Still have kitchen on the brain since hearing back from the carpenter that we spoke with about our project. Since we're working on a limited budget, I had assumed that we couldn't afford much more than refacing our current cabinets and painting it all out. Currently we have a cooktop and a double oven to the side of it. Since we are limited on countertop and we hardly ever use the double oven, we thought it would be a good idea to take out the ovens and just get a slide in range. That meant that part of the cabinet base would need to be redone in order for the refacing to work, that's when we brought in the carpenter who was recommended through a friend, to discuss what this would cost. Turns out we can keep to our budget and get all new wood cabinets based on the fact that our kitchen is pretty small and fairly standardized. Unfortunately the curved bench that we were picturing in the eating niche blew the budget big time, so that isn't going to happen but being able to take out all the cabinets and start fresh was a big surprise!

So now that the cabinets don't necessarily need to be all painted out, the choices just grew exponentially! I've been drawn to the two toned strategy for the cabinet finish, there's something about the mix of materials or colors that seems unexpected and fun. We have a dishwasher that we bought just last year after our original one died, which has a nice smooth white front with no exposed controls. Starting with that, it seems like having white lower cabinets makes sense with warm wood upper cabinets on one side and wood open shelving on the other side (window side). There's such a mix of shelf attachments and brackets, but I want to stick with something true to the midcentury modern aesthetic so hidden hardware is probably the way I'll go. This image below is probably closest to what the shelves would look like, both the wood tone and dimension and the way it's attached at the wall.

What are your thoughts about two-tone? Especially in a smaller kitchen?