tamaltree, There are a few types of wood that don't take paint well. Heavy oily woods, like teak are the kind I mean. Most other kinds of wood will, so long as it is dry, clean and has a slightly rough surface for the paint to adhere to. If you are not a professional or an advanced amateur, don't try for the lacquer. It is toxic and highly flammable. Is that the information you were after?

First of all the images you posted you cant make anything out what you got there. Secondly you should contact a local Architect when doing something like this, not only for structural reasons, but window design as well. He will layout window detail based on the window sizes available from a certain manufacturer or you can take his drawings which indicate opening detail to a place who sells windows, and they have catalogs of window combinations and sizes to make it work with what you have.

Looks like some of them open...it would be cool to get some glass paint and paint the windows to look like stained glass...just pick you favorite colors and go at it

Thank you Marie. I'm herewith attaching couple of pics that were taken when the house was newly constructed. I wish I could take latest ones but it is a total mess now. But you'll get a fairly better idea with an empty house. One picture, taken in long-shot, shows the lateral part of the kitchen hidden behind the shelf and Arch (I brought down this Arch now). The second one shows the kitchen door showing only part of the kitchen interior. I've annotated the pictures wherever necessary. Hope they're not distracting. As you can clearly see, this is an old-styled construction even though this house was constructed barely 6 years ago! In an attempt to make the home look contemporary, my current project involves either 1 . Bringing down the concrete shelves completely and replace them with wooden cabinets/wardrobes. I've already brought down few concrete shelves in other rooms. OR 2. Alternatively, overlaying few of existing shelves with wooden doors to cover them up. Either way, the appearance is more or less the same once the furnishing is completed. At this juncture, this decision of 'Open Versus Closed kitchen' is holding me back from proceeding to the next phase of remodeling - Dropped Ceilings.