FYI - we have 6 yr old Kraftmaid natural cabinets (custom) inherited from the PO. Bought new appliances & had to order a new, deeper cab for over the stove/microwave. After > 2 mths, the cabinet came and it was BLONDE not "yellow" as the older cabinets. Thankfully, the store ordered the wrong dimensions so we were able to send it back, but now we are crushed...new microwave that is still in the box mths later! No fan over the stove! Unfortunately, the fan for the stove is under the microwave or I'd just buy a vent hood or something. Can't find a mix 'n match (maple + darker cabinets) that uses maple. I found an article on the WWW where one can set the cabinet out in the sun to age it and check it hourly until it is the shade to match our other. Has anyone else tried this? Also found different advice from sanding and refinishing to tainting shellac and can honestly say am not remotely interested in those, i.e., we're at the tail end of major renovations (inside & out)& just do not have the will to start another project. New - matching - kitchen cabinets were not part of the budget. Any words of wisdom are appreciated.

Just an update...We are still working with Home Depot on our cabinet order. I guess there really wasn't any rush on that 10% after all! We modified some things, taking some things away and adding others. Price went up about $285 based on our changes. And, now I find out they will only give me up to $300 toward the "free" sink base ($502.01)...The Lowe's guy never said anything about an "up to" limit. So, Home Depot sent the quote to the "bid room" (corporate) to see what kind of deal they can authorize...We'll see what they can do. I still have $11,500 in my head, so hopefully they can stay at that price. With such a large order, I would hope so. A couple hundred bucks probably would not make us walk away just because we have spent so much time and energy on this already, but staying at $11,500 would just make me feel good. :-) We started thinking we could do the cabinets for $8500, but then we got caught up in quality (solid cherry wood doors, dovetail drawers, thick shelves, etc) and convenience upgrades (soft close drawers, super susan, etc), so then we ended up just hoping to keep it under $12,000. Our whole budget for the kitchen is (was?) $20,000 including cabinets, counters, backsplash, wood floors, new refrigerator. Not sure if that is realistic anymore. Thankfully, DH is a handy guy and we are DIYers! Although, with one 2yr old and another one baby on the way, DIY is losing it's appeal...Looking forward to putting this project behind us and enjoying the house! By the way, we added a second super susan to the corner cabinet that was just going to be an EZ Reach with 2 stationary shelves (addl $350), increased the size of another cab by 3 inches (addl $25), got the stainless steel tilt out trays instead of the plastic ones (addl $100), added a base filler we needed ($25), and added a tall scribe molding ($25). However, where we saved some money was switching the 27" and 30" "Base Pots and Pans" (BPPS) cabinets to "Base 3-drawer" cabinets. Saved us about $100 a piece. The BPPS cabinets come standard with undermount ball bearing glides so they are more expensive than the Base 3-drawer which come standard with sidemounted glides. However, since we are upgrading all our drawers to undermounted, soft close anyway it made no sense to get the "BPPS" cabinets. They were charging me for the drawer glide upgrade on all the cabinets anyway, so really I was paying for the upgrade twice on those cabinets. Unfortunately, with both Lowe's and HD, this was something I noticed and had to point out. They should really know that. I also had to point out that getting furniture plywood ends on one cabinet ending being about $10 cheaper that buying the wood veneer skin for that cabinet. So, it helped to get familiar with a line and get lots of quotes so you notice these things. Because of these savings, we were able to add that second super susan - Yeh! If anything I've said here raises any flags for anyone reading this, please let me know. We might finalize our order on Saturday if the "price is right!" Thanks again.

Hi mcook, Since you aren't getting any responses, thought I'd chime in here. I am also having cherry cabinets installed for my kitchen/laundry and master bath. They are all different stains. The kitchen I ordered a black glaze. I'm a little concerned about the darkness, but instead choose to think of it as a rich old world look, which I love. I've heard that the cherry darkens a couple shades, and it depends on the amount of light in the room. I've also been told that it happens gradually enough that you, seeing it every day probably won't notice it. Another thing I've heard is that using a darker stain, the change is less dramatic. I had a sample piece of wood for my kitchen cabinet, and purposely left it in bright sunlight for a couple weeks. It did darken a bit, but the reddish highlights came out which are beautiful. I'm going from blonde oak cabinets to these, so it's a little bit scary. Hopefully someone else will chime in with real world results.

I'll add me 2 cents as well & completely agree with Live_wire_oak & Debbi. Many years ago when I was an apprentice Furniture Maker I was trained to always cut out the sap wood especially with cherry. Unfortunately, this is not a practice used by many companies now. It's become the "normal & acceptable". It never catches up with the heartwood in colour and the heartwood will darken more to create even more of a colour difference. It could have all been stained "to match" when new making it less noticeable, but over time the heartwood has darkened leaving behind the noticeable sapwood. Unfortunately, your Rep is telling you the truth. As much as it pains me to agree with it.