Can you take one or two clear digital photos and post it? With an oil based finish or sealer (and not stained), red oak is generally amber to orange-reddish in tone, whereas white oak is more tan to golden brown. With a water based finish, both species will be much lighter or whitish, but the basic color tones will still be there. Red oak generally has a thicker or wider earlywood cell layer (the rings you see), whereas the white oak earlywood layer is usually very narrow in width. This is most easily visible on the end of a board or with rift and quartered. When looking down on flatsawn flooring, both species rings can appear wide. White oak has rays (the cells that are perpendicular to the rings) that are longer (1-2 inches) and are very noticeable as wide ray fleck in 90 degree quartered material. Red oak rays are short (1/2" - 1" long), but can be easily seen due to the lighter colored wheat or amber red oak wood and the generally wider annual growth rings. This flooring company has some good pictures of both red and white oak with an oil based finsih: Here is a link that might be useful: Launstein oak pictures

Monkey,,,a few suggestions. Only you can decide if your 20 year old knotty pine cabs are worth keeping as is. It's not like they're made from some exotic wood, so do what you like. You have to look at them everyday. while they may look ok in the photos, perhaps you see more wear and damage than we do. The inspo pics above are gorgeous, but those cabs are a nice oak. has a different tone than your knotty pine. try the other small changes first and see how you like it. you could always install a beadboard backsplash, paint it, and see how you like it. For the record, I don't think a white tile will make your kitchen too bright. for the countertops, there are a few DIY options other than painting them that you can try. One is Ardex concrete. it's a skim coat you can do right over whats there. if you google it, many videos and pics will come up on how to do it. It's not that difficult. you can even tint it black so you get a similar dark charcoal looking counter. The other is to remove what you have and make your own wood countertops out of doug fir beams. Also how-to's online. These are just options for you to consider. I'm not saying any one is better than the other. painting the cabs. you don't have that many to do, so it can be done, if you follow the proper prep instructions. I won't get into here, but if you do decide to go that route, let me know as I have one of the best online tutorials I can give you. Again, I'm only offering you options. People come on here and say, 'do this" or 'my god don't paint those',,, It's your home. Do what makes you happy. here are a few knotty pine kitchens, some natural, some painted. with your black countertop, if you don't want to have white tile, do a natural slate in these black/rust colored tones. they'd be a perfect match. Paint the surrounding walls a light cream to keep things from getting too dark. I think black appliances look great w/pine this is a laminate top and a travertine splash. if you do want to paint the cabs, or even the walls, this color would look fine. natural, glass in a few of the uppers, new lighting and granite. the sage green is beautiful w/your floors. You could always do just the lower cabs in this color, or do the entire lot. white splash, walls and butcher block or lighter countertop, you'd have a beautiful kitchen. below, she did a beadboard backsplash w/some open shelving.

This is a great thread and I've read it with lots of interest. I'm not as interested in IKEA vs. the rest as I am in frameless vs. framed. I grew up in Europe with frameless cabinets and have now lived in the US for nearly 30 years with various framed cabinets. I still like frameless better from what appears to me be a usability factor, but maybe that is all in my head, but the things that I'd like more information on is to figure out if this is just in my head. What is the inside dimension of a drawer for a say a 30" cabinet for the different brands, or use the 36" or an 18" as an example. The same goes for how much space is wasted in say in the 171" direction and the 143" direction due to the framed parts? It might not be much, but having gone from a large kitchen where I had plenty of storage and the frame was smaller to a smaller kitchen with framed cabinets that has more frame (I assume to save money on the doors) this is something that is really pushing me towards frameless feeling like it has less wasted space and be more comparable across lines of frameless cabinets vs. framed ones where that seems to vary by the manufacturer. One thing that to this day annoys me with the framed cabinets is the lip on the bottom shelf. I love it when I visit my mom and friends in Europe how easy it is to slide out a stack of plates from the bottom shelf and not have to go through the lift motion first.

I like them both!!! Depends on if you want white/white, or pink/white. Have you looked at homes built with both bricks? Beware that mortar color can completely change the look of a brick house. We are currently building and have a brick called Magnolia Bay that, yes, has a pink tinge in certain light. We love it, and have received many compliments on the color! There are also tinges of gray, brown, and slight black throughout the brick. The trick to keeping our brick looking on the white side was using a white mortar with a mica white sand. None of that pre-mix stuff. We have seen this brick used with darker mortars and would have sworn it was not the same. Here is an example of the same brick with a darker mortar.