thanks for the responses. Lyfia, interesting idea about doing open shelves instead of uppers in order to get the bank appraisal. I will ponder this. Trebuchet, the builder actually worked with us and the bank throughout the loan process. They get their draws directly from the bank. They know we need the appraisal, unfortunately. Aloha2009, in our state (Florida), the buyer comes up with the difference. We just had friends who bought an existing home and the appraisal came in less than the sales price. The seller wouldn't lower it at all. Our friends really wanted it, so they had to come up with an extra $15,000 to cover the difference. The seller was under no obligation to lower the price. According to our bank, if the appraisal comes in low, we must cover the difference to get to the purchase price. If we can't, then the loan would fall through and we would lose the house to the bank. Crissyb, we couldn't get someone to install a different kitchen before the appraisal because as weissman said, we do not own the house yet and the builder is under no obligation to let any other trades in to their work site. I also do not like the thought of the waste of tearing out the builder's kitchen after move in, which is why I was considering still using the boxes and just replacing the doors and professionally painting them. SparklingWater, thank you for your pricing comparison. Did you have upgrades like dovetail drawers, soft close hinges, plywood,ect? Our current quote includes none of those things. Weissman, The mortgage was already approved, but with new construction there is another step at the end where a second appraisal ensures that what was specified in the contract is what was actually built, which protects the bank. We cannot walk away from the deal at this point.

I gel stained my bathroom cabinets 8 months ago (Probably not as long as you are looking for but I will give you my insights). I also did the handrail down our stairs. I used the java stain. The one bathroom that 3 teenagers use has gotten a few nicks. I've just reapplied some stain over them with a q-tip and it covered fine without being able to tell that it was patched. The hand rail gets used by 5 people everyday and I haven't had any problems. I just wipe it down every so often with a wet cloth. I also did a mirror that must be in a dusty location because it gets dusty very quickly and you can really see it on the java stain. Hopefully that wouldn't be a problem with the walnut stain because if you have a lot of cabinets I would be a pain to have to dust them all of the time. Hope this helps. On another note, I've been researching replacement cabinet doors for our kitchen. Barker Doors has gotten a few good reviews on here and it would cost me around $2000 to redo our cabinets and drawer fronts. We were looking at painted white doors though and planned to paint the cabinets ourselves. Maybe you could buy unfinished doors and then stain everything the color that you wanted? A lot cheaper than totally refacing everything. Cabinetdoorsdepot was the cheapest at around $1000 for everything, but I couldn't find any reviews on here. Where did you get your estimate? If you live near a large city you should be able to find a better deal than the big box stores.

We refaced our kitchen cabinets about 2 1/2 yrs ago, it was a DIY job and turned out great, if I do say so myself. My husband, who is very handy and not afraid to tackle anything, said, "lets do it ourselves" I did the prep work, a laborious job because I wanted to make sure the boxes were 100% squeaky clean before applying the veneers. (Veneers won't stick well if its not really clean) Husband did the veneer work, its tricky but can be done. Our veneers were maple, wood backed (not paper backed) and they had adhesive on the back so we didn't have to use contact cement. If you want painted cabinets, you can order doors (either unfinished or factory painted) and then paint the boxes yourselves, in the same color. Paint the new doors if you go with unfinished. (though I'd get the doors prepainted, saves a good bit of work). We wanted stained wood, so we bought the prestained veneers and doors. DIY refacing is not for everyone, but for us, it saved us a bundle and no one can tell its not a professional job.

get fridge panels and trim in a cherry with stain as close as you can-it is achievable....the cabinet itself can be a void door cabinet and use it as a cubbyhole for baskets/a piece of pottery/etc. the interior in cherry and with stain selection close, and items resting inside makes any slight difference irrelevant. Not worth monkeying around any more than that. The side panels and trim are the more relevant things as your fridge is now chosen and will be a long term thing. that will be a nice look when fridge is encased.