Unfortunately I have no idea what their plan was. I felt bad because my communication was clearly not getting through, which is why it took so long to get even those basics across. This suddenly reminds me of a story I heard years ago, probably an urban legend, but here it is. A newly arrived immigrant family goes to the grocery store and ends up buying a can of crisco, fully expecting it to contain fried chicken parts as pictured on the label! I don't know if they realized the turkeys were plentiful because of thanksgiving or if they just thought that this was a regularly stocked item. I figured at the time that they were trying to get into the American spirit of things but looking back, I wouldn't be surprised if they'd only been in the country a few days and had no idea about Thanksgiving! I just have to keep telling myself that if they were brave enough to buy it, then they would be able to figure out if it was done after three hours or not.

>For me however, given the choice in cabinetry, I'd go solid, so now I will tell you why. I like the feel of the heavier doors. A solid panel is also easier to repair if it gets damaged. I've seen some veneer panels completely blow out when hit hard enough. Plywood and veneer aren't the same thing, and both come in many thicknesses. I have no idea what you mean by "blow out", but properly glued veneer (or properly made plywood) will never delaminate. OTOH, only a fool would make guarantees about solid wood and warping and splitting on larger panels. Many companies, for that reason, will either not make the large doors without extra stiles or will not guarantee them. If you have a raised panel fridge door with just two panels, for instance, all the luck to you, but there's a reason that raised panel passageway doors are made with SMALL panels. >I've had several clients complain about the rattly sound when closing a door with a thin center panel (especially if the doors are large...tall 42" uppers and pantry doors are the worst). You don't think about that until you're using it everyday. You mean that the whole DOOR vibrates? Or that the panel vibrates in the door? With the second, it's more likely that solid panels will develop that problem over time, since they move more with the seasons. You can reverse-cove-shape a plywood panel, too, though the results wouldn't be as pretty on the backside, but I'd take that before having a *big* solid wood center panel. The LAST place you want big panels is with solid wood. (Unless, of course, you can magically keep the moisture and temperature exactly steady year-round--like you'd have to to keep paint from splitting where stiles join, as Woodmode mentioned.) It will warp very rapidly. You're courting disaster if you insist on it. If you have to have solid wood on big doors--if, for instance, you have the actual panel with a cove facing out--then you should keep the size of each panel to a reasonable dimension considering the dimensional stability of your chosen wood. That means raising the number of panels per door. >And finally, veneers can STAIN differently and AGE differently than solid wood. I've seen kitchens where the center veneer panel is slightly lighter in color that the solid wood frames. Now you're making no sense. A horizontal stile will look a different color from a vertical stile because of the direction of the wood grain. This is true with the vast majority of stain colors. Natural variation in the wood mean that panels and stiles will also look slightly different colors to a very careful eye. The BEST way to get panels to look the same, if you're not doing an almost opaque stain, is with veneers. (True veneers, not plywood.) The BEST way is to book match or slip match veneers. Without that, the best you can do is to do a "pleasing match" of solid woods--that is, select them to make sure they are all the same color. If some moron didn't do so, blaming the veneering process (or the fact that they used plywood) shows an astonishing lack of comprehension of what veneer/plywood is. If you like solid wood panels because you think they're more authentic, sure, whatever, I'll give it to you. If you like the idea of being able to put an enormous gouge in a piece of furniture and the color underneath being able to be stained to the same color, I'll agree but I'll think you're crazy since any sensible person would fill it, sand it, stain it, and make it disappear. But if you're pretending that, in performance, solid wood is superior for a flat panel application or if you're pretending that the most exquisite furniture made today isn't enormously dominated by rare and beautiful veneers...you're selling your clients a load of nonsense. The very best casework is made with a mixture of plywood, veneers, inlays, and solid wood--typically, in that order. The pieces that are worth more than my car ever was rarely have more than trace amounts of solid wood. Pretending that solid wood=high quality is dangerously deceptive. The stile-and-panel style door was originally developed because slabs of solid wood warp so dramatically. (Yes, solid-wood panels work--as long as you keep the doors within reasonable sizes ***for the material.*** Many people don't want that, though....) Historically...yes, Shakers wanted simpler designs. They couldn't change the existence of stiles-plus-panels because plywood technology didn't exist yet. The cove actually has a function in solid-panel doors, so they kept it and reversed it to make it seem less decorative. If Shaker villages were thriving today, they'd probably all have slab-style doors! :-) (Which aren't just slabs of playwood, BTW, but are built up--with plywood and solid wood, both--and usually have...yes, veneers, if they are any size at all. Those amazing zebrawood modernist design? All veneers!)

Actually, if you learn one color system - the language of just one color system - it's not hard to figure out all the other ones. The one to learn is Munsell. Albert Munsell is my favorite old dead guy. We share the same birthday but that's not the only reason he's my favorite. Al was a teacher and his motivation for creating his system was color education for elementary school children. What that means is you don't even have to be smarter than a 5th grader to figure out how the Munsell Color System works. I recently wrote an article about the absurd state of retail paint stores and how manufacturers market color. In the article I ask readers to imagine walking into a department store to buy an outfit: shirt, jeans and shoes. Everybody can relate to that, right? Now imagine that there are no tags on anything. No labels sewn into the collar of the shirts or seams of the jeans. No sizes imprinted on the bottom of the shoes. No clues whatsoever about sizes or prices. The only way you're going to be able to find a complete outfit it to start trying stuff on. You have to start by searching out a shirt that "looks like" it might fit. Try it on and when it doesn't fit, your only option is to keep trying on shirts; comparing each one to the one before that didn't fit. Then you have to do the same to find a pair of jeans. Then you have to do the same to find a pair of shoes. How long do you think it would take you to find an outfit that fits? How long do you think it would be before you got totally frustrated, confused, and exhausted by the process. How long before you said "this is crazy, I'm outta here!"? No one in their right mind would shop at that store. They'd find a department store where all the items had labels and price tags. Substitute color notations for labels and this is exactly the situation in paint store world right now. Some stores have paint brands that have notations. And some do not. Sounds half hopeful, right? Not so fast. Sadly, the people who own/work in the paint stores that do have brands with notations have not one fat clue their brand has a color system loaded behind it - let alone what to do with the actual notation. So, unfortunately, @williamsem nailed it. Most people are left with aimlessly combing through chips and sticking with the company with the chip you like. Bonne chance my colorful friends. P.S. Thanks @linelle for the kind words.

I agree with a couple of prior posters. The real value of the 13 indictments is the detailed information on what the Russians did and how they did it. If the Trump administration is smart, they'll use those indictments as a resource for developing some procedures which will prevent or at least inhibit Russian meddling with our elections in the future. I also think we need to hit Russia with a cyber attack of some kind so it will think twice before meddling in our elections again and we also need to keep the existing Russian sanctions in place and implement the Russian sanctions that the Congress recently enacted because it is clear that Putin is desperate to have those sanctions lifted and he wouldn't be that desperate unless the sanctions were having an impact.