another alternative is to have your cabinet company deliver some extra small molding strips and then just have your GC apply them to your end panels.

we didn't want to spend the money on the panel for the side of the fridge, so that's what we did there, and it looks great. just two strips of molding, miter-cut and applied in a way that mimics our door panel style. a very easy and economical solution!

You're not getting the whole picture yet because the kitchen isn't quite finished, the floors are still covered up, the appliances aren't all installed, etc.

And, honestly, I think it looks just fine the way it is. Adding beadboard may be a little too much.

I think it looks fine how it is I also think too much beadboard would be too busy.

I think if you added beadboard it would not match the end run of the upper cabinet. I think it look great without it. Good Luck!

I think the above idea of the trim being applied to look like your doors would be a very nice finishing touch to your kit. 20+ yrs ago when we did a kit I didn't finish the ends and I will say it always looked unfinished.

Is the existing "naked" end real wood, or a picture of wood? If the latter, get the end panel. I have "naked" end panels in my current kitchen, and will be glad to get rid of them in my remodel. They make the kitchen look cheap, perhaps because they are not a particularly good match to the wood doors.

If the "naked" ends are wood or veneer, I think they look fine!

Honestly, I don't think the beadboard really works as end panels for the pictured cabinets. What the cabinets really need is a fake door to finish them off. The bead board wouldn't look appropriate as end panels. I'm not sure it really works above your range hood either. And, honestly, side of the 24" deep (MW, oven?) cabinet next to the fridge being naked bothers me a lot worse than the ends of the bases not being finished. It also looks like you finished off the island with beadboard at one end but not the other??? Is that the case, or is it just a trick of the light in the photo to the left? I think it looks perfectly appropriate to finish the white island off in beadboard all the way around, but keep the stained perimeter different. That's why I think the beadboard above the hood looks awkward. It really doesn't tie in with any other beadboard in that stained color, and doesn't look right. Stained beadboard is tricky, and really doesn't work well with a lot of cabinet styles, whereas painted beadboard works relatively well with a broad brush of cabinet styles.

Skip the beadboard and order finished door panels.

I had a similar situation & ended up ordering dummy doors for the end panels. I really like the way it looks.
I actually think yours looks fine the way it is, but I understand your desire for a more "finished" look.

I agree with edlakin. I think you should finish them with molding so they look similar to your cabinet fronts. I think the beadboard would be too much - you want your range hood area to be a focal point.

Thank you all for your thoughtful responses!

The large white elephant at the end of the island in pic #1 will be replaced by beadboard, so I'll end up with beadboard on all 4 sides of the island.

I can't just add molding because these are not classic shaker cabinets. I would need to take a closeup to show the detail, but where classic shaker cabs have 1 wide piece of trim (rail? stile? you'd think that I'd have learned its name by now), mine have 2, and the top flows into the second in a cove style -- my attempt to be subtly different. So I'd have to go thru my KD to the cab co. I'm fed up with her. I'll probably ask her to price the door option but I have some idea that's the most expensive way to go, and I'm also fed up with the little extras and cost overruns.

I am having second thoughts about the maple beadboard piece above the range hood -- and livewire has articulated the issue better than I ever could. When I first posted here, I thought the way to tie it in to the rest of the kitchen was to add more beadboard. Now I'm having serious second thoughts about replacing it altogether with plain trim. I may try posting again once the range hood is up (manana...always manana).
Once again, I really, really wish I'd discovered this site while still in the design phase and not in the cabinets-already-ordered-too-late-now phase! I do understand why KDs get fed up with clients -- a lot of us (including me) can't fully visualize a kitchen element on paper (or in a computer program) and don't realize what it is until it's fully installed, and then we want it changed!

On one cabinet neither I nor the cabinet guys realized that it would stick out farther than the adjacent cabinet and that therefore it needed to have a finished end. I only realized it after assembling the cabinet and installing it with the entire run of cabinets.

This image shows the cabinet with the problem:
{{gwi:1482241}}

I bought a piece of matching QS red oak veneer, glued it on, and finished it, and now you'd have a hard time noticing the difference.

Since you've already got your counter-top there, you might want to take into account the amount of overhang on that side. If the thickness of an additional panel takes the overhang down to something odd-looking, you might want to go with the trim idea. The other possibility is to see about something else that could be applied to the existing end of cabinet that might seem an artistic point of interest.

jayne

I did not finish off the ends of my cabinets as it would've been too expensive to do all of them--esp. with 2 tall cabinets. I did finish off all the island ends though and think it is a fairly common practice to treat the island and perimeter differently.

What bothers me about yours is that the toe kicks were not recessed on the finished ends as my KD did with mine. Adding a door panel alone it not going to fix it. At this point, it you do any type of finished end treatment you would also need to do furniture base moldings. Given you budget, I would opt for furniture base and mitered trim pieces to finish the ends.