Need Your Opinions My Lovely Followers

Note:  Sorry I haven't been around a lot.  Trying to help out in our community and with some very good friends that lost everything in their home after SuperStorm Sandy.  New York will come back stronger, but it's going to be a long road.  But good community, good family & friends will make that all easier on some I hope.  It's amazing to see so many people come together from all over the USA to help those in need at this time.  xoxo
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I'm turning to you, my lovely followers, for some opinions about my kitchen.

Below is our kitchen and I need to make some changes.  I need to brighten it up.  This will be a process over time, but I want to get a to-do list put together so the project runs smoothly.

Options

1. Paint the whole island white and leave the rest of the cabinets the cherry wood.  
2. Add white wood planking on the outside of the island horizontally. I would end the planking on the sides of the island.  So the doors and the inner side of the island would still be cherry wood.

What are your thoughts?  I would love to hear someone else opinion on this one.  My hubby didn't seem to mind either way.  Though we both thought that doing the horizontal plank wood, would be a lot easier then having to paint everything.  haha.  I would love to hear your thoughts and what you might do to brighten things up in our kitchen.  One day I might actually talk my hubby into changing out the backsplash.  We loved it at the time, but we just choose everything very dark and now of course my taste has changed.  I still love the kitchen, but I need it brighter in some way.

 Sorry for the older pictures, but I already had these to use.  There is only a few changes to the area anyway.

Here is our Dining Room which is right next to the kitchen.  Again this room is too dark.  But I think I'm going to paint the mirrors white and the inner piece will stay brown like the Ballard Design ones.  But that is a whole other project.

{again, sorry for the old pictures}

Link to Dining Room

Want to see a look at the original kitchen from the previous owners?  Oh I know you do.  I will say one thing, it wasn't that bad looking in pictures, that is why we went and looked at the house in the first place.  But the kitchen was really gross and there were flaws in it that I didn't like.  So I talked the hubby into redoing the kitchen completely before we moved into our home.  Best decision we ever made.  You have to understand that the previous owners were not that clean and they had lots of animals {which I'm allergic to}, and the counters were in pretty bad condition.  Plus those upper cabinets had to go that were over the island.  The footprint of the inside part of the kitchen was very small for two people to walk around in.  It had to go.

Looks like a whole new house right?  Painting our walls and adding in cherry wood cabinets made all the difference in the world for this kitchen.  It really warmed things up.

You can take a look at the whole process with our kitchen and see a lot more pictures of the kitchen.  Yet again, sorry for the bad pictures.  I really need to take all new pictures and put a "house tour" tab together for all of you.  I'm putting that on my "to-do-list" right now.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Inspiration

Love the wider planked wood, but I want to put the wood horizontal.

Traditional Kitchen design by Portland Maine Architect Whitten Architects

Oh My Gosh I would love to do this to our catherdal ceiling in the kitchen and dining room.  Oh no, now I have another idea.

Contemporary Kitchen design by San Francisco Interior Designer Amoroso Design

I love this island.  Not sure about doing ours in turquoise, I think I will stick with white for this project.

Traditional Kitchen design by Toronto Interior Designer Chris  Kauffman

I guess this would be closer to the look, but I want more of a cottage look, so that is why I think I will go with horizontal planks in white.

Traditional Kitchen design by Denver Kitchen And Bath Kelly Cross

I finally found an island with horizontal planks.  What do you think?  I think I might be in love.  Those look like 6 or 8 inch planks.  Oh yes please!!!  My biggest worry is that our island is not flat and has odd angles.  I'm sure we can figure out the angles, but I just hope it will look good.  Maybe we can play around with some scrape wood first but not nail or glue anything yet.

Here is our island again so you don't have to go to the top.  See all those angles.  Yikes.  What were we thinking?  Right we had just bought a house and we didn't know anything, that is what happened.  ;)  But this is how you "live" in your home and make changes over time.  :)

OK, so seriously I would love to here your opinions.  Do you like option 1 or 2?  Do you like this last picture with the wide planks?  Do you think I'm out of my mind?  It's ok, you can tell me the truth.  Please by all means, if you have any other ideas or come across other pictures for me, I would love to see and hear all about them.  Thank you so much everyone!!!

Thanks for stopping by everyone!!!  Have a great day!!!  :)