“I WANT a traditional kitchen—but make it cool.” Today, younger, hipper homeowners are texting designers with such seemingly irreconcilable desires. They want a look they can relate to. Not the ...

Kitchen valances — those mini-curtains hanging out at the tops of kitchen windows — were all the rage from the 1970s through the 1990s. The '90s versions were often rather big and ballooning (my mom, ...