I'm more partial to the baseboard running around the bench.

Not sure I understand... you mean no toe kick, right? The problem is a kitchen company is making the cabinets, etc. and they are making the bench with essentially cabinet fronts on the drawers. I would have someone else construct the bench without a toe kick but the company is applying the finish on the cabinets with color/glaze exactly per custom order and it might be hard for another cabinet maker to match the finish.

Does the cabinet company do a furniture base? Take a look at that.

Most cabinet makers can add details to the front of any part to make it look like furniture; I would contact them and ask.

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thanks for all of this! I will check with them.

I built a window seat for my own house out of standard kitchen cabinets on top of a 2X4 base. Matched the cabinets in the kitchen. Used four 12" tall cabinets that would normally go over a refrigerator.

Looks beautiful the way you did it. It's interesting that you chose to recess the base so it's like a toe kick. Can you say what your thinking was about that?

Design/function ?

agreed, looks fine the way it is shown in the drawings to tie the two spaces together.

@wowww, I wanted to use the same cherry cabinets as in the kitchen. Since the bottom of the door as about a quarter inch above the bottom of the cabinet, kinda close to the floor I thought, it just seemed easier to build a recessed "toekick" rather then trying to do something flush. Also I had two floor vents to deal with (you can see the cutouts for them in the first photo) and a grill would work better in a flat recess instead of some molded baseboard arrangement.

What was interesting is at that point the kitchen was about 18 months old. Of course cherry gets slightly darker over time so for the first year the window seat was obviously different. But now they're the same color!

Dytecture: just to be sure I understand, you think it's best to have a toe kick on the bench to tie in with the toe kicks elsewhere in the kitchen? Maybe by ensuring that it is tied in with the kitchen that way, the kitchen appears more spacious?