I would think about doing a light counter instead of a dark one. You have a very small kitchen and dark counters will make it look smaller. It will also be very dark with the darker flooring.

Thanks for the suggestions so far. We're not 100% committed to the dark floors but did like them for the rest of the space. What colour floors (besides lighter) would be more suitable?

Something a little lighter and warmer like a walnut LVP tone would work better

Adding some more photos of island size mock-up and some of the floor laid out to show the colors better

spend some of that budget on decent lighting in the kitchen. remove the track and do at least 8 canned lights.

Your cabs are very yellow toned (prob due to the oxidized clear coat ). If you painted them white or a very soft grayish white, they'd work a lot better w/the flooring you've chosen.

similar flooring to what you've chosen. look how they painted their cabinets (also added to the top, but haven't done the crown molding yet to hide the gap)

You don't have a lot of cabs to do. a Pro cabinet painted (not a house painter) would prob charge you close to 3K or more to do a proper job. (taking down the doors and drawers and going back to his shop with them to prep/prime/paint). Can you handle that? If it's too much, then do them yourself.

you could also add on to the top w/boxes like they've done here

hold off on the countertop until you can decide. and when you do get a new one, don't get the 4" piece up the back. you want tile to come down to the countertop

Thanks, I agree with the white/color palette you suggest, but unfortunately the 3-4k we quoted for painting the cabinets just isn't in the budget right now. We were hoping to do something that would work for now with the plan to update the cabinets a year or two down the line. Here's a few quick mock-ups of what we were thinking, but maybe it's better if we just hold off and do it all at once.