Sorry I've been out of touch. Traveling and doing this reno from 3000 miles away is impossible! My guest house is almost finished so I'll have a place to stay. hurray! Thanks everyone for your pics and thoughts. I've just spent two days in appliance stores comparing and interrogating sales people. For 42" there isn't much out there. If I want perfectly flush built in with custom panels. The only one any sales person knew of was the Thermador columns 18" freezer with 24 " frig...but the frig has only 13.1 c.f. and narrow....not much room for a turkey! Clinresga, you are right! Since I can't go to a 48" inch frig....presently the choices for frameless, fully integrated, built in flush with custom panels are 36" bottom refrigerators: Miele, Thermador, Gaggenau or Bosch (sales people tell me they are discontinuing the Bosch) and I also saw the Gaggenau 36" French Door which looked fantastic also and perfectly flush, but not much door space on the french doors. Seems these companies try to keep their cubic feet secret, even the sales people had a hard time finding this info...it's looking like the frig portions are 15 for the Thermador and can't find numbers on any of the others. If anyone has true numbers on this, please share. 36" subzero bottom freezers, though they advertise flush...all the sales people pointed out that they aren't truly flush because there needs to be an inch on either side due to their hinges. loves2cook I'm liking the Miele and the temp controls!! Also, the Gaggenau looks pretty glitzy inside with the metal, Hollywood lights and the electric shelf elevator...definitely a wow factor.

@rkb21: The piece for the dishwasher is a little different than the rest of the toe kick. Our real toe kick is 3/4" x 4", but at the bottom of the dishwasher the black cover is 3" high, and then it sort of tilts back. I happen to have extra molding from the cabinets that was 3/4" x 3", so I had it cut to fit the width, and they had to bore out the back a little where the plastic screw caps are that hold the cover in place, and then we just velcro'd it to the black cover. You can see the seams where it meets the other toe kick, but it's better than seeing black. It seemed to me that a 4" toe kick might interfere with the function of the door, but I don't know that for sure. So far, we have been very happy with the KUDE48....no issues with the side vent causing condensation on the cabinet. @island: Thank you very much....our countertops are called "waterfall". I have a thread which follows my kitchen renovation from the beginning, and there are more pics in there of the countertops....see the link Here is a link that might be useful: Kitchen Renovation

My fridge is unpaneled as well - the compressor is 8.5" and the cabinets above are 12". I know you were looking for paneled examples, but I wanted to show you what I did - it's three small cabinets and might be enough of a visual break between one long 8"x48" panel and three small cubbies above it. Note: Mine look like they open up, but they actually don't. Aesthetically we thought it looked better this way, but functionally, because I'm short, tip ups that high are difficult for me to use. I can get them open but I can't reach them easily to shut them when they're in the open position. The doors actually open left-right/right-left like normal doors; the pulls are just mounted horizontally for the "look".

First, it's not a long post. Second, I happen to really like the look of your fridge panels. A lot. I like how it's not just this huge blank panel (not a pejorative, just thinking of your dishwasher panel sized to fit your fridge), and I think it looks v. rich (as in "high-end") and clearly custom. I think it's an incredibly thoughtful detail and, let's face it, it's really easy to gloss over a lot of stuff because planning a kitchen is just so overwhelming! Have you seen bayareafrancy's dishwasher panel? That's exactly what I mean about an incredibly thoughtful detail. Look at what perfect visual sense it makes in her kitchen. That's how I feel about your paned panels. While our styles are really different from yours, have you seen either ricklish's kitchen or mine? My refrigerator closed: and open: Again, I know neither of these are the direction in which you want to be headed, but I wanted to give you my perspective why I esp. like the panels. Ultimately, though, it's your kitchen. And if you think there's a chance that every time you go to open your fridge / freezer you'll think "ugh," then you should definitely have them changed. It is more important for you to be happy in the long run.