We went way over the budget for the countertops and had to go budget friendly in the mudroom to account for it. I'm thrilled with each decision.

The mudroom is always messy so it would have been wasted money.

The counters pull the whole kitchen together - they were worth every penny.

We also were super conservative on the lights figuring we could always upgrade later. It wasn't easy but I found pendants for $75 a piece and they work really well.

The first day I turned the over head and the under cab lights on I thought I'd gone over the edge but I really like it. It's like daylight in the winter evening. I'm much more motivated to get the kitchen cleaned up or to start something cooking or baking because it's like working in the daylight.

I'm with you on the hood, but I've found I like all of the power, even though it's more than I need. :) And it's supposed to work better on a lower speed of bigger pull than higher speed of lower pull.

My overkill, not on budget but on volume, is lighting. I never used to like cooking at night because of bad lighting. Plus, with California law, I had to include fluorescents, which bug my eyes and give me headaches. So I hired a lighting designer. I have the indirect fluorescents (but fancy ones) which I had thought would be good bounced off the ceiling, plus more of them as downlight on the island, for which thank heaven for dimmers. Both have gel sleeves that reduce the color temperature to be more like incandescent. (And on the less fancy ones in the laundry too.) I just wish the light were sharper. The whole thing is dumb because I'm using a lot more fluorescent light to be compliant than I would with nice, sharp, warm incandescent. Sigh. Then there are the five halognes in the corners and in front of the pantry, plus three in the BP, and two over the clean-up sink, the LED's under the cabinets, the built-in halogens in the hood, and the little swag light in the doorway. All of these are useful at various times, but day in, day out, I mostly just turn on the indirects.

Sub-Zero in an above entry-level condo building, not a luxury condo building.

We went for overkill on our separate fridge and freezer set (Whirlpool Sidekicks). They look huge, but since we have been using them for almost 4 years, in addition to our old fridge which got recycled after demo, while we were waiting for the reno, they are really not overkill after all. I guess using all 3 could have been considered overkill, lol.

I can stock up on sale prices and save trips to the store since I can freeze items and cook double or triple batches with room to store leftovers. I have 2 growing sons who will eat us out of house and home in a few years, so these will get a lot of use.
Their sizes seem big to people when they first see them, at 30" each, but when you use them, you no longer notice how large they once looked. Together, including the ice maker and shipping, they came in at $2k. They are also more energy efficient than our old smaller s x s fridge.

We skipped getting a prep sink, potfiller, and instant hot (although we had been tempted to get a bottleless waterfiller that made hot water, before going with a plain water filtration system).

Probably one of the nicest kitchens in the neighborhood now, but when starter homes go for 1/2 million, well, no, not overkill.

Did we need to have the built-in fridge, the beverage and the wine coolers, the Wolf, the 2 DWs and the prep sink, the beautiful calcutta gold marble and quartzite? No, but we did. Especially, after 7 years of scrimping and saving, researching and planning, staying within the original footprint, this remodelled kitchen is just right.

Wow...I am with Melissastar! Our kitchen is definitely overkill for our neighborhood, where our house is strangely twice the size of all the others to begin with.The houses are all from the 50's and 60's.

In our old house (very old....slopey floor 1834 house) we spend oodles on the soapstone countertop, paying a $1000 travel fee for M. Teixera. That kitchen was 1/4 the size of our current and we paid way more for that soapstone than we did for this marble. Ho hum.

Overkill? At first I thought I went crazy with the lights but that only lasted a day or two.

I wish I had another dishwasher. And a maid. Ho hum.

for me it was doors. doors on every cabinet, even doors behind doors! it was like i turned into some kind of hysterical neat-freak. i haven't even moved into the house yet and i already have the cabinet maker coming back to remove two appliance garage doors i just HAD to have for my microwave, coffee maker and other small appliances -that are already hidden away in an area covered by ...that's right, DOORS!
thank GOD i came to my senses before ordering door panels for our mudroom cubbies -which were running over $100 each!

meet the soon-to-be-gone offender:

{{gwi:1475532}}

Windows. They run along the entire L counter, interrupted only by the stove hood, and continue at both ends in a French door and window-seat bay. They, with the custom wood hood as a minor note, do make a special space of what would otherwise be a very standard low-end kitchen. My DIL misses my unlamented uppers on my behalf, though. :)

My overkill was my marble backsplash. I also spent more than I needed on a Silgranit sink, and the antique brass faucet and light fixtures.

OTOH, the granite I liked best happened to be in the cheapest price grouping, my custom-made cabinets were cheaper than the estimates I got for conventional lines, and my hardware was relatively inexpensive.

If I had a bigger kitchen, I would have found ways to splurge a lot more. :-)

Kitchens can be a kind of a frenzy. Like when you have a baby or get married. You start making choices and convince yourself that you HAVE TO HAVE IT. Sometimes it just gets out of hand.

If you don't know by now, short posts are not my strong suit LOL! So here goes.

We're still in progress, there's time yet as I haven't bought some major big ticket items. My neighborhood is around 20 years old and has homes between 1800 and 4000 sq ft. We're on the lower end at 2500 sq ft. We don't want to over improve, however, the norm for this neighborhood is Whirlpool, GE, Jenn Air, or Kitchenaid appliances and oak cabinets. A typical kitchen "upgrade" for this neighborhood is to swap out white or black appliances for SS, new tile floors and granite replaces laminate on existing cabinets. Full remodels are rare.

We opted to do a remodel versus upgrade. We are the 4th owners of our 20 year old house and it shows. The kitchen had had minor updates, the most recent was a new tile floor laid right over the 20 year old vinyl. The previous owner had put in new black Whirlpool and Kitchenaid appliances 4 or 5 years before we bought the house. I guess they chose black over SS because their existing refrigerator was black. Other than that, the kitchen was original. We knew on inspection day that we were going to have to address the kitchen. I was talking to the inspector and noticed a bulge in the backsplash tile. I touched it lightly with my finger and several tiles fell off. Yup, the kitchen was literally falling apart.

Here's where we are:
The fridge - bought it 4 years ago. It's SS, it works, would rather spend elsewhere.

Layout - no changes to plumbing or fixed elements like windows.

Lighting - craigslist, I paid $45 for 3 "vintage" pendants. Quirky, but I love them!

Window - replaced old aluminum window with best quality off-the-shelf low-E vinyl.

Cabinets - craigslist, got a great deal on a former kitchen display for $1500

Counters - craigslist, part of above great deal. Granite. They're Baltic Brown and I don't love them. I got the ok from DH to sell them, but I will reserve this decision until we're closer to the end. I love a pretty counter as much as the next girl, but would be perfectly happy with Ikea butcher block.

Backsplash - found crackle tile on clearance at Expo.

Floors - the original plan was to keep the tile and fill in with leftovers, until we found out that the tile went over existing vinyl and sound hollow in spots. Plus, we already had a few gouges before we did demo. We've opted to scrap the tile even though it's only 3 years old. The current plan is to do engineered hardwood to match our entryway. It all depends on price here, mostly the price of install. Although I love the wood, I could compromise with a less expensive floor in the kitchen and reserve the wood for the family room.

Faucet - still haven't bought it, but I'm leaning toward a very budget friendly Kingston Brass model. It's something that can be upgraded easily in the future.

Sink - haven't bought it either. I know I'm going with a farm house sink. It's one area I'm willing to spend a little bit more since it's a permanent fixture.

Range - craigslist, a vintage yellow Chambers. It still needs some refurbishing, so although it wasn't terribly expensive at $800, I've spent around $400 so far to have some of the pieces refinished. I still have more work to do on it. I'll probably end up spending another $600 to $1000 to get it finished. After I'm done, it likely going to come out the same price-wise as a lower end 36" SS range, but I'm emotionally invested. It's my showpiece.

Oven - got one on clearance at Ikea. It has everything I need for a second oven and the price was $200.

Dishwasher - here's an area I'm considering spending. I'm picky about dishwashers. I've had pretty good ones and a whole lot of crappy ones. I want a good one and I want it paneled. I HATE the upkeep of SS. One the lower end, I'm considering Kitchenaid. I've had two in other houses. One was great, the other, meh. On the middle end I'm considering Fagor. The online reviews are very good and one person on this board has one that she really likes. No one sells it in my state. Even the fancy schmancy appliance showroom sales person hadn't heard of the brand. It would be a gamble if I have issues that require repair. Plus, not being able to see the rack configuration IRL bothers me. On the high end, I'm considering Miele either the Diamante or Optima.

The Miele might be overkill. Most machines do a decent job cleaning and are quieter than ever. Do I really need a machine that can be PC updated? Built in water softner? Tons of features when I typically use the Normal and Pots and Pans cycles? Probably not, but still...

I think my overkill was raised panel, applied molding, painted and glazed cabinet doors. It's almost impossible to tell what a wall of cabinets would look like from a 12x15 door sample, and this was THE DOOR I loved. I don't regret it, but in retrospect, I could've gone with a simpler cabinet door and achieved a very similar overall look.

I think the undercabinet lights may end up being overkill. They are not installed yet, as we are waiting until the backsplash is done first, but already purchased, so they will be going in. There seems to be plenty of lighting in the kitchen, but with the dimmer, hopefully it won't be too much of an overkill.

On the other hand, very early in the process I gave up the double wall ovens, speed oven, convection microwave, pot filler, 2nd sink. So far, no regrets about any of those.

I'm not sure if I really NEEDED a 6 burner Culinarian or a huge farmhouse copper sink, but I am enjoying using both of those tremendously, so therefore overkill it is not!

homechef: there is nothing overkill about a proper range. enjoy it!

Kathec -- if there's a Costco near you I noticed they're selling engineered wood floor tiles in the warehouse at the moment; might be online too. I know nothing about these price or quality-wise; in general their prices are often good though.

Thanks for the heads up aliris19. Funny, I was just there today buying my son new eyeglasses, too bad I didn't see your msg before I went. I'll need to check it out next time.

We spent more than I had planned on doors--big, solid wood doors and one metal one with internal blind. Also more than we needed to on cabinet glass. These are pretty modest splurges, I suppose, but you did ask. Generally, we weren't able to splurge except that the whole project was a splurge.

Let me first say what I didn't do. For structural reasons, our kitchen ceiling was removed during reno. My DH wanted to make the kitchen two stories, killing off 2 bedrooms and a bath! I said no, even tho we have pretty low kitchen ceilings dating from when the house was built in 1900. The gc wanted me to combine the kitchen with the adjoining dining room/solarium. I said no .... The dr is the only room i've not changed!

Originally the kitchen had a 19 foot long island that held double sinks, cooktop and d/w. I wanted to rip it out and put in a an island with the same functions but white marble to replace the granite and gas cook top to replace the electric. And add a breakfast area by taking down a wall at one end of the kitchen. Keep all the perimeter cabs, double oven and subzero.

But DH insisted that the existing odd, long, landlocked kitchen needed to be opened up to the family room. So we blew two 5' wide holes into my kitchen walls and those openings killed off several appliances and next thing the whole thing is down to the studs.

It is much better for our family, but I sometimes wince when I think of all the waste of the old kitchen.

Windows. We're not done yet and there's room to kill more over. But for now it's these insanely roccoco windows in a simple, Craftsman bungalow. Every window has nine lights. And there are more windows than anyone has a right to envision. Then there's an edging, then the edge of the window. Then a lip, then another, then the edge where the lock goes. Then a face board for the window. Then comes the molding. There's 3.5" of it. There's a bump and a dip and a slope on up to another lump and then a dip and it *finally* ends in a flat-ish bit.

It's out-of-proportion to the house, out-of-proportion to the lifestyle of the house's inhabitants, out-of-proportion to the inhabitant's bank account. Not only are the windows expensive to begin with, but then you have to paint them too. Mistake; pretty but overkill for sure I think unless it isn't. Architects are expensive in so many more ways than their bill alone....