Last weekend we went and picked out the color package (about 8 different decisions) for the new house. It was not very hard, I think we picked out everything in less than an hour. Caitlyn stayed in the car with the little ones so we tried not to take too long.
We chose the brick package that I posted earlier, and the same dark walnut hand scraped laminate flooring that is in our house now. Since the kitchen is a combined kitchen, dinning room and living room, there wasn't a really good way of requesting tile in the kitchen but laminate for the rest of the area, including the foyer & half bath. The transition strip would have ended up about five inches from the bottom of the kitchen island, meaning that barstools would constantly catch on the transition strip. Not ideal. If we had the transition right up to the island, then it would cut the pantry flooring in half. Again, not ideal. We knew we didn't want tile in the living room, so the choice to make everything laminate was fairly easy.
We went with white kitchen cabinets - I read reviews online and apparently white cabinets are the "timeless" choice for kitchens. I didn't know that. Anyways, they look great with dark wood floors and the other option of a dark wood cabinet would NOT look good with dark wood floors. So again, the choice was fairly easy.
We are getting brushed nickel hardware, plumbing, & lighting fixtures, so I wanted a granite that would go with silverish tones. Unfortunately most of the granite choices seemed to be reddish or yellowish, and would have looked nice with the oil rubbed bronze fixtures, but we didn't want to upgrade to those, especially since we like the brushed nickel better anyways. Bottom line is that we ended up picking a rather dark choice for the granite, but one that apparently looks beautiful in the light and also has silvery specs in it which should look great with the brushed nickel faucet & lighting as well as the stainless steel appliances. So, I'm going to post pictures of what I'm thinking our kitchen may look like. First I'll show you the granite choice. It is called Verde Butterfly, and has large flakes of what look like butterfly wings, and looks like a dark charcoal in the dark, but in the sunlight looks either bluish or greenish. Here are a few pictures of what the granite looks like. It's hard to tell exactly what it will look like without the right lighting, but I think these are two good examples. They show the pretty "butterfly" flakes.
So, here is what I think our kitchen will look like - or will try to make it look like. I can't find the perfect picture, so you sort of have to imagine items from one picture merged with items from the other pictures. The floors will be dark brown as in the first picture, the countertops will be the dark black/green/blue as in the last two pictures (best seen in the third picture). I'm debating between a light greenish/blue color for the walls and a bluish/gray color. Something light for sure, but I need to make sure that it goes well on the dining room and livingroom walls as well, since they all share the same wall. The kitchen cabinets will be extra tall and will have crown molding that goes directly to the wall & then crown molding on the ceiling, as in the third picture. I really like the wall color in the first picture and am leaning towards something in that shade. I want something that looks modern, clean & crisp without being beachy. So I don't want turquoise, but a very light grayish aqua would be good, I think. The other option is to go with a less green, more chrome or silver tones. I know that I don't want browns, olive, red & orange tones (definitely not thrilled with the wall color in the third picture here) - I'm looking for cooler neutral tones this time. Ah decisions, decisions....
