Kitchen Design

Here is the first design I came up with when I started putting together what we wanted in our kitchen:

A.

The Dilemmas:

We have original beautiful hardwood underneath all the carpet area. The kitchen and bath are the only place that don't have hardwood. Options we considered for flooring: 1. Ripping out all the hardwood throughout the whole house and replacing it..way to expensive. 2.  Having just the kitchen area custom to match the original hardwood (worried about it being cohesive with the original hardwood).  3. Putting in tile. Didn't love the thought of it at first even though there is cool tile out there but I had a hard time envisioning what tile would look like in our small space. After looking around it didn't take long for my husband and me to find the perfect tile (see in design board below)!  

The next dilemma we ran into is cabinets. We want the bluish gray inset cabinets. We had a guy come out to give us a bid and I knew it would be pricey but it was way more than I wanted to spend. I did a quick Ikea design online to price it out and it was only $1,900 (not including labor or tax but still WAY cheaper). They are made of particle board so obviously they are cheaper, I read 303 reviews on the cabinets and about %60 were pleased and the other %40 had complaints. I really do like the gray finish they have but my husband is not sold (on the finish or the fact they are from Ikea). We had another guy come out to give us a bid and we will see what his bid comes in at. 

Because this is not our forever home (we may only be in for a couple yrs) we are trying to be cautious not to dump too much in that we won't get out of it. 

B. Ikea cabinets: 

C. Custom: 

Faucet / Flooring / Backsplash / Hardware / Wall sconce / Rug (similar) / Pendants / Sink

Anyone have strong opinions or suggestions? A.B. or C. brass, nickel, custom cabinets or ikea?

Here are some inspiration pics that we like: