Thanks everyone for your suggestions. I am amazed at the response! I think we will go ahead and change the benchtops, replace the cooktop with stainless steel, a new rangehood, splashbacks and new door and drawer handles and possibly a new sink and taps. We will consider painting the beam and post and add a modern blind to the window. Then if we are still not happy, maybe we can rethink the painting of the cupboards? Actually, I like the timber, so if these changes work I will be more than happy to leave them as they are. Our floor tiles are relatively new and are throughout the entire downstairs area. Also, the wall paint we know is not the right tone (for the floor tiles) but is in good nick and will be remaining until we are ready to repaint. Rome wasn't built in a day but I will add photos when we start the process and you can follow our progress. Thanks again

Hi there Sharon, Yes, I decided to go a Grey Pebble in Dulux (Half). It is a warm, soft white.......although I haven't seen it on the walls yet as the painter is only coming tom!! Fingers crossed I chose the right colour!!! I will keep you posted.......if I remember lol I also choose to get the ceiling painted in Grey Pebble but in Quarter??? OMG, scary to say the least!!!!

I would definitely ditch the brown marble and go similar to the window sill. It is just beautiful. It looks like Carerra but you can find similar tiles that are from Chinese quarries. Marry it with white paint and add white and grey tones to your accessories. You could accent it with any color as it is a neutral. Brown dates very quickly where is white marble is timeless and classy. Good luck!!

We recently renovated my son's kitchen/ family room in a weekend. His oven needed replacing so it was a good opportunity to 'fix' it all. We rang around and got quotes on having the cupboard doors professionally painted but it was way too expensive so we took the pine laminate cupboard doors off and painted with a white laminate paint and replaced all the timber handles with chrome ones. We retiled with 600x 300 white marble look tiles (leftovers from our bathroom) (cut the old tiles out and re-sheeted the walls so we had a good surface to tile on) and repainted ceilings and walls. Replaced a dark timber venetian blind with a see through 'sun-out' blind and painted all the architraves white (previously mission brown). A new mixer tap replaced very ancient 'double' taps. We were totally shattered at the end of the weekend, but the kitchen looks a million dollars and the room looks twice the size now the pine and mission brown have gone. We are pretty chuffed with the result achieved by us unprofessionals!