Lighten Up Already :: Painted Kitchen and Open Cabinets

Our kitchen is beautiful, yet dark.  Between the granite and the tile, there is an awful lot of brown for my liking.  So though at the moment I can not change either of those things, I could change our cabinets and wall color to lighten it up a bit.

Our kitchen before: Our kitchen after:The wall color is a really light grayish blue—almost white.  I had been considering opening up some cabinets for awhile but it was Melissa’s post at The Inspired Room that finally gave me the final motivation I needed to just do it.  I painted the backside of the cabinets the same shade as our bathroom. New crisp white curtains from Target. We (and by we I mean my mother and I, not my husband and I!) decided to continue the same color of the kitchen to the opposite wall.  It seemed to open the kitchen up more and served a good contrast with the darker color of the dining room.  We use the dresser as a buffet as we have bar seating in the kitchen.  Whenever we have a semi-large amount of people over, we use this buffet to serve all the food.  That way we have room for plates on our small table and the kitchen can still be a mess from cooking (I also have a pet peeve about serving food at the table.  I prefer food elsewhere so I will not overeat).  And when we are not entertaining it serves as our mail and paperwork station.  And, obviously, by this picture, the dining room was not painted yet.  But you get the idea.  How do you need to (or have) lightened up?  Your house that is.