What did you end up doing? I have a similar wall I am contemplating cutting a pass thru bar in.

Yes, the open pass through could look good. Notice the finishing touches in your inspiration photo--panelling in the dining room, ogee edge on countertop to take everything up a notch on the dining side.

We scapped those palns and went big! We added on a 20x20 family room/living room to the back, and knocked down those kitchen walls.

We looked into MANY different options.... expanding the island/just adding legs/adding the ledge, adding some pantry cabinets... refacing cabinets or painting them. So many of the kitchen costs were fixed it was hard to justify the cost of counters/appliances and not just doing the full thing. It was going to be hard to match counters/wood stain of cabinets since the door style and stain were no longer offered by the manufacturer (Schrock). When I wrote that post 3 years ago I thought our cabinets were 5 years old. I was able to track down more details of the house and it turns out they were 15 years old amazingly.

We also added on a 20x20 living room to the back of the house. It seemed the cost of working with what we have for the kitchen part would still be pretty costly, especially with the ceiling change. We were able to sell alot of the materials (cabinets, light fixtures, etc) to offset some of the cost/keep some stuff out of the landfill.

What was our dining room is now part of the kitchen, and our old living room is now the dining room.

We doubled our living space. The kitchen layout is slightly different than pictured here. But this is what we ended up doing.

Thanks to all the people on this forum, I learned SO much throughout the process and I'm happy with our end result.