Kitchen Dreams. Part 2b: Inspiration!

Here is a picture that inspires me layout-wise. This one is similar to the layout at the foreclosure house, so this kitchen arrangement would be do-able:

The sink and window in the house are along the right-hand wall instead of where they are in the picture, but otherwise it's the same. In the foreclosure house, this picture would be taken from the breakfast nook. We'd have room for the beverage center on the left side of the picture, near the fridge.

This one is even closer to the layout we will have, more of a open-galley type kitchen:
Instead of a flat window over on the right, we have a bowed out area. I'm planning to put the fridge over in the left side of the picture in our kitchen, because I'd rather not have the fridge in the walkway (if we put our fridge in the location shown in the picture, it would be right next to the doorway from the dining room). I'm not even sure we have room to copy this fridge location, because in the foreclosure house the laundry chute is there.

I was originally thinking we'd go with a light-to-medium cabinet and low-maintenance, light-colored countertops. I like the look of that combo and I was thinking it would appeal to many people.

Darker cabinet, lighter counter:

Lighter cabinet (white with chocolate glaze) lighter counter:
These days I'm leaning more towards a white or cream colored cabinet. I learned that black granite is the cheapest color, so we will probably go with that. I was hoping for quartz, but i learned that quartz actually costs more than granite! Crazy.

Here's a picture of a kitchen that is currently inspiring me. It's got the glossy black granite we'd be going with, plus the medium-to-dark hardwood floor. The cream-colored cabinets work so beautifully in the space!
Here is another one:I think I like this picture even better than the one above it. I think the unglazed cabinets look so fresh. Glazed cabinets are traditional and very beautiful, but the flat colored ones seem to open this little space up so much; they don't draw your eye as much to the surface detail. I also think the greenish-yellow color works beautifully to make the space warm (black and white can be so stark).

There is another reason white cabinets will work: I can paint them myself! We want to keep the existing cabinet boxes and just refresh the look with new doors and drawer fronts. MDF doors are cheaper than wood and take paint beautifully. I will have to build a few more cabinet boxes, but I'm really excited to DIY this project! I've had some practice building furniture, and I think I will be able to do a good job making cabinet boxes. Hopefully with cheap MDF doors and a couple gallons of a pretty, creamy white paint, we can give the kitchen a whole new look for less than $500.

What do you think? Am I nuts aiming for a $500 cabinet update? Have you had experience with white cabinets (do they get super dirty)? Is anybody out there "so over" black granite?