You should post on Freecycle.com (everything is free) in your area, Craigslist, etc. Maybe you already are and I am sounding too bossy. This is a very wide audience here, but there's always a chance someone will connect! Good luck! Heidi

I think you're right about the window balancing the fridge in this photo. The trick is to get away from photos however. There is absolutely no way to get IRL balance in a rendering because the page ends. You always have to take it back to the space and see what your reality is. Hold up the renderings one at a time and see what is off page. I know you did a lot of mockups...so do you have a beach towel or sheet that more or less matches your current cabinets? And a gray or blue one? Get a family member to stand holding each, one at a time, even waving them a little, where the new fridge goes, during the day time so the window gets its full due, and see how much it matters having a contrast color impacts vs. just having the big towel hanging there. Walk around. Approach it from all directions. The look of this wall is really important to you, and nobody's taste but yours (and your husband's) matters. Maybe the contrast will help lighten the room? And tie in with all the appliances (okay, for that one imagine that a blue towel with fishies matches :) ). It may be that the "hulk" you were worried about seeing when you put the fridge here looks much better if it's part of the cabinetry. The smudge thing really isn't an issue. Actually, the replacement issue is only a moderate consideration too--important, but not the first thing to determine. The overall look is a huge issue. Especially of this one appliance you were so concerned about. Settle that, and make your decisions and compromises from there.

For me the worst part of seeing all those new, poorly planned kitchens is when you hear afterwards that they ripped the whole thing out. What a waste! A few years ago a house was for sale for an absurd amount and it was a spec home built by a builder who clearly had no idea about the tastes and the styles of people in this area. The house sat on the market for a long time (by our RE standards), and it was on one of the best streets in town. When it was sold, at a HUGE discount from the original listing price, I found out that the owners ripped out the kitchen and all of the bathrooms--brand spanking new! Admittedly, I too would have done the same. The kitchen was poorly designed and the choices that they made were not pretty (peach marble for the bathrooms). It was awful that all that material went to waste. I love to troll the RE listings and think about how I would change things! I think it's one of the perks of being a GW "student"....we've learned so much from eachother :) I am currently in a crazy rental with black lacquered counters (yes wood that has been black lacquered!), and I always wonder what the original owners were thinking!!!

They are cracking because they have been painted in. Frame and panel construction works by allowing wood movement in the panel, if you glue the panel down (with paint in this case) the panel can't expand and contract with seasonal changes in humidity and then cracks instead. Unless you free the panel it will continue to crack with seasonal movement. If you want to replace them probably the easiest way is to cut away the part of the frame holding the panel in, then replacing it with a molding when replacing the panel. I'd do that by making a template and using a pattern routing bit to cut away the old wood. That said, it would be a lot of work to fix a minor defect. An alternative would be to free the panel so it can move again (thin paint scraper around the edges), glue the panel back together and use something like bondo to smooth it. Disassembling an old door is difficult. You can cut it apart and then reassemble using loose tenons, making up the lost width of the saw kerf somehow, but you'd really have to love the door to make that effort worthwhile. If it were my door I'd ignore it, it's part of old house charm and a reminder to always accommodate wood movement.