The kitchen

As we continue to get ready to put the house on the market we are staging rooms for the marketing photos. In preparation for the birthday party over the weekend, we shot the kitchen.We haven't done anything in this room. I hate the vinyl floor tiles, I hate that the walls AND ceiling are painted bright yellow. And who paints the window sashes blue? I don't know why anyone would put in black back splash tiles if they weren't putting in under cabinet lighting. With the black concrete counter tops the kitchen is like where light goes to die.If we were to stay I would replace the back splash with off white 3x6 subway tiles and replace the vinyl tiles with Marmoleum (old style linoleum). I was thinking of a ivory and light green on point 12 x12 tiles with a black border along the perimeter. Oh, and of course paint the walls a light green, and the ceiling and window sashes off white.
The previous owner, who was a carpenter at Hammer & Hand installed the cherry cabinets, which I am guessing are stock cabinets, and he poured the concrete countertops. Because he made them so darn thick the range is up on crude blocks so that it is flush with the counters. I actually like the slightly higher work surface though.Overall, it is a very nice kitchen. The cherry cabinets are very pretty and warm. The hardware is subtle and there is a ton of storage! The pantry cabinet to the left of the fridge contains a pull-out 4 bin recycling center. The doors to the bedroom/tv room and basement were stripped of their layers of paint when we did the restoration to that room. I think they make so much more sense now stained rather than painted blue. To stage the room we removed our kitchen table to make it look more spacious and not everyone would need an eat-in kitchen so we are letting people's imaginations roam.When Mr. W bought the house the stove, refrigerator, and dishwasher were all different finishes: stainless steel, white, and black respectively. The dishwasher died shortly after our elder son was born and I commissioned the cabinetmaker who built our nursery built-ins to fabricate a custom cherry front panel for the new KitchenAid dishwasher we installed. I think he did an outstanding job matching the finish considering the cabinets were 15 years old and cherry is known for patina'ing rapidly. I had a hard time finding bin pulls and knobs to match the existing so I moved the ones from the drawer and door to the right of the stove and used them on the new dishwasher panel since they were so close to the others. Then I found comparable iron ones to use in it's place next the the stove. Since it is a bit isolated, it isn't too obvious that it isn't an exact match. This new hardware I had to order from Chown Hardware.The work triangle is very small though and because Mr. W both like to cook together we are on top of each other a lot.