Thanks Carrie. I need to find some water around here that doesn't have clutter like a Lowes or powerlines on the west side to use for nice sunsets. But, I just haven't found one that works too well yet. Great sunsets we have... water to add to the picture mix, not so much.

I think in your case, you can go either way. In Rocco's first example, I actually don't like how they frame the top of the fridge because it is unnecessary. The room has a very tall ceiling and there are no top cabinets there. So the extra cabinet looks a little odd. Also, it throws off the symmetry to the floating shelf on the other side. In the second examples, it looks much cleaner. and i think it's perfect. So I think if there are no tall cabinets, you shouldn't frame it.. But if you do, then you can go either way. In Redlover's example, there is some tall cabinets on another wall, but I still think it looks a little odd because the wood frame has no function, it's not reallya cabinet. However, I think the wood framing provide stylistic unity for the kitchen. Since in that example, the kitchen is not going for modern, but going for more elegance. So, besides having top cabinets or not, style of your kitchen is also a consideration. Frameless is a little more modern, clean, it may even feel a little commercial. But the frame maybe necessary if you have a more "elegant", "traditional" kitchen. In your case, I think you can go either way. I'll probably not frame it since the frame probably won't provide usable storage, unless you are going for the elegant look.. then frame it. Lastly, looking at your kitchen layout, your main sink is very far from your range and the fridge. So, you can only use that for cleanup purposes. So your prep sink near the fridge became extra important and you will spend a lot of time preping there. It's a bit hard to see exactly how big of a prep sink you have but it look a little small from the rendering, esp if you get the kind that it's narrow on the side of the faucet. I'll advice getting a sink that is "normal" size, wide, and shallow for your prep sink. I am adding a photo of how we do it in our kitchen .. we have a very small kitchen but we lean toward modern and clean look. So we need lots of cabinets and we have to frame it. Here is the "wall" behind my island (w/sink). I haven't done my Kitchen reveal yet since i'm still waiting for my combi steam oven to arrive (see hole above oven) This post was edited by noopd on Wed, May 1, 13 at 23:51

SubZero still has the cachet, but there are competitors now. Fifty years ago, they were about it for built-in, and it was much more recently that they got competition for the dual compressors. If you don't have that, you'll really notice the difference in the freezer. A LOT. They also have the freshness filters, which some of the higher end European ones do, as well, but they all work differently. A big part of the price difference, however, besides what the market will bear, which is at the bottom of all pricing, is reliability. Icemakers are the weakest part of any refrigerator, and call for the most repairs, but they are reparable. If you maintain a SubZero (e.g., vacuum the grille), if today's units are anything like the past ones, and I haven't heard that they were slipping, the fridge will last decades. A 2002 SZ isn't even through half its projected life! My mother is on her second one in fifty years. :) The earlier ones were only good for twenty years... OTOH, since you're in a less high house in a transitional neighborhood, you could just as easily frame in a standard fridge and make it look elegant and unassuming. I got Miele columns because I couldn't make the sizes for SubZero work for me, and I wanted all fridge and all freezer anyway. And, yes, my old Kenmore fridge from grad school days also kept food cold. It's the little details that make the difference. The lighting. The quality of the shelves that don't chip or crack, and supports that don't break. The drawers that actually do something rather than just saying "crisper". The smells that aren't there. The corners and back wall where the lettuce doesn't freeze. Lots of little things like that. And the fact that, given the possibility of a few repairs along the way, the thing will last 30+ years, with on the mark customer service, and you have why people will pay more for the SZ. But it's only a must where it's a must. In those kinds of places, if you don't go all out on your remodel, you'll be better off keeping the kitchen as is, except for what you need for your immediate comfort, because it's going to be ripped out anyway, and they'll pay less for thinking they need to remodel, not more because you already did it.

I have mild/moderate DIY experience and an IKEA kitchen, so I'll give you my perspective. I am comfortable with most anything that involves non-powered hand tools, plus I have a lot of experience with a power drill, and I had fun using a jigsaw for the first time. DH has a circular saw, but I don't touch that. When it came time to do our kitchen, we hired most of it out. DH has extensive DIY experience, but he refused to install the cabinets. I joked that it was because he was resistant to redoing the kitchen in the first place... but in fact he was speaking from the wisdom of experience, because our house is old, there isn't a square corner anywhere in it, and he didn't want to have to deal with cabinet installation. The kitchen turned out to be a sort of parallelogram, skewed in all 3 dimensions. lol. Our installers did not level the walls, but they shimmed extensively. We had licensed pros do the electrical and plumbing, and we hired out the hardwood floor installation. This is what I think, given my experience: 1. You can assemble the standard IKEA cabinets, no problem. 2. You can paint. You can also learn to tile (I didn't but I wish I had, since I hired the wrong person to do our backsplash and I could not possibly have done a worse job than he did). 2. Customizing the size of the lowers will be a problem for you. 3. Changing the door size will be a much bigger problem and might in fact not be doable at all, with IKEA doors. 5. A much better option for a custom-sized cabinet (and more to the point, its door) is to order it from a cabinet company like Barker, Scherr's, or Semihandmade. Then you can get the size you need and have a door that fits. Your easiest approach would then be to have that company supply all the doors and drawer fronts instead of using IKEA's, so they'll all match. (All 3 of those companies routinely make doors to fit IKEA cabinet boxes.) 5. If you really want to change a door size yourself, buy one and try it BEFORE you set your kitchen layout plans in stone. 6. An alternative to points 2-5 would be to sit down with an IKEA kitchen person to see if you can fill your space without using custom sizes. Sometimes there are cabinets available that you don't think about. Measurements also get thrown off if you don't account for all the cover panels etc (including on the cabinets on each side of the range, if you have a range, to match the measurements of the cover panels you'll put on the sides of the cabinets over the range). 7. There are definitely areas of installation where experience would be a huge asset. For example, our counter height and counter-to-uppers distance changes throughout our kitchen because our floor and ceiling both slope in 2 directions -- but not in the same 2 directions. I did not think of having to have different counter-to-upper distances until I saw it happening. (You understand: we do not have sloping counters or uppers. It's the floor and ceiling that slope away from the level cabinets, in different directions. The installers had to do some creative toekick and crown molding cutting to accommodate this.) 8. The easiest way to get around point 7 is to not have uppers. Failing that, don't try to take them all the way to the ceiling with crown molding; go ahead and leave a couple inches of gap up there (the gap will be bigger in some places than others). Our crown molding makes a big difference in the look of the kitchen, but we could not have done it (to look as good as it does) ourselves. 9. Stacking the uppers will give you an extra layer of complication. Try to use a single row of uppers to simplify things. 10. I don't know what a Japanese saw is (other than presumably being made in Japan), but cutting in a straight line is only part of the equation. A lot of IKEA material is MDF, which is very hard to cut by hand, or particleboard, which leaves a jagged edge when you cut it. The part I cut out with the jigsaw looks completely ridiculous -- remember it was my first time using one. Luckily it's not a structural part and also isn't visible. Again, I suggest bypassing any need to saw anything that people can see, especially doors. 11. You will still need to saw toekicks and cover panels to length, but this you can handle (probably) given IKEA's good instructions and the fact that the cut edges will be covered. 12. Bottom line: you can install basic IKEA cabinets yourself (they are intended to be DIY-able, after all), but customizing them could be a big problem without experienced help. Installation will be much faster if you hire it out. You will definitely need to learn how to figure out your floor, ceiling, and wall slopes and how to account for them. (I don't know how because I didn't try.) Good luck! You do know that IKEA is changing to a different cabinet system this winter, yes? This post was edited by northcarolina on Mon, Jul 14, 14 at 11:55