Can you post some pictures of your options? Do they allow you to choose your specific granite slabs?

Yes here are some pictures.

This is the Durham toasted antique cabinet with Javea Cream granite. The toasted antique cabinet is Durham by Aristrokraft, it is made of purestyle laminate. The two floors that I'm considering are both shown in the picture. The one on the left is countryside hickory, the one on the right is English elm.

This is the white cabinet, it is a maple with the two black granites. To the right is Uba Tuba to the left is black pearl.

Better picture of the toasted antique cabinets.

I like the foiling in the antique cabinet, it adds some personality to the doors. I was drawn to the Javea Cream because it has some fleck of black and blue. I want to decorate mostly in grays and blues in the kitchen, I'm sick of brown!

I really like the fresh look of the white, and the contrast that the black granite provides.

Having a hard time deciding.

I like the white maple cabinet. If you want to decorate in greys & blues, I'd also choose the black pearl. Even though the Javea Cream has flecks of blue & black, I see gold & tan. Do they let you go to the stoneyard & choose your own slabs? I like both the floor samples. The hickory looks warmer and would soften & ground the white cabinetry.

I'll have to let someone else chime in about the $2000 upgrade for soft close & dovetail construction.

Congratulations on your new home.

It looks as if some of your choices have a glaze. Just my personal opinion but a glaze on some cabinet lines just makes them look dirty. We have looked at very upscale new homes and rejected them due to the glazed cabinets. Check out more than one door in the line for how the glaze is done.

Finishes are all in the eye of the beholder. In my case, I happen to like glazes - it would be a plus if it were me.

All personal preference. I happen to like the left side of your first photo (antique cabinets, javea granite, and hickory floor). I prefer a light, airy, and warm look in the kitchen so I avoid dark colors except as accents (especially on the counters) and go with an off-white rather than a bright white. But that's personal preference. Your friends advice on needing more contrast is definitely a personal preference as well.

Which of these two looks do you prefer? Yes, some of it is lighting but the top is a cool look whereas the bottom is a warm look. And yes I'm sure someone will correct me and say they think the top picture is warm not cool :-). Back to personal preference.

Love your choices. I can see how it's making for a difficult decision! :) I like the glazed doors myself. They warm up the room as illustrated in the pictures posted by StanZ.

Regarding dovetails and soft close, dovetails provide a furniture quality to the drawers. They're an aesthetic feature, imho, and do imply a better quality drawer. What is the standard drawer construction?

Not all soft-close drawer glides are the same. For example, I hate the soft-close drawers on my bathroom vanity. I have to really tug on the drawer to get it open. However, I have one soft close in the kitchen. It holds all my corningware and is a high quality Blum drawer glide. I really like that one. If your upgrade option is for Blum soft-close, full extension drawer glides, then I'd say it's worth the upgrade.

When we bought locally made cabinets they had actually stopped making dovetail joints because they added so much additional cost without much benefit especially in the era of soft close hinges - much less impact on the drawers. Aesthetically they are pretty but my 1920s cabinets that were not dovetailed never fell apart either, and they definitely weren't soft close! I'd have a hard time paying so much for that. The soft close hinges are really nice - someone had a post on here recently about adding this after-market to the doors inexpensively so you may want to look into that and spend your 2k elsewhere.

Both your cabinet/granite choices look great - I'd prefer the lighter tops but that's just personal preference.

I would do anything I could to not have stapled drawers if your house is not a starter place. As for soft close - I love the drawers soft close. I don't like the cabinet doors soft close. PITA IMHO those doors. But, for the doors, I would spring for the hinges that open the door 180. Our hinges limit the angle that the door can open and I didn't realize I would miss the full opening doors.

That is kind of a strange option that they are offering you because the reason soft close drawers became so popular was that the soft close prevented people from slamming shut the stapled drawers and breaking them so putting the dovetail with the soft close is like belts and suspenders. You only need one.

If this is intended to be your forever home or a place you will be for a very long time or if you are not the only person who will be using the drawers and the other people in your household tend to be hard on the furniture then I would definitely pay for the upgrade. The things that I would really want is drawers rather than doors in the lower cabinets and for those drawers to be full extension drawers capable of bearing a lot of weight.

I will ask about just getting soft touch, maybe that would be cheaper. I was also thinking about doing a 2nd color cabinet on the island, that I would carry into the bathrooms. I was thinking a glacier gray, but worried that may not look right with cream... and would gray look too trendy? The bathrooms must have white marble sinks so I wasn't wanting white or cream cabinets in there.

Soft-close:

Drawers - I think they're worth the extra cost, but they're a "nice to have". Our drawers are both dove-tailed and have soft-close - I don't consider them mutually exclusive or redundant. I like that the drawers don't slam and that I can give them a shove and I know they will quietly and gently close behind me. The soft-close also reduces the shifting around of items in the drawer. I've noticed that self-close drawers w/o soft-close snap shut sharply and audibly.

Doors - I don't think they're worth the extra cost b/c you can DIY them easily for doors - we did! For our cabinets, they wanted $50 per door for the soft-close - we bought the soft-close dampers for $3 each and one per door. It took us less than an hour to install them on all our Kitchen & Powder room cabinet doors!

Full-extension on drawers - I consider this a "must have"

I noticed that one of your cabinet choices is Purestyle Laminate. What type of a finish is that? Are you able to sand & repaint it? Not that you will want to, but I'm wondering how it compares to a wood cabinet.

This is kind of old, but what did you go with? I have the same dilemma now and I've been told the purestyle cabinet would be better for my busy family and I'm trying to decide between while and antique white. I've picked the Durham door style.