The discussion of open on-wall storage reminds me of the pegboard in Julia Child's kitchen:

I believe the pegboard was an idea from her husband, who also drew outlines of the items to make it easy to see where each one belonged:

I have a pegboard in my office (for cutting, sewing, and drawing tools), and I rather like the utilitarian tool shop aesthetic, as well as the convenient accessibility.

Via @WarnersStellian, "A beautiful (but small) working kitchen in St. Paul":
http://www.midwesthomemag.com/media/Midwest-Home/August-2011/Petite-Patisserie/

Likes:
- against-the-wall pot rack by the stove
- use of open shelving above the countertops

For fun, this week I've also been doing an informal survey of friends: for a kitchen, do you prefer light or dark cabinets? Light cabinets currently have a significant lead (8-3), with one person making the no-cabinet suggestion. And while it doesn't solve our light vs. dark question, we're seriously pondering open shelves since we might have plenty of under-counter storage (as well as a sizable pantry). IKEA has some rail systems:

• IKEA Grundtal
• IKEA Asker

We noted that pots on an on-the-wall pot rack will probably dent drywall (the owner of the St. Paul kitchen doesn't have this problem since her walls are tiled with carrera marble). We're considering some custom-placed strips of wood. It could create a fun rhythm of materials on the wall...

So my last experience with an IKEA planning tool was the IVAR shelving planner which they had over a decade ago. Today's Kitchen Planner tool is significantly better, but using it is still an exercise in masochism. A few useful notes:

• doesn't appear to work in Chrome at all
• works very poorly in Safari on Mac
• works fine in Firefox on PC
• the "Switch Top/Front" tool is really great for more precise cabinet height placement when you are in "Floor View"
• note that the glass-door cabinets get a separate category from the wood-door cabinets (probably because the glass doors come in fewer sizes)

We started off with the black-brown Nexus finish, but are fairly sure we want to go with light-colored cabinets now (probably birch, Nexus finish). We're also fairly settled on using one of their aluminum-framed, frosted glass cabinet doors for the wall cabinets. The only drawback is the limited size selection (and slightly higher cost). We may/may not have a cabinet to the right of the stove (would do shelves and/or a rail system there). Enjoy some quick screenshots of what we put together:

Birch:

Black-brown:

Today, we ambled around IKEA scoping out the kitchen & bathroom cabinetry and hardware. First, a hearty IKEA breakfast:

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Under-counter drawers:
Per the subject line, we'd been thinking, and finally confirmed that drawers for bathroom vanities, and drawers for all under-counter storage in the kitchen is the best idea ever.

You don't have to crouch down to see what's inside, or pull out all the stuff in front to get to the stuff in back. In the bathroom, you can keep a ton of things on hand without having to clutter the countertop. Do you lose some storage height? Yes, however I don't anticipate this being a problem for what we store in these two rooms.

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birch + white, and Vitviken sinks:
So...the bathrooms are tentatively going to be birch cabinets with white sinks:

We like the Vitviken line of sinks, which has a modestly sized circular sink bowl which = more counterspace.

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floating bathroom vanities: YES

Notice: no legs/portion of the cabinet touching the floor

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3-medicine-cabinet setup:
For the bathroom, a solid expanse of mirror is nice, but we're bigger fans of medicine cabinets...for the convenient storage. Here's a nice 3-medicine cabinet arrangement = open the two outer cabinets & you get a 3-way mirror in the middle.

The doors are also mirrored on the inside, which can be handy. My only hesitation is the quality of these mirrors and cabinets isn't very high.

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for bathrooms, skinny-opposite-wall-storage:

Two of our bathrooms will have room for only one medicine cabinet. If they are used primarily by 2 or 3 people, these skinny cabinets may be handy for toiletries. We'd probably mount them on the wall opposite that of the sink and toilet.

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extra space on side of vanity = another wall cabinet + towel bar:

Our master bath has a vanity space significantly wider than the widest IKEA sink vanity. This is one way to use the extra width.

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small bath ideas:
This shouldn't be a technique we need in this house, but we noted these two space-saving ideas:

1. mount a not-as-tall cabinet well below a sink = get some counterspace without the extra width

2. wall-mounted small sinks, for when you really need to save space. (Side note: I can't stand pedestal sinks. I could never rationalize wasting all that heavy porcelain to just create a stand, which isn't really needed.)

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behind-mirror storage:

Hinge a boxed-out mirror = hidden storage. The sign says, "Mount knobs to organize keys and accessories." We liked the idea of using this in a dressing area.

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kitchen color palette samples:

We're not sure yet if we are dark-, or light-cabinet fans. Our kitchen is large enough where dark cabinets shouldn't make it feel too closed-in or dark. But...dark cabinets still = less light reflected around.

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glass shelves in wall cabinets = see what's above:

For those on the petite side, glass shelves allow you to see what's above, even when you're looking from below.

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appliance garage:

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Overally, a productive IKEA visit. Side note: we were pleased to see there was a ton of marketing centered around concepts for small living spaces (they had a couple super-small studio apartment mockups, which is notable, given that this store is in the Silicon Valley suburbs).

We visited friends this weekend and I really like this combination of glass-and-polished-slate(?) tile in the kitchen of the house they're renting:

We're also pondering gloss-finish cabinets for the kitchen...

Bathroom layout ideas:
We might not need to use this bathroom layout, but our friends' hall bath had many conscientious decisions that we liked. Things we noticed included:

• an efficient but not too-snug layout of vanity facing long side of shower with toilet in between, which faces the door.
• partially glass-walled shower without door, which gives the shower a nice, open entrance
• toilet paper holder mounted under vanity countertop
• translucent pocket door lets light in and doesn't need swing space inside the bathroom