Very country-esq. But very very charming!

I would upgrade your appliances to a stainless steel or just change out the microwave to a white one.

I would also suggest re-facing the cabinets to a darker wood and upgrade your countertops. The countertops look laminate but the bar counter (from this picture) looks granite.

for the nook, I would get rid of the wallpaper. It's a bit outdated. Paint the walls instead. For the color of the walls, I suggest using an off-white. The reason is because you will lose a lot of light (not physical light) by changing the color of the cabinets.

The floor looks amazing! I love that floor. It looks like the flooring I had when I was young, there was a wood floor in our barn that looks just like that.

I love the light above the table. Keep that. But if you change the color of the cabinets, get a new dining table to match the cabinet color. :-)

If you want to keep the color of the cabinets, what you can do to really change the space is just remove the wallpaper and paint with an update on the countertops. :-) Good luck.

Everything can go = D I would like to keep it somewhat traditional but I am really open to anything. No furniture is staying so it will be everything new. (Wall paper is first to go lol).

Haha, im so glad you're open! Im sure you'll get a ton of advise here on Houzz! Also, we would love to see pictures once you update it! :-)

Do you have a budget you are working with?

see all the pics on this site for ideas
https://www.houzz.com/photos/crisp-architects-traditional-kitchen-new-york-phvw-vp~607038

We have an open budget, we will splurge on counter tops and try and keep the same cabinets but try and darken them up a bit. We were even considering trying to open the kitchen up to put a larger island.

We love medium and dark wood along with earth tones. We are quite sure we will replace the appliances with stainless steel also.

We have 3 children (so far) and would like something open and maybe a better layout option for them to be able to sit at and eat. The breakfast nook is not that large so we thought that a small-ish round table for 4 would be acceptable but not our favorite.

Are you doing the work yourself? As far as picking what you want. I started with the counter tops. Go look at a warehouse of them and pick out what you like. Bring along a sample of your cabinets to see how they look together. Sometimes the countertop can be your inspiration. If you're not doing the work, you'll have to find a contractor, cabinet company or designer to work with to get a bigger island or different layout.

We will so most of the work ourselves but will hire a contactor if we move the island or anything major.

Colors similar to this...

Or maybe this...

We would also like to do a little rearranging of the island and counter to be able to do a "T" shaped island. The "T" would fit best if it were flipped and the top of the "T" was on the outskirts of the kitchen.

The left side of the kitchen (where the refrigerator wall is) would look similar to this when the counter part was removed.