Good luck with the project. DH and I are down to the wire with our home built shaker inset cabinets. Got door panels drying in the basement as I type. Our house is 135 years old, and we wanted to stay with more of an "old farmhouse" feel, so the minor imperfections we got from not being very experiences at this actually look right at home. I'm not talking about glaring mistakes, but things like the gap between the drawers and frame isn't exatly the same all around, or on all of the drawers all around the kitchen (it varies about 1/16th of a inch, and not that noticable to the eye). Making the doors is a ton of work - but half of that is in the painting so if you are going to paint them anyway . . . My main reason for not buying doors made is I hate (with a passion) ending up with small hairline unpainted edges when the wood expands and contracts over the seasons (and we have wild seasonal changes here in SD) and the only way to avoid that is to paint the panels before they are put into the frames. Precisions router bits help too - we started with a cheaper set and finally moved up to Eagle ($140 for the pair) and that made a big difference in how the parts fit together. While I'm not "anal-snot" my DH is - and he does the cutting. He does reloading where micro precision is needed, so he's not happy if he's got a 1/32" slop in cutting wood. And he's constantly checking to make sure everything stays square (blades and such) during the project. Drives me nuts - but I've learned to shut up and walk away and let him "fiddle" until he's happy with the results.

Oh I love P & F but having seen them and the CP in person, hands down I would go for the CP if I could. Thanks Kat... supposedly cab install by July 1 ish but the cabinet guy is the cabinet guy from hell and we do not get along at all. All kinds of delays and excuses... I'm my own GC and the cab guy usually runs the whole remodel show so he doesn't like me much at all. He likes to do what he wants to do rather than what I ask for. He is the only contractor I have had any kind of problem with so I'm pretty sure it isn't me. Anyway, I was trying to figure out hardware placement and the size of each portion of your island (which is beautiful, btw). After much soul-searching and rationalizations, I did just commit to a slab of Imperial Danby this week and I'm thrilled with that... (husband has no idea YET or he thinks the check I gave the fabricator is for all of the countertops!)

Take a picture of the top, print it out and practice on the paper. Take good notes about which colors you used. Do it again with clear plastic over the spot you are repairing to double check your choiced. And apply one coat of clear shellac on the top before you overpaint so it doesn't soak into the wood. Then protect the top because the overpainting is susceptible to damage. That's fake tiger oak. The oak was extremely popular but not plentiful, so low-priced manufacturers resorted to painting on the grain they wanted onto a plainer wood. The underlying wood is going to be alder or whatever is easy to work and cheap in the area.

Use a tooth brush and a good stripper. Don't go for a "safe" stripper....go for one that does the job so you don't have to sand lead paint. And never EVER use a belt sander on anything unless you are VERY V*E*R*Y experienced.....I have seen people who work wood for a living make a mess with a belt sander. And yes, lead is a real issue but the world is full of people like me who has stripped many many items and never worried about what kind of paint, who grew up in a house painted with white lead paint....and helped her father paint the fence with that same white lead, lived in a major metropolitan area where the air was full of the fumes from leaded gas. Grew up always letting the water run until it was cold because the house had lead soldered pipes.....and I don't let have brain damage nor kidney damage and the only time I have been anemic was a week after my first child was born. Not to Pooh-pooh the dangers of lead but unless your children are eating paint chips from the window sill and forgetting to let the water run through the lead soldered pipes, I don't think casual exposure is a big concern. But....Don't sand off the paint!! use a stripper! LOL1