I'd cancel the contract. Usually your local countertop / kitchen place is competitive price-wise with HD and Lowe's. Check them out and get 3 bids altogether - maybe HD will end up being the lowest, but this is a pretty major project to not bid out.

AZ-now I get where you're coming from. My nephew did lumber stacking (or something) for HD for a short time and it near drove him nuts. My son works at Barnes and Noble and has similar issues. We are buying frameless cabs from HD because we like the workmanship and versatility, but we aren't using their labor. We can do most of the work ourselves except for expert stuff like new wiring, maybe some plumbing, and, of course, the counters, whatever they turn out to be. Undecided on that front. That work will all be from local shops. When we were first there and the KD started with all the "specials" that ran out "soon," my husband was confused by the segue until I told him the guy was telling us about their "blue light specials." Oops, missed out on that month's deals, but guess what?! there were more deals the next month. Careful planning trumps transient specials, which is where this thread began.

New in 89, excellent! The problem with old cabinets and new stone is that the stone will last a good 20+ years. Cabinets at the end of their life will expire long before the new stone top. It would be a shame to have to throw away a perfectly good and expensive counter top when the old cabinets have to be replaced because they are literally falling apart. So now you have choices. You can sand and repaint what you have. You can order new doors/drawer faces, maybe from somewhere like Scherr's, and paint everything to match. You can get new and keep the same footprint. OR you can re-design your kitchen/breakfast area and make better use of the space. As it is, you have two difficult inside corners next to the sink, and a whole extension of the kitchen that flows into the dining area. Is the door near the refrigerator the only door? Is this dining area the dining area? Suggestion: measure out your kitchen and draw it on graph paper. There are some marvelous design people here who could help you make that space as good as it can be. With that in hand, you can go back to HD (or really anywhere) and get them to spec out how much that new cabinetry would cost. This is a much bigger project than you'd originally intended, but it might be the more cost effective option. And if it isn't, you can always sand and paint, but at least you'll have concrete options to choose from.

A couple more thoughts about our kitchen renovation I posted pictures of above (it was a complete gut as we were working with an original 1915 kitchen that had a few horrible modifications. We got solid wood cherry cabinets (I believe they were Kraftmaid off the top of my head) including soft close, lazy Susan corner cabinet, but no slide outs. For all of the cabinets, the GE oven/range and microwave, the Kohler sink, the faucet, and the knobs and pulls...we paid about 4k total. Since budget was a concern for us and we were fine using "middle-end" brands, it was worth it for us to use Home Depot. We did order everything during a big sale and it was 7 years ago, but it was much less than estimates at some smaller local places we checked out, although it was probably for higher end products. And it was a lot less than my mom was able to get as well (she's a designer).