Hi cate, Thanks for the compliments! What we did was clean the surfaces to be painted, doors, drawer fronts and gable ends. We used tsp, scrubbed, rinsed and dried. Everything was dismantled and taken down except for the parts that didn't have gable ends to be painted. I was left with about 1/3 of the cabinets during the painting process. We sent them out to be painted with a spray lacquer and were charged $2000 for the whole job, that included getting our kitchen chairs (also golden oak) painted black. The edges inside we painted ourselves, cleaned and primed and then painted with the same navajo white as on the cabs. Any other questions, feel free to ask, I won't be around for the next few hours but I'll check in again when I'm back.

These are the steps used by girlwithaspirin, who turned a very dated oak kitchen into an espresso brown masterpiece. I imagine the steps would work with lighter colored paint, as well. 1) Clean with soap and water. 2) Lightly sand, only where needed. (I'm lazy, but the varnish had built up in some places.) 3) Prime with a thin coat of Zinsser Bullseye 123 Deep Base, tinted to match paint color. Let dry for a few hours. 4) Paint with a thin coat of Benjamin Moore Satin Impervo Alkyd. Do cabinet backs first! Don't paint bottom or top edges. Let dry overnight. 5) Paint fronts. Again, let dry overnight. 6) Hang cabinets. Carefully. 7) Paint bottom/top edges and do any touch-up. 8) Leave them open for as long as you can stand it. This stuff takes forever to cure. I didn't do two full coats of paint like many people suggested. For one, the Satin Impervo covers amazingly. The dark color helped -- I imagine a light color would require more coats. But also, the thinner the paint, the more it looks like stain. If you glop it on, which I accidentally did in some places, it doesn't look as much like a pro job. I imagine I'll be touching up for the next few months, though. Whenever the sun hits somewhere new, I notice an area that's a little too thin. Here is a link that might be useful: girlwithaspirin's before and after photos

Deedles, we put plain oak in our utility room. I'm not against plain oak cabinets at all, but they can be overpowering if there are a lot of cabinets. The stain the cabinet maker used on these is SW chestnut, and it looks more red in person. No underlying yellow at all. if you don't want the oak to absorb too much stain, thus reducing the visible graining, you first need to "fill" the grain. That can be done with a light coat of varnish or shellac or diluted solvent. Or even using gel stain. Your cabinetmaker is the best person to ask about this.

Oak white combo is not dated. This pic on This Old House site last week: Other pics: Paint your cabinets only if you want to. Do not get on the trend merry go round. Unless your budget is huge, you wont be able to keep up with the changing trends.