Kitchen update, and progress towards the tiles

This weekend, we were allowed to take the cabinet fronts home. I figured it would be best to bring together as many of the kitchen elements as possible in order to make a decision.  So, I brought a bar stool into the house, and put the bar stool, floor sample, and paint chip card all together with the cabinet fronts.  Turns out, we were surprised by the outcome:

We agreed that the high gloss was MUCH nicer with the gray beiges that I love!

On Monday afternoon, we went back to the kitchen showroom.  It isn't fully completed yet, but we did make some more headway.  We decided for the high gloss cabinet fronts.  We also discussed our options on the built-in wall.  It turns out that our coffee maker may not be the same size as the oven/ mircowave.  If they are not the same size, we will have a symmetry problem.  The kitchen guy offered a suggestion of a plate warming drawer.  The good about it is that it would balance out the two appliances on both sides of our "breakfast prep center."  But, putting it under the coffee maker is a bad idea because, you'd have to run all around the island with plates of food, and, of course, its 600 Euro.  Joern had an even cooler suggestion though, he asked if we could do a stainless steel drawer underneath the coffee machine, that we could line, so that Joern would have a little drawer for coffee grinds from our KitchenAid countertop espresso machine.   This would be a good solution, because well, Joern is a little bit of a slob when it comes to coffee grounds, and as long as we clean out the drawer once a day, it would be a very clean looking solution, plus solve our symmetrical problem. 
We also discussed the material for the exposed cabinet bodies.  We have quite a few exposed cabinet bodies, especially when we enter the kitchen from the back door or come downstairs.  We also have exposed cabinet bodies in the "breakfast prep center." The two options are high gloss or matte cabinet bodies.  We decided that not only did the high gloss cabinet bodies look better, especially with the lighted shelf in the "breakfast prep center," but also helped to solidify our decision to go with the high gloss cabinet fronts. 
We still haven't made a decision about the drawer configuration, but we will have our final meeting with "Kitchen Guy," next week.  We have until the meeting to decide on the drawer configuration.

Also, this past Tuesday was the last day of tile preparation.  It was a busy day in the house, with all sorts of new and exciting changes!
The plumbers came to install the shower in the children's bath:

They also delivered, but did not install the shower floor for the rinse-off shower in the cellar:

And very excitingly, they installed, although not completely, the bathtub!

Cute tile guy was also super-busy on Tuesday.  He fixed our cellar stairs!

Although it is hard to tell from this picture, fixing the stairs was a huge deal.  These three steps had huge height differences, so that the first step was about 3 inches high, the second was about 8 inches, and the third, was close to 12 inches.  Obviously, the human brain, nor the body, does well with such varied heights in one set of stairs.  Once it all dries, he will tile over the stairs as well. 

You can also see that the Estrich (concretish material,) is darker at the top of the stairs than at the bottom.  This is because "Cute Tile Guy," also applied a primer for the tiles.

Well, this week certainly got off with an exciting start, but I can assure you, it got even more exciting from here on out.  But, that will have to wait for another post!