I'm really having a tough time deciding. I've gone through the FKB several times but I've seen many pictures of people's kitchens here that are not in the FKB and I didn't know to clipboard them at the time. I was going to get a sample door from Scherrs but I'm not sure how much good that will do since cherry darkens quite a bit the first year.

Here's a pic of my current kitchen:

The layout will basically be the same but with more base drawers and the island will have cabinets full depth instead of the overhang in the back. I have red oak flooring that needs to be refinished but will still be fairly medium. That's a lot of wood. I now have a SS refrigerator and countertop convection microwave and a black induction cooktop. I'm keeping the black DW and will have a SS/black oven.

The kitchen is interior so I'm worried about the counter being too dark. However, the adjacent nook has three windows facing east, a patio door facing south and two skylights that aim into the kitchen sink area so maybe darker wouldn't be bad. I definitely don't like anything brown or yellow but I'm not keen on the whites or grays either. I'm one of those people that hates white Christmas lights (unless there's a whole bunch of them) and doesn't see the point of white flowers. Generally I like cool colors like blues, bluegreens, and purples but all the countertops are earth tones or wild primary colors. Basically I'm a PITA!

I went to a couple of kitchen galleries and a granite supplier this week. I don't like a lot of movement.
I saw a Cambria Bradford sample that was interesting but I'm afraid it's too blue. I can't find it in an demo counter so I ordered a 12x12 sample to see how it looks in our kitchen and to compare to other options. It has grey and blue quartz bits in it along with taupe and cream bits. Not sure how well that will go with cherry and the cream bits may stand out too much for my taste. The woman at one shop turned up her nose at the idea of that with cherry. The woman at another shop got a sample cherry door and said she liked it. It looked better than I thought it would.

I saw a sample of verde butterfly at one kitchen place and a demo counter in verde butterfly at another shop that I liked but it's so dark if the light isn't shining right down on it. The crystals in both of those looked deep blue but it looked green at the granite supplier. The blue pearl was interesting. I liked the crystals and it seemed lighter than verde butterfly but it's so grey to me and I like color. Of the lighter granites I saw one called Ambrosia White that wasn't bad. Bianco Romano was alright but it's so hard to tell how it will look in my kitchen from a slab. There was a leather one called Marron Cohiba that caught my eye but I doubt that would go with anything else.

Do any of these sound like they would go with Natural Cherry in my kitchen? For what this stuff costs, I'd be miserable if I didn't like it once it was installed. Should I be looking at a stained maple instead? The Kraftmaid Toffee stain caught my eye. I've got a medium hickory now. I don't want the open grain of oak. Painted white and cream look great in magazines but I hate it when the seams open in the winter and they're too hard to keep clean.

Is there any hope for me?

I have natural cherry cabinets too. I was restricted (in my mind) to laminate due to cost, so I can only speak to that and to color.

I'll keep it brief. I was set on dark gray/slate-look/or black/oiled soapstone-look laminate--until I brought home a dark slate-look laminate section from Home Depot. Too dark for my kitchen and my taste, although the dark looks sexy in photos online.

So, I knew I wanted to avoid tans/brown-based colors because I think that they deaden the cherry tones.

That left wood-look (no thanks) or gray. I went with a gray soapstone-look laminate.

It's not installed yet. Hope it works.

Good luck with your decision. Try not to compete with the cherry! :-)

naan: LOL...I guess that's like when you flip a coin to decide something and you want to go 2 out of 3 once you see the answer.

I have natural cherry shaker cabs and really agonzied about the counters. I chose Carrara marble, which you won't like if you don't like whites and greys.... but I also looked at the following granites and stones which all looked lovely with the natural cherry. (By the way, my kitchen is fairly dark so I quickly ruled out the darker colors and looked mostly at medium tones)

Costa Esmerelda granite (the more grey-green, neutral slabs)
Costa Smerelda Rosa (grey green with pinkish)

Azul Aran- Absolutely GORGEOUS blue-grey granite. really stunning and perfect with the cherry, but I needed something lighter and less expensive!

dark grey soapstone

slate

caiquemom: I did read the article. It said NE slate is stronger and doesn't split like some but it later said that you could sand out scratches. That's why I was concerned about the softness.

Where do you find NE slate? I'm in NC and I didn't see any at the one granite supplier I went to and I haven't noticed it in the few showrooms I've looked at which, based on the article, isn't surprising. There's a big stone place fairly close that I know has slate for exterior use and flooring. Is that the type of place I'd buy it or do you just have to pick a color based on samples and order it direct from NE? It says the slabs are smaller. Any idea what a typical size is?

I haven't seen the Azul Aran in person but the photo looks interesting. Any idea how it compares in darkness to the Blue Pearl? I must have confused the Costa Esmerelda with something else. I was thinking it was a really dark emerald green but the picture I just found doesn't look that dark.

BTW, I see that your drawer base (far right above) has 5 drawers in it. What's that little one at the bottom for?

We were worried about matching the movement in our granite when we layed out the templates on the slabs with the fabricator, but we did find that the movement being kind of swirly in places actually helped in the spots where we couldn't place the pieces for a perfect match. Both the large backsplash pieces were cut from the area adjoining their counters so they have a near perfect match, but the small piece to the left of the window wasn't but the eye isn't drawn to the difference because the lines aren't straight. When the movement is more straight, it can be jarring when they don't match it from one piece to another.

We do have a little window sill piece behind our sink and a counter outside that for the pass through which might give you an idea what your narrow top behind the sink might look like with some movement. There is also a seam in about the middle of our sink. That is one of the places where we weren't able to position for a perfect match, but we put the two ends in a swirly parts of the grain on the stone to hide the mismatch. The sill and outside counter also weren't positioned for a perfect match because we wanted to take the backsplash piece out of that area but I think they still flow pretty nicely.

If the 35-year old 18"-wide trash compactor someday breaks badly enough that it can't be fixed, we may replace it with a 12" model and a 6" pull out for more baking supplies. I thought it had done so and got as far as calling a cabinet guy, but my husband and son got the motor unjammed.

Thanks for all the information on your kitchen. Now cut and paste it to the FKB. ;-) I've seen lots of gorgeous pics of your kitchen in various posts. Think of all the time you'd save if you upload them to the FKB.

We even converted it from black to stainless in the remodel. The one thing that bothered me was that it was missing the cover of the toekick area and, when I recently reminded him about that, my husband improvised one that looks good.

Our son, DIL and granddaughter were living with us the last time it broke and with 5 of us it was handy to be able to compact but when it is just the two of us, we rarely push the compact button.

So for now, I'm content to keep the old beast (not to mention the white refrigerator) and wait to figure out what to do when it fails permanently some day.

He doesn't mention what type of slate he had but I just thought I'd point that out if you're still in the research stage.

Alexamd, your kitchen probably is the closest to mine as far as lighting goes and that granite doesn't look too dark at all. I like your backsplash too. Is that slate?

I received my 12x12 sample of Cambria Bradford on Thu. My daughter (who never likes the same thing as me) actually liked it too. I took it with me to 2 more granite suppliers Fri so I could compare granites to it. All the ones I've liked are pretty dark. I gave my layout to a fabricator to get a quote on sapphire brown just to get an idea on the granite.

Unfortunately, there aren't many places here that handle Cambria anymore because the company won't allow anyone in NC to fabricate it but them (in their facility in Charlotte). Presumably there's not enough money in just measuring, templating and installation to make it worth the local guys' time.

I ordered a sample door from Scherr's yesterday. I should have done that a long time ago. I'm hoping it will darken up faster if I set it in the sun.

From Harper Kitchen Remodel

clearcoat natural cherry (knotty) with sun ray granite. I love it.