Yes, it looks too busy and vertical line-y. At least in this image. Can you take your cabs to the ceiling? Are you having drawer/door lowers or are you planning on drawer base cabs?

What are you planning on storing in those cabs?

How long is the wall?

It looks busy to me also, but the first thing that screamed at me was the use of base cabs instead of drawers. You know we all pray at the altar of drawers here, right? ;) Infinitely easier to use than standard cabs where you must crawl around on hands knees to find items in the dark back recesses.

I would agree to take your cabs to the ceiling. The look is much cleaner, plus you get more usable storage by eliminating the dust catcher on the top.

After we saw this rendition, we told the kitchen guy to extend the cabinets higher. This is an old pic. I had no idea to plan for extra drawers....makes so much sense though. Do I just commandeer one of those bottoms and change it to drawers? Thanks for the heads up. Any other critiques?

Do I just commandeer one of those bottoms and change it to drawers?

I'm betting you could covert that whole run of base cabs to drawers.

I suggest making a list of everything to be stored in that zone. Then analyze the best way to store those items. I would guess that 99% of what you need to store there could go in drawers. You'd be surprised how many items are effectively stored this way. Large pots and pans. Small appliances. Plates, cups, and bowls. Storage containers. The list goes on. Some items are better accessed in shallower drawers like you'd find in 4-drawer stacks; whereas many other items benefit from a 3-drawer arrangement. Some folks even use a very deep 2-drawer stack.

The only item I can think of that store better in a doored cab are sheet pans or serving trays, but those are best stored in either an overhead cab with slots or in a pullout cab with slots. This last method is really just a type of drawer if you think about it.

I'll link a thread below with an explanation of what I store in most of my drawers and what type of stack I have. Many, many, many of us here adore our drawers (kitchen, that is) to the point of listing them as one of our three most favorite items in our new kitchens. I'm a complete drawer convert.

The doors you see here are my two sink bases (even these can be made as pullout drawers), my pullout trash and recycling cab (really just a type of drawer), and my corner susan (again, corner storage could even be drawers).

Here is a link that might be useful: Thread on my drawers

Ditto. And I don't even HAVE my drawers yet and I agree.

Seaswirl, go to the Finished Kitchens Blog (linked below) and look at how people use drawers. You are thinking about drawers as shallow things in an 18 inch or 24 inch cabinet. In designing kitchens these days, people use drawers for everything, including pots and pans and dishware. They are easily 30 or 36 inches wide and can be deep enough for a stock pot. All of your base cabinets can be drawers. People have learned that it is so much easier to use drawers than to get down on their knees or stand on their heads to look into base cabinets.

I believe that your wall cabinets look "too crowded" to you because they are too uniformly tall and skinny. They have nothing breaking up their uniformity. You could try a design where the center cabinet with glass shelves is trimmed out differently, is 2 inches deeper, or is different in some other way to break up the look. Having wider cabinets, instead of narrow ones, could also help. I am not sure that removing one set of two doors and making the remaining two cabinets that much wider would work. It might make the two cabs too wide to comfortably open the doors. You would have to play around with it to see.

Here is a link that might be useful: Finished Kitchens

It looks like you also have enough room to make that wall deep - 30" base and 15" uppers. You'll add a ton of space that way!

Like Deedles, I'm still in the planning stages, but just an hour ago I finally convinced my hubby to go with all drawers in our base cabs (we only have 2 - it's a small kitchen). The more you see it and think about how they will be used, the more sense it makes. What worked for DH was to go to our cabinetmaker's showroom, where he had drawers and pull-out shelves side by side. Seeing is believing!

Yes totally on the 30" deep! You'd gain enough that you could definitely back off from the doorway a bit, too.

Without knowing what you need to do in that area or what the rest of the space looks like, here's what I'd suggest.

Increase to 30/15 inch deep cabinets for that wall, it's small enough to not cost a lot but will give you options for workspace and storage. You can cheat and just pull the lowers out 6 inches to get the counter space without paying for deep cabinets if you want.

For the lowers, maybe a mixer lift by the wall, then two large drawer stacks, then a recyclables pull out on the door end. Functional and symmetrical with out being all the same.

For the uppers, what about putting your microwave there? Have the two double doors on either side, and have open shelves in the middle for the MW and cookbook storage. Or keep the MW and books, but have doors that are long and open up for each shelf for a different look. It looks like a good spot for the MW since the fridge is right there and you could make snacks and reheat without having to cross the main cooking space. You could even put the cereal and dishes over there with the toaster for a breakfast center on the end closet to the fridge if you wanted.

One thing to consider is trim cost. I love the look of different depth cabinets. I almost got deeper cabinets over my range. But the added costs for the trim was not worth it to me. It adds 4 corners in close proximity to each other, and the labor is more intense than just straight trim. I decided that money was better spent elsewhere since my kitchen is small and in a starter home. If it was my forever house, I probably would have done it though. Just one more thing to think about.

I think it looks fine. But it might be because I have a similar wall. Forget about the glass in the center, and make the middle base cabinet a 3 drawer. That will give it some more functionality and variation.