When we bought our house two years ago we had to buy all the appliances because there was nothing in the house. At the time DH insisted we had to keep the kitchen that was here which had custom built cabinets that he thought looked authentic to the home. I said I'd be ok with that as long as we could put in an island with a dishwasher. I bought an appliance package and chose the GE Profile in a slate finish. I chose slate because I thought it would look good in the current kitchen and because in my experience stainless was difficult to keep clean. I was right, it does match well, and it is easy to keep clean, however I often wish I'd gotten stainless just because the kitchen is so dark that anything reflective would be welcome. Fast forward two years and due to unforeseen circumstances we never put in the isalnd and after living with it we have both agreed the kitchen has to change completely. The custom built cabinets were not particularly well built and were worn out, the layout was atrocious and inefficient. I realized after countless attempts of coming up with a better layout that the main problem was that there was nowhere to put the refrigerator. I finally came up with a layout for putting the fridge and range against the back wall and sink and dishwasher in the island across. DH is building the cabinets (not my choice but he was determined). We are putting the island in right now and will start on the perimeter next. The thing is, if we had not just bought all brand new appliances I would be choosing totally different things now, however with all the money we will have to spend to redo the rest it just doesn't make sense to put money into appliances (though I keep thinking about it). However, the biggest decisions if we do want to change appliances lies with the fridge. We will be building around it and the pantry next to it will come even with the front of the case. To maximize space it makes sense to have a counter-depth fridge. With our current standard depth fridge the 45" aisle will narrow to 36" on the corner of the island across from where the fridge will be. However, counter-depth fridges are expensive and smaller so its hard for me to consider spending money on that right now, ESPECIALLY because we also have the issue of matching a unique finish. Though I would like to go stainless for reflective quality, and would love to replace my range for an electric slide in (I let DH talk me into gas, which while I love cooking on it, its such a pain to clean), its not in the cards at the moment to replace both or all appliances. I feel like replacing one causes a domino effect because they are in close proximity.

So my question is, decide on counter-depth and buy a mismatched fridge for who knows how many years? Or just build around the standard? There is no way to "test" which would be best as we'll have to wait until its all torn out, but once changing it would be very difficult. Unfortunately I do not like the GE counter-depth french door refrigerators. Really there is only one counter-depth fridge I've seen that doesn't look too small to me, its' the 24cu LG with the door-in-door. It seems the perfect size, but the LG stainless doesn't even look like other brands stainless to me. I do think their black stainless looks a lot like the slate only shiny versus matte (even in person, I've seen them close to one another but not side by side) and I wonder if in my darker kitchen (we will be adding lighting but there just isn't lots of natural light to be had.) they would work together? Or would the extra 3" or 4" of aisle space make enough of a difference to make it worth this expense and trouble?

Here is the basic layout. The island has been moved back about 5" to give a little more room between back wall and island and if we have a standard depth fridge the pantry on the right of the fridge will be brought even with it.

Here is the type of range I have:

and the LG I like: