I'm not really sure that any laminate wood would look good against real wood. I think if your cabinets were painted white you could get away with it, but laminate only looks good if you can't compare it to the real thing. Have you thought about slate or stone laminate? I have seen that and it looks fantastic! You have to load your pictures on a host site like Photobucket and then put the code here for pictures to show up. If you use photobucket, it will give you 4 little code boxes under each picture. Copy and paste the contents of the 3rd box into your Gardenweb post.

I bought quarter sawn red oak cabinets for my previous kitchen and although the doors were quartersawn, the interior faces of the cabinets were regular red oak veneer. That's the way they were manufactured. Since the doors were full overlay, the parts of the cabinets that were not quartersawn were never really visible and I had "furniture" sides so those were also quartersawn. However, red oak and white oak are different species, with the white oak tending more towards browner tones. If I were you I would buy a sample door and see how the color match goes with your current boxes. Or you can buy an unfinished door and see if you can play with stain to match the color. You might be able to find a stain close to your current cabinets in tone that will be good with the honey oak. .

Such a nice space! All that wood is going to boss around your decorating. You are smart to try to work with it instead of fight it with cool colors. I think orange is definitely out as an accent color. It is just going to enhance the orange tones of the wood. I would consider painting all the doors in the dining space, it will make the space look less chopped up. I saw on another thread that you are replacing the kitchen floor. Have you considered a slate look tile with faint brown accents? Your floor will have a nice clean look and the accents will work with the wood and will look good with your taupe cabinets. Daltile porcelain slate.

@Beth, first thanks for all your tips and ideas on the hardware. Good idea to mark them out and good to know that 4" is the min (they sell 3 and 3.5, which are cheaper, so I wondered if that would work. thanks) I know; You had a lot of good ideas on painting. Thank you. I am still waffling on what to do. I guess my concerns w/ the painted floors are the effort to do it and the maintenance (I have wear patterns on my front porch and the kitchen gets more traffic). Plus I want to limit my exposure to chemicals. FWIW, this morning I emailed my house painter to check his schedule if I choose to have him repaint the cabs. (he's a much better painter than I am) Painting would allow me to fix the placement of the holes on some of the cabs (currently, most of the cabs do not have holes). I could also put a cab to the left of the stove. And I made an appt next week with the interior designer who was going to help me pick finish materials etc with the big remodel....to get his opinion of a scaled-down remodel. i.e. how to make this house a better version of what it is without spending a ton of money since I may move in a few years....thanks for all your help! I don't want this to be all about $$$, but everything is so $$$ and I hate the idea of investing a lot of excessive $ that I won't get when I sell. (when my former realtor came over this summer, she kept saying "do what *you* want; do what makes you happy; you don't need to do anything to fix this house to sell it" etc). So I guess my dilemma: what can make it more live-able for me for the next few years. (but possibly longer? who knows?)