The last of our original appliances - the oven and cooktop - are failing. Countertop is splitting and cracked. Time to make some changes!

Our 20-year-old Mills Pride maple cabinets are still in good shape. The maple has darkened, so is pretty much impossible to match. But we have maple throughout the house - maple collonades between rooms, maple floors in LR and DR - so would like to keep them and blend some other things with them, but don't want the kitchen to look outdated, or piecemealed together.

The area we need to address is the area where the refrig and wall oven are (72"), and the island.

We are moving the refrig to a built in area next to the pantry on another wall and want to get the cooktop off the island, so we plan on putting a range and a pantry cabinet on the wall where the refrig and wall oven currently are.

We have some matching cabinet doors from a built-in entertainment center we are dismantling, so can build the pantry cabinet using two 18 x 30" upper doors, an 18 x 6" drawer, and an 18 x 24" base door - see drawing. We also have 12" cabinets, tops and base, and drawers to put on the sides of the range area, but the top cabinets are only 30" tall, and the other cabinets in the kitchen are 42", so thought about putting shelves or small wine racks below those cabinets to make them align with the other cabinets in the kitchen - see drawing.

What do we do with the area above the range? We don't have enough matching cabinets. We thought about putting the microwave there and buying cabinets of the same style and painting them to match the island or maybe white, or putting a decorative hood, valence, and/or shelves there - husband doesn't like the metal hoods that go to the ceiling.

For the island we would like to make it one level, reduce the seating area to two seats, put in a wine rack and maybe a wine cooler, we could put the microwave in it, we were thinking of a butcher block top (dark or light?), and some kind of decorative corners, and painting it a rustic looking blue? we would also like a pot rack above it. The finished size of the island will be about 75 x 36".

We also need advice on the countertop - quartz? Granite? And what color? would also love to have ideas for a backsplash and a sink.

Some additional info: our appliances will be stainless - (electric range); the floors are large, cream-colored tiles; in addition to maple throughout the house, we also have a lot of white beadboard; we have a lot of blues, tans, peachy tones; years ago a designer called our style French Country, but we prefer beachy.