Kitchen cabinets

I've looked at a zillion cabinet doors, in person and online. Most of them are ugly to me. I considered stark modern slab doors, made from some exotic wood. But the kitchen's not configured to show them off, and they don't go with the prewar look. Nor do I like raised panels, or cream painted cabinets, and shaker styles are too boring.

Finally I saw Mission-style cabinet doors - knockoff Stickley and Wright designs - and something clicked. I'm thinking of these:





















... in quarter-sawn oak, with glass set into some of them. I'll have trim panels on the fridge and dishwasher to match.

They're from Maplecraft USA, a custom cabinet shop outside Pittsburgh.

The kitchen cabinets themselves may well be Ikea - Ikea's kitchen cabinetry is much better than the rest of their stuff, it gets great reviews from Consumer Reports (it outranks Thomasville, for example), and the interior fittings and gewgaws rival designer European lines at four times the price. A colleague of mine did Ikea cabinets recently and loves them.

But the cabinet doors on offer are uninspiring. Fortunately you buy the doors separately - and even more fortunately, a cottage industry has sprung up to make custom doors to the Ikea dimensions. Maplecraft is one of them, and they get good reviews on the renovation blogs.

Now to pick countertops, and tile ...