I remodeled my kitchen about two years ago. We had been wanting to do it for about 10 years. I did everything except the cabinets and countertop. There is very little I dislike about our kitchen
The island is two bookcases (one with doors), one deep cabinet and one drawer cabinet. They were put together and the toe kick is back about 9" with feet on the corners which makes it look like a piece of furniture.
I removed the double door pantry and we put in a prep sink and moved the dishwasher to that side. I wanted double ovens, but could not make that work so I put in a convection microwave and upgraded to a 36" 6 burner dual fuel stove. When I ripped out the pantry I bumped out the wall so the fridge could recess as viewed from the family room. One of these days we will get a stainless fridge.
The flooring is hickory. I love it, but might opt for something water could not hurt if I did it again. Since we have upgraded we had the freezer defrost and have a few boards which slightly cupped and I broke a bottle of wine. Neither has caused damage, but a flooring surface which can take impact and water would be ideal.
Oh, the island cabinet is maple with an antiqued black finish and the granite is peacock green (although it appears more black). The other cabinets are parawood (rubber tree) which looks awful until it is stained and they stained it at the cabinet company. The granite on the perimeter is most likely santa cecila. Pulls other than standard will cost you a buttload. Nice thing is you only cry once. The pulls on the island are a basket weave black "football", the ones on perimiter cabinets are a solid "football" with a pewter finish, or else they are made of pewter, I forget.
If I had not done the lion's share of the work myself it would have doubled the cost and the cost was not exactly cheap. My undercabinet and uplighting is dimmable LED from Inspired LED. You really don't want to know how much that cost to have the ability to dim the lights!
Some of the nicest features are things you do not notice. Pot filler off the sink (useless, but fun), inverted sink base for the main sink (drawer at the bottom), spice rack to the left of the sink, pull out trash to the left of the stove. In the base cabinets I had them put the lower shelf as a pull out and in two of them I had them cut back the upper shelf so I could put tall items like a blender or mixer at the front of the pull out. On the fridge size the cabinets go to the ceiling which is awesome for storing things you don't routinely use. To the left of the fridge and right of the prep sink is a pantry cabinet and I had all the shelves put in as pull out. The microwave is to the right of the fridge and to the right of that is an angled cabinet where I wired an outlet into so we can charge cell phones. The island required an outlet by US code and I put in a plugmold strip on the top interior of the bookcase end. That way I did not have to mess up any of my exterior faces on the island. I wanted to do all my outlets as plugmold, but it was far too expensive.
The fridge in the before photos is in almost the exact same spot as it is in the after. I also changed out the window above the main sink and put in a larger window. I set it at a height so the countertop is the window sill.
Before
New Layout (from cabinet company)
After (does not have travertine tile backsplash installed in photos and undercabinet wiring was incomplete)
Only good shot I could locate of the fridge wall was a construction photo