I looked at the Suzie-Q but was hoping to avoid the central pole. I have two with poles now, and would like to skip those next time. Ours are 25 years old, and no adjustments needed, just get a little sqeaky from time to time. I will have two corners, one will be for the bulky things, so definitely no pole there. The other will be for heavier pantry-type storage, so maybe the pole is not such an issue for that one. I now have one diagonal with one door and one pie-cut with two doors. It's a little inconvenient, but not a deal-breaker in the larger scheme of things. I know what you mean about the finger-smashing-- had a close call at a friends house recently. Not sure what you mean about a spring to prevent it, jakuvall-- how does that work? I haven't discussed this with the cabinet maker yet-- was trying to get as far along as I could before that. Thanks for the picture, Ann-- I see that it can be done, now I have to figure out if it's a good idea. Did you have the finger-smashing problem?

I'm going to assume that money does not factor into this question as I answer it. The reason being....you didn't mention it :oP And many custom cabinet makers don't charge like cabinet companies (ie my beaded insets were a 19% upcharge). Partial overlay have gone a bit out of style (IMO) you don't see many in new kitchens. You do see a few....but not as many so I'd steer away from those instantly if I were doing your kitchen. Now the question of the full overlay or inset. I'd like to share a few pics of my cabinets and see if I can help there. Not knowing what an Rh door style is LOL I have to guess....but I have a little of everything so pics might help you. First beaded inset doors are a very old style, and you don't often see them with "fancy" (ie lots of detail) doors. Most often they're done with Shaker style doors or slab...fairly simple door styles. They are in my opinion, very classic styles, traditional would also fit, but they're normally very simple doors so that the wood frames and details are shown off with the simple lines (although the majority are actually painted) but it's still about simplicity. Here are mine...they're basically a wide shaker style door with just a tiny bit more detail on the top and bottom trim pieces: (My house is still in progress so there are missing trims, etc....please don't mind the mess): The above are inset, beaded, shaker style doors with glass panels. Again same cabinets, with the lower, which are shaker style doors, inset with beaded edges, and just an fyi on all of my solid doors...they're all reverse raised panel. Inset drawers with glass are in the above. Another choice you have to deal with is your drawer style. I like a mix (the above are five panel...with the glass) and I also have slab. My panels are so big that on a basic inset drawer, you'd just have an eyebrow of flat wood, so I prefered the look of slab: This cabinet in the dining room is a full overlay. It is MISSING the trim which will make a picture frame around the edge (we're talking about the cabinet on the wall not the stand alone china hutch...which by the way is a mix of full overlay and inset...and it was made in 1940...note the simple lines of the doors) ANyhoo, cabinet in the wall: The door style in the dining room wall cabinet is a bit more detailed than the kitchen. The full overlay allowed the biggest expanse of glass available, which I wanted so I could display a collection of venetian glass. I would not personally do this style as an inset. I think it's too busy for inset. Just for fun, this dresser has inset drawers. They have a bit more detail, but not much (a little bit of rounding on the edges) than my kitchen insets: These are full overlay cabinets. They're not finished in this pic (doors are missing while the glass blower makes the glass for them). But you can see the nice lines full overlay gives you: I wouldn't do that in an inset either. They're too much detail. You didn't ask...but here is one more choice you'll have to consider...the hinges. My kitchen (well all of my cabinets except this one) are hidden hinges. We did that because they're adjustable and our house moves alot since it's on pilings. But we had to do one cabinet with exposed hinges because it wasn't deep enough for the hidden ones (these doors open up to a flat end of the island, painted as a chalk board for my 3 year old to keep busy on): My son's bathroom cabinets are highly detailed carved doors, reverse raised panel, full overlay. I fell in love with them but they didn't go with the style of the kitchen, so I put them in his bathroom...rediculously expensive cabinets for a child's bath LOL But I really loved the doors and had to use them somewhere: and with glass: And last but not least (I told you I had a lot to share for options Heh heh) these are full overlay slab drawers and a simple shaker style or even slab type door with glass. They are in my master closet and I wanted to keep the details down given the small size of the room: A few choices you will also need to ponder are the debth of your counter overhangs. With inset you do 3/4" overhang and with standard doors, you do 1 1/2, but with a heavily carved deep door like in my son's room, I had to do 2" to cover the carving (you want 3/4 or so out from your doors so in case of spill, it does not run into your cabinets). I hope that helped :) And now...good luck! YOU'LL NEED IT!!! heh heh

Here's Chad's answer: "I do not work for Blum, nor did I design the hinges, but I assume that the compact hinges are not really designed to have two back to back doors being opened at the same time. This is just not a common occurrence as one set of doors would typically be closed prior to opening a separate set of doors." He makes it sound as though my need is odd, but given the responses above, it seems to be known by the GW experts to allow double clearance when hinges back to each other. So I'm surprised that the experts at Barker aren't aware of it. And I'm a bit disappointed that they are sidestepping it instead of saying "good point, we'll update our measuring guides to warn others about this." Oh well. I'm not going to hit them up for new doors or anything. We can remedy the issue on the 4 sets of doors that back up to each other. And I'm not so anal that I care about those doors being closer together in the middle than others in the kitchen. I'd rather live with that than paint 8 new doors. :-)

Sure. You just need to find a cabinet maker who remembers how to install one. You don't see it done because it requires some skill and time; you can't just slap it in and use the hinge adjustments to make sure things line up later. More traditionally if you were going to do this you'd use a fully inset door design, which IMO looks much more elegant than an overlay, but again requires a lot more attention to detail on the part of the maker. The kind of hinge you'd use on a full overlay is called a "cranked butt hinge".