabinet above the hood go all the way to the ceiling? The one challenge is the crown from the adjacent wall cabinets will have to end somewhere so we might have to make the cabinet over the hood deeper. Also we are putting back the ceiling crown molding (that the rest of the kitchen has) and so do we use that to trim the top of the cabinet over the hood or the one that matches the cabinets?

By the way the hood in this drawing is mounted way low so the cabinet above is really much shorter. We are also not planning to use a two door cabinet above more like something with a single panel.

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Also we are trying to decide whether to do one door (as shown) or two doors on the 24" wall cabinets and/or lower cabinets on either side of the rangetop/hood. Also on the tall oven cabinet we are only doing one deep drawer on the bottom.

On the sink wall (by the way our window is much taller) right now we have symmetrically sized cabinets on the left of the sink so 21" drawers and 24" trash. The 24" trash contains the same size trash cans as an 18" cabinet so we could do 27" drawers and 18 trash and gain 6" of usable space but it wouldn't be symmetrical. What do you think?

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In the desk area I like the look of the recessed bookcase so we'd have to put deeper upper cabinets (I believe 15") on each side of the the open bookcase or make the bookase only 9" deep which I'm not sure would be functional. Also do you like the open bookase being wider (30") than the desk opening below (24")? There is also a chance we can make this whole desk are wider overall if the island doesn't end up being as long.

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Here is the fridge wall. We are getting the leibherr 36" french door so there will actually be two fridge doors and two freezer drawers below. Also we are doing drawers on the lower right cabinet.

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I know this is a lot of questions but if anyone has time to share your thoughts I would really appreciate it. Thanks in advance!

Here is a link that might be useful: More pics of current kitchen