This is what our kitchen wall (the one that's not cabinets) looked like before:
We did not like the faux-wood paneling, and the new chairs--which looked great with the honey-colored cabinets--pushed us to get serious about changing that wall.
An intermediate step was looking at paint chips in the store and getting a little jar of sample to put on the wall, where it looked really silly for a couple of days, as we looked at the color as light changed through the day.
And finally, the furniture back in place again:
We like it a lot. There will be a picture or so on that wall (not the same one, though) and there's more painting to do (around behind the refrigerator...we didn't feel like moving it today.