I second what livewire said. One more point though. It's possible that your 'unfinished end' is actually a vinyl wood grained end. I love Medallion cabinets, but their vinyl wood grains are horribly matched (as oppposed to KraftMaid who does a beautiful job!). So, it's possible that this end looks like oak, because it's a horribly done brandywine vinyl end. Other thought was maybe the builder stained an 'unfinished wood end' because part of it would be exposed under the microwave. Will depend on which series you went with Silverline, Designer or Designer Gold. Like I said, livewire's advice to order a 'wood skin' is the best. If you order raised panel end panels, they will be too thick to fit with a 30" hood. Also regarding what the builder/KD designer said about recirc or vented OTR hoods? In a way they were right. You wouldn't notice much difference between the two....neither works very well. A wood hood with liner could easily have added $1000 or more to your budget. If money wasn't an issue here, they should've designed how you wanted it. Can you take a picture of your end panels and post here? I'm curious. Kompy

Charlikin, that's the color family we are aiming for - maybe a little darker, but somewhere close to that. The thing is, I really love the look of wood grain when it's diffused and fine (not grainy like oak) so that's the compromise I personally make with Maple. But the tradeoffs (color and durability) make it pretty much the only choice left, although the color part seems to be debatable. When I brought a KM toffee door from HD to my old cabinet maker as an example of a color we could do, he said, "that is ugly. Downright ugly and horrible. Look at that finish - you can't finish Maple like that and have it turn out decent. I wouldn't even do this for you, and I'd never warrenty it. Yuck." That's what I mean by debateable. Haha, and we may end up going with that "yuck"...for lack of a wood with a fine grain, durability, and in the brown/yellow/medium hue color family! DH is the one who is opposed enough to the red to eliminate cherry, although it lingers on the table for me. I think it's gorgeous. I don't like the color red, never have (I am a yellows and greens girl), but DH abhors it, but he said if I got it he would come around just for me. But would I be happy if it turned deep, deep red? I don't know. I know a brown stain would mitigate it somewhat, but the natural color of the wood would still come through, and all the cab people I've talked to say you can't control how the wood will age and the color that it will end up being in the end - it depends on the tree used.

Hi Stretchad, there is a post on this forum titled "Any regrets choosing dark hardwood floors?" posted by peemps -- it is long, but toward the end there are photos of dark and dark --pretty look. I found a link by searching "classic kitchens dark hardwood" on Google.

We have maple painted white for our perimeter cabinets and maple stained espresso with a black glaze for our two islands. We went with this because the other dark stains were showing red highlights in our light. While the color looks good in our kitchen, I don't like the glaze on the cabinets. Cleaning them is difficult. Even with a damp cloth, they show streaks in certain light. And the finish on the cabinets themselves was not done well. We have the same thing on our bathroom vanity and the finish on it was poorly done as well. As for the white, it is easy to clean, but the paint finish on some of the cabinets had bubble spots. Shiloh was good about replacing them.