Do not replace the board...chances are it will not match. If you can't find someone to work with shellac sticks, then there is another way to disguise the damage. Hardwood flooring people (I being just one) use a 3M Epoxy to repair hardwood and to fill knot holes, splits and other things that need filling or repair. I have heard mention of colored epoxies, but I have never used those. They might work for you...the stuff would stick permanently and you could paint in the missing wood grain with most any media (pencil, marker, paint). I have done that with just the clear epoxy and got acceptable results. If you started with a colored epoxy that is a close match to the background color of the wood, then painted in the missing wood grain, that could work as well. Hint: when you work with epoxy, you have to think of the repair site as a surgeon would a patient in an operating room. You want to protect the surrounding area to prevent the epoxy from winding up where you don't want it and be sure that you have denatured alcohol to wipe up any that might get where not intended.

breezygirl - I know what you mean by donating it too soon. I did it for two reasons. One is that we didn't really have a place to put the old Sub-Zero where it could be properly braced. Built in fridges are very dangerous if they aren't braced because they are prone to tip over. Plus the family that I'm donating the kitchen to really needed it when they got the rest of the kitchen. This family has a group from their church that is getting together to help them put their "new" kitchen together. They need the help as they can't do it on their own. The biggest issue is they had to scrap together the funds to rent a truck to move the kitchen and it would have been really hard for them to do that twice.

Thanks plllog. We were hoping we'd like the match of the wood to the paint. It looked good to us with our sample, but natural wood can vary so (we weren't sure what flavor of pink the beech our cabinets came from would be exactly, but we love how it turned out -- the warm LED Cree lights reflect the warm tones more and the green contrast also enhances it; this is a night shot with a phone camera so color is not true). Gee, you think we could go for a preppy look with an argyle backsplash? :-o florantha, I wish our dog was as vocal as yours -- we love talkative dogs. Ours only barks at strangers (we use 'that's enough' to tell him to stop). We've been trying to reward his subvocalizations and he now will howl when he sees something he wants really bad and is waiting for the command to get it or greet it. Yes, he's an Akita. Prior dog was Akita as well, but wouldn't match the kitchen. In later years as he went gray, he'd be a closer match to the blue merle kitchen choices! Our late pup: Current pup has an undercoat that won't quit. To cut down on how much dog fur we eat, the stay-out-of-the kitchen rule got started. Without the wall, I think our daily supplement of this will increase. Then again, the remodel involved updating the HVAC system which also filters air better. We also switched to washing at the pet store facility instead of home because of the cleanup. With this pup we also learned about the debunking of the old wolf studies on 'alpha' theory (results repudiated by the researchers that wrote them!) and switched to primarily reward-based training. It worked so well and our dog and we are so much happier for it. We lucked out that he is extremely food motivated, so training is easy with this dog (e.g. sometimes when barking at the door, he'll bark twice then run to me in anticipation of getting told 'that's enough' and getting a treat. Alerting, then running to me without commands gets a jackpot reward sometimes).

I am just finishing a four month reno that affected nearly my whole first floor (and half the second) and left me with no kitchen or eating area the whole time. I have a fridge in the garage but the fridge portion was no good to me bc it’s winter and everything froze in there. I set up one end of my living room with a long folding table. I had some very lightweight thin sheets of wood cut to fit it at Home Depot and laid that down for heat protection, then put a table cloth over it that hung down to the floor. I put a dorm fridge at one end of the table, and on the table I put a toaster, microwave, and toaster oven. At the other end was the trash and recycling bins. I kept one plate, one cup, one bowl, two knives, two spoons, and two forks in the house, along with salt and pepper, a spatula, some tongs, and several disposable food storage containers that could either store leftovers or act as additional bowls if needed. All of it went in a basket under the folding table, behind the tablecloth, which gave me some sense of neatness and order. Another basket under the table held food basics - bread, pb&j, cereal. Almost every single other thing in my kitchen was packed up and put into storage. I cooked tons of stuff ahead of time and froze them in individual serving sizes and put them in the garage freezer. My best advice is to get the stuff you will not need out of your house. ALL of it - put it in storage. I put a lot in storage, but there were some misc hard to pack things (like bottles of liquor, and a large wall mirror, and a clock) that I decided I could just stick in my living room or office. I also didn’t want to put any sort of pantry food in a storage facility so anything I hadn’t used up before the reno I put in boxes and set it in other rooms. I regretted these decisions big time. I’ve spent four months tripping over that stuff or shuffling it from place to place - I should have just found a way to pack it and store the possessions and given the food to a food bank. It seems like every available surface had stuff piled on it that I should have stored. I hated that way more than not having a kitchen. And remove any excess stuff from the room you’ll be living in - pare it down to only what you need. Otherwise it will just feel cramped and overwhelming. I just found it’s super important to create some order and visual calmness in the spaces you are living in. Other advice - take everything off the walls, even in rooms adjoining the work area, otherwise it may fall during work that vibrates. Buy extra filters for your HVAC and change them frequently during the work. And absolutely do not use your garage as storage for what is normally in your house. The very best advice I saw on Houzz before my remodel was to ruthlessly purge and organize my garage ahead of time. I did it, and thank goodness I did - both the house and garage would have been sheer chaos if I hadn’t, because the garage was used to stage materials and set up saws and other tools. Even though I had completely cleared both bays, this stuff completely filled the garage at times, leaving only a narrow aisle up the middle, so thank god I didn’t try to also use it to store stuff from the house. One of the big surprises to me was the amount of money it costs to deal with the reno but is not being paid to the contractor or designer. Examples include: movers to move things in and out of storage, storage fees, post-reno deep cleaning, post-reno duct cleaning, area rug and carpet cleaning, service charges from my home security company to come and put sensors on my new windows, appliance delivery and installation fees, packing supplies, etc. It adds up. BUT it will all be worth it!! Good luck!