WOW! You must be so excited! It looks simply stunning; what a great transformation. I love that giant fridge handle, your beautiful floors, the ceiling lights and the colour combo. Can't wait to see more shots and hear the details.

Enjoy your gorgeous new kitchen :-)
Eliz

Love the chocolate walls! It's all gorgeous. I'm SO excited for you. A tremendous job and change from the 'before.' Enjoy, enjoy.

To get your photos smaller: While viewing a photo in Photobucket, if you slide your mouse over the top edge of the photo, some tabs show up and one is 'resize.'..Or you can go to 'edit' and choose to resize. For the forum, I always choose the preset "Large" option.

Congrats! We are hoping for sign-off the end of this week. Can't wait to move in.

Love the color combination and it looks like you must have doubled your storage capacity! Wow!

Can't wait for you to reveal more of the mosaic behind the stove -- looks stunning!

Love it!

I really like how you did the crown. Nice touch.

Wow!!! What a transformation!!

Love, love love it! Very serene space. Love the color. Love the way the stone, wood and appliances come together.

I have a galley as well -- and quite honestly I do not like it. But now after seeing yours, I think I can make it work without changing the design completely.

After you have lived in it, I would like to know how chocolate walls are working out for you, esp from dirt/stain perspective.

Enjoy --- yet another beautiful addition to the long list of beautiful kitchens.

What a fantastic remodel. I love the color palette-- it's white but warm. Love all your choices, actually. The new French doors are fabulous! Great, great job!

I can't believe the transformation -- it's beautiful! Enjoy your lovely new space.

Wow! Beautiful transformation! Everything really looks wonderful together. I can't wait to see more pictures, especially one of your tile work behind your range...you're just teasing us with that tiny snippet of it in the one photo! :)

*on a side note...rhome410 why should the photos be made smaller? I have a large monitor and so maybe I don't get it, but I prefer the larger photos that people post so that you can see the details, otherwise I find myself squinting and wishing the photos were larger*

Kat :)

Looks great! I love that chocolate color, and your doors are beautiful!
What is the brown countertop?

Oh, it's such fun to finally share...and I will soon post some more detailed pics. I want to post some taken in the daylight as those fluorescents we are required to put in here in CA really cast a yellow sheen, even more obviously in the fotos than "live". Thank you all for your compliments and support.

elizpiz--how funny you should notice my "giant" fridge handles. They are the 11" size and I worried that they were too small for the fridge which seems rather giant itself to me...but I think they actually are probably the right size--which was nice since the bigger price tags were rather daunting!

rhome--glad you like it--you've been one of the more constant responders on GW and I always admired the pics I saw of your kitchen as well. Thanks for the instruction on smaller pics.

lesmis--I asked for instructions for smaller pics because there are so many I'd like to share and I think the download (or is it upload?) could be very slow if all my pics were sent at that size. Hopefully they won't really be squinting size! Especially the mosaic :-)

gldnfan--have fun moving in...I'm so glad to be able to do it but also realizing how much work is involved. And I'm SO tired right now. The good thing is that it is all on my own clock now!

alice462--I'll have to let you know if I really doubled my effective storage capacity. I carefully plotted out exactly where everything was supposed to go but of course a few changes were made as we went along and sometimes I wonder if I will discover that I completely forgot about all my pots and pans or something big like that! I think that I basically rearranged the same effective space I had before but I may now have more "extra space", i.e., the space that is only useful for the things you rarely get out and don't mind needing the step stool for. The big question though is whether we're going to like not having a "breakfast/supper nook". I think most breakfasts and snacks will take place at the counter but we try to eat suppers at a table together and we either have to make room in the family room for some kind of supper/game table or use the dining room table. My son is 12 now but I don't see much evidence that he's quite ready for the dining room on a daily basis :-)

fori--glad you like the crown. Before GW, I never even knew what a crown was, or undercounter lights or any of those things that now seem so basic! :-)

homey bird--I didn't much care for my galley either until I saw how someone redid theirs and I was lucky that we could open it up to the family room and still find space for the cabinetry that we needed.

morton5--I'm so glad to hear you describe my room as warm as that was my goal. Previously my complaint about my house (and still about other parts that need attention in Phase 2) is that it is "cold". Those French doors are actually not new--they were there before and completely didn't fit the house but I didn't think we could get new ones right now so the GC just repainted them from cherry to mahogany and it completely changed my feeling about them. Now they fit right into the house.

hostagram--thank you

timber j--the brown countertop is stained mahogany covered with seven coats of The Good Stuff. I love it and I hope it holds up as well as so many others' wood countertops have.

I think that was all the questions. Thanks again everyone. I'll get more pics up soon.

I love your kitchen. It is very warm and inviting. I love all the little details like the molding on the cabinet sides. You can set up a free album on the web so you can share all the details like the mosaic and such.

Gorgeous transformation! I love all the little details and I just want to lick your walls - such a yummy color. Everything came together so nicely. Specifics! Post all the nitty gritty that you know your fellow TKOers want to read.

Gail, it's just beautiful and the chocolate and honey go perfectly with your cabs, counters and backsplash. Great job, look forward to your next set of pics and personally I love the big pics, it's easier to see all of the detail. Which paint colors did you end up using?

I actually daydream about one day being able to post beautiful pics like these and say... before/after.

What a beautiful job... you give me hope.

Stunning. You are very talented!

you did a great job!

Gail, thks for your very nice note on my other thread. I think the best part of finishing a kitchen is sharing it with all of us TKO'ers who appreciate the beauty - but also the know the pain that went along with it :-) Savour the moment!

Eliz

Lesmis, I gave her the tips on making the photos smaller, because she asked. :-) But not everyone has large monitors and it can mean scrolling back and forth to see larger photos, which means not being able to see the whole thing at once, which is very unsatisfactory. Additionally, the larger the photos, the slower the message will load, which can be another problem for some, depending on their modems and internet connections. I use the 'large' size photos (600 x 800), because that's what was recommended by the forum instructions when I first started posting photos a couple years ago. I haven't checked to see if that's been changed, but the large size seem to work great.

When I first started on the forum in 2006, it was often recommended not to post photos, but only links, because many people still had dial-up and it took forever to load a message with any photos at all. ;-) Thank goodness that's not usually the case any more, because seeing the photos is too fun.

Ahh, that makes sense about the pictures, I was just curious because I had seen that mentioned in other posts as well. We are lucky enough to have large monitors and cable internet (we both work from home so need both) so I can understand how it might be tough if you don't have those. I just have a tough time with the tiny pictures and LOVE seeing the bigger pictures...or maybe I need glasses?! Hmmm

Thank you, thank you...so rewarding to hear from GW'ers that I know really know what they are seeing! Unfortunately today I could not take pics because Ds is home sick from school and the workers have been here finishing up details. I feel so blessed not to have one of those GC's you hear about who disappear close to the end leaving lots of details hanging. This guy doesn't miss anything, even the clean-up part. So lucky.

Pluckymama, the colors we ended up with are BM's Rockies Brown in the kitchen and Dunn&Edwards Verona Beach at 175% color in the family room with BM's Swiss Coffee for trim. When we first started I would have been willing to bet a million dollars that I'd never have brown kitchen walls...but one thing I've learned in this process is how little I know about color--but I'm learning! :-)

More pics soon...I know that's beginning to sound like "the check is in the mail" but it really will happen!

Beautiful job!Your kitchen looks very inviting.

Great transformation! I love inset cabinets but I worry about the loss of space. How are you finding the difference to be from your old cabinets...if any?

Great design. I have a question, I live in Calif too(Near Disneyland).I had not heard about that law that florescents were now required in Calif, When did they sneak that one in. (Kinda dumb law) If you use 35 watt Halogens (as I do), annd you put them on a dimmer, and I rarely turn mine up even half way, You will use less electricity than a florescent. Oh well, Our govt at it again.

Gary

Gary -Title 24 in California - a certain percentage must be florescent. Most people now put in the florescent and switch them after inspection to - as you said - one of the newer more efficient option that provide a better light. In order to balance our track system we shoved a bunch of lights above and below our cabinets - they look especially awful in my kitchen with green countertops - they give the counters a nasty yellow tint.

Gail - we also have a GC who is meticulous about keeping the job site clean - in prep for our move-in he had someone clean the windows to a sparkling clear finish - unfortunately we have a floor to ceiling window just as you enter the house and the other side has an ipe deck with boards run to match the floors in the house. DS and his friend - who were told not to run in the house but they are 7 ;-) - came tearing in from outside and the friend went right "through" the window - with so much force it threw him backwards on his bum. It could have been so much worse - we will have a table in front but of course didn't then.

We get our sign-off today - I don't think it has sunk in. It has been such a long process.

Just had to open this thread again to gaze and give a deep sigh of appreciation. Gail, I too like the big pics!

Gldnfan, my daughter ran into a closed glass slider at a vacation house last year. Chipped one front tooth and cracked the other, she'll have to have laminates when she gets older. Sad, but like you said it could have been so much worse. Glad your son's friend is okay. Sorry to hijack!

gldnfan, I'm curious what you say about switching out the lights...now that they are required to be pin lights, how does one "switch them out"...are there other lights that use pins? Or do you mean they have the electricians come back and change the fittings? Our understanding is that with the new law it's not easy to switch...I have the same green countertop and yellowish glow on my "cream" cabinets when the lights are on...I suppose as KD's and GC's get more familiar with this people will be advised about the combination prior to choosing it! Oh well, I find I'm starting to get used to it already so maybe eventually I won't even think about it. Gary, my understanding is that the current requirement is that you must have 50% fluorescent, i.e. if you put in one pendant as in our case which is rated for 3 100 watt bulbs, you must have at least 300 watts of fluorescent...the result being that we have LOTS of fluorescent lights.

Congratulations, gldnfan...sounds like ahead of me in terms of getting moved back in.

Amela, I will let you know about the insets. I love the look and because my kitchen was reconfigured, I think I gained some space to help make up for any lost due to the insets. But I haven't really been able to start moving much back in as I've had a sick DS at home all week as well as a sick DH so not much energy around here. I think it's a sign that it was really time for the remodel to be done! I'll let you know what I think as I go along about the space. The insets do look really good in my house, though, as it was built in 1931.