Bumping this for you. Your ideas sound great. Good luck.

The style sounds okay, but I'd be careful with different coloured crown. A few kitchens I've seen pull it off okay, but if they're too close it could look like an afterthought or a mistake, and if they're too different it can stand out, and sometimes not in a good way. Before I soldiered on with the idea I'd try and mock it up in photoshop or at least do a 'story board' to see if the elements flow together well.

Potentially it sounds like a good idea, depending upon how level and flat your ceilings are. I tried this effect in a very small kitchen with shaker doors, but the ceiling was so uneven that it had to be scribed and fitted a lot and it tended to emphasize the uneveness.

Thomasville Cabinetry makes a moulding called shaker crown and Kraftmade makes one called angled crown or simple angled crown that are basically flat 45-degree moulding. I am sure many companies make similar, non ogee or colonial style mouldings. These may be a reasonable solution if necessary.

I agree with donka about using an accent wood. Sometimes it looks nice, but sometimes it looks --not well considered. Since it is one extra accent material, it may limit other options. There was a kitchen in the forum where there was a great deal of discussion about ebony crown used as an accent, and because of another problem, the OP decided to replace it with crown the cabinet color raher than go with the ebony again, and really it was a good decision.

If the plan allows it, I would rather see an entire cabinet or stack of cabinets in the cherry to accent the maple than a moulding. But all maple would be the most classic and flexible rather than two tone in any combination.

I have natural maple cabinets with natural cherry trim.

I love it. I added a natural cherry island with a birch (looks like natural maple) butcher block counter, so it picks up the natural maple around the room.

I love all natural woods, so for me it was a no brainer.
I saw it done that way in a kitchen showroom.
For me, it's trickier with stained woods or painted woods.

Sorry, I just got this new computer and haven't set anything up, so no pics.

Thanks for all your input. We're getting a custom cabinet guy to do the work so he should be able to get things straight.

dabunch- I'm with you on the natural woods. I'd love to see pics when you get things up and running fully with your PC. That's the same color scheme we're looking at.

Our floors are Brazilian Cherry and we want natural maple cabinets. I've been thinking of some accent somewhere in the cabinets. The moulding thought was just mine, hadn't even passed it by my DW, yet. Plus the ceilings are on 8' so they may be too close together to pull of the different color.

The other thought was to have just a couple doors in cherry. We're going with 30" counters so our uppers will be 15". Our current hood (Best by Broan so I don't want to replace it) is for 12" so I was thinking that instead of putting a filler at the back, we'd put 12" uppers in for the hood and accent them with cherry. That way if we decide we don't like them down the road, we can just change out the doors...

It's all a work in progress. I'll be posting a layout soon and I like the idea of a storyboard for colors. I'm modeling it in Google Sketch up but haven't figured out the whole colors thing yet so something simple to see the colors might be the right idea.

Our first home had natural maple cabinets with a square, simple type of trim at the top. The cabinets didn't go all the way to the ceiling...there was rope lighting in the area between the cabs and ceiling.

The kitchen was a small galley style, but super functional. We made some changes to the kitchen while we lived there including changing out the trim at the top to a simple, cove-style crown molding. We added a simple crown throughout the entire house and we thought the new molding on the cabs would help tie it all together.

Here are a couple pics of both, so you can see the difference. It is really a matter of preference for you. If you like the idea of square trim in an accent color, then go for it. As long as you love your kitchen, that's all that matters.

Good luck!

Trim on cabinets when we bought the house:

Cove crown molding on cabinets:

cali_wendy- They both look great! Thanks for sharing.

What backsplash did you use? It's incredible.

Thanks dredpir8. The tile is 4x4 slate tile. Super inexpensive!