Except for the few guys on here, I never found them very helpful when I went to them trying to get help buying granite but if you read their posts they talk about how to do things - http://www.stoneadvice.com/forum/ All my links no longer work, but here's a thread where we talked about it in the past and someone did it: http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg04172748689.html?7

Hi cv2014, I still love the look of our Semihandmade walnut, to me it's very warm. We briefly looked into having Semihandmade make panels for the side and the back of the island, but we wanted a more substantial edge and it just seemed like we'd have better luck getting it to all work out if we hired a finish carpenter to do the job. We're very happy with how it turned out. You can go to almost any good lumber store and purchase a full sheet of walnut veneer for not a lot of $$s. Depending on where it's used, it could be ok if it doesn't match perfectly with the Semihandmade walnut. The corner cabinet has a filler piece, I think it was around 4 inches, that gives enough clearance so that the cabinet door can open without worrying about having it hit the door to the right. In my case I think I was also concerned about clearance so it wouldn't hit the oven handle as well. That was solved by making the pull-out next to the over slightly wider than originally planned. These are the older Ikea cabinet style, so I'm not sure if the new style has the same kind of corner cabinet or not. Good luck with your planning!

Thanks all! (I don't really want to replace the shelves for a few reasons. First, it would be quite a bit of work. Each corner has to be notched out a particular way to fit the cabinet's innards. The ends are also rabbeted (?) to sit on the shelf supports without squiggling around which is why they fit better right-side up. The other reason is that they are pretty. :) They are the same wood as the case and have a nice little profile on the fronts. The tops may have been finished but the bottoms aren't. Someone before me put shelf paper on them which didn't come off. Probably didn't help with the warping!)

Sarah, glad you're (hopefully) not going to have to deal with a hole from a biscuit joint. I just wanted to chime in about having a wood counter with a sink in it as my island is long boards of walnut and I have an undermount sink in the island. Because I knew it was going to get wet on a regular basis I opted for the Waterlox finish and I'm well pleased with it. I've had it over a year. Now, I did refinish it once, but it was because against my better judgment, my hubby had asked that I do the original finish (we've done all the work ourselves) when the temperatures were very low. I knew it wasn't going to cure properly, but he was certain it would be fine. Long story short, I was right, he was wrong, and I made him sand the whole thing down again some 8 months later because it was leaving huge scratch looking marks in the finish (not all the way down to the wood) everytime something accidentally got dragged across it. The second time I used the Waterlox finish the temps were just fine and I was able to leave my house open for the top to cure properly. (He wasn't going to uninstall it for me to refinish it... ours has a waterfall edge so I understand why he didn't want to remove it) Even when it wasn't cured properly though, water beaded right up the way it's supposed to. I also have two different bathroom countertops done in walnut with a Waterlox finish. One is our powder room, the other is the bathroom in our basement that our three teen boys share everyday. Those have been perfectly fine for several years now. Except you don't want to use bleach on a Waterlox finish, it's the one thing I've found doesn't react well, not that you lose the water proof finish, it just makes it look cloudy.