Bellajourney, Thanks for understanding and caring. I am confused and not sure what to do but the installation costs at one place are 3X the cost of the cabinets and at the other place if you include the counter, they are almost 3X the cost also. Home Depot's installation price without considering the counter is 1.3X the cost of the cabinets and with considering the counters is 1.75X the cost of the cabinets. This is with NO recessed lighting and just changing the fixture out. Removing the soffit is causing problems despite nothing under it since it requires a permit which is not even included in the above cost and some construction on my popcorn ceiling. The cabinets that I really love are most likely going to cost me $40,000 with the B grade granite counters and installing the tiles and removing the soffit for a 10 X 14 kitchen smaller than your kitchen. The other place with cabinets that I was not in love with but liked would be $31,000 and the Home Depot, $24,000 before the permit plus no lights under the cabinets until a later date and before making the changes that the installer suggested which may add a few more thousand to the price. I was not in love with the cabinets and would need to not have use of my kitchen cabinets. I am wondering if I should hire an electrician to do my lighting in my kitchen that is bothering me and install the tiles buying two more boxes to go under the cabinets so I can save money after my busy season and revisit the project to get what that will make me happy with more drawers and then at least I will not have the tiles and electrical in the price. Maybe I do not need to go under the cabinets with the tiles at a later date either. I hate my floor so much and I don't want to settle on something if it will not make me happy. Also I would love to see what you are doing with the crown molding your husband is adding. I wish you lived near me since I would hire your husband as he looks very handy. Now I am wondering if I need a cabinet over the sink since I love having a clock there and the light in the ceiling. By the way, I have all my appliances that were expensive and are stainless steel and are fairly new so the prices do not include any appliances which I am sure would add at least another $8,000 to the price. Thanks goodness I do not have to buy new appliances.

I've altered white IKEA cabinets and they looked fine. I wouldn't worry.

We just replaced all of our IKEA Akurum STAT kitchen doors and drawer fronts. Like others, many of our doors were cracked, swelling and discolored. If you want to replace your doors with brand new with the SAME HINGES, you can order them from Swedish Door Company in Canada. https://www.swedishdoorco.com/ They are a full-service cabinet door company and they also do IKEA warranty work. We just installed all of the doors and door faces. The product is PERFECT. Beautiful paint, drill holes exactly where you'd expect. You simply provide your cabinet door measurements, and they know exactly which IKEA door size you have. They make a note that it is an AKURUM reface, which tells them exactly how to drill the holes. For us, this was a good solution because we did not want to replace all of our cabinet boxes. They can send you product color samples if you want to change up the color. The exchange rate helps with price. We found the pricing very reasonable. Hope this helps!

@tc9876 we have 8' ceilings and planning the Ikea upper cabinets would be MUCH easier if we had a few extra inches. We prefer the full 40" uppers, but we also want crown moulding and a light rail. Additonally, we also want the space above the counter to be slightly higher than the standard 18" (certainly no smaller than that standard). We're probably going to have to settle for 30" uppers that won't go all the way tot he ceiling if we want all of these things.