Deedles, we put plain oak in our utility room. I'm not against plain oak cabinets at all, but they can be overpowering if there are a lot of cabinets. The stain the cabinet maker used on these is SW chestnut, and it looks more red in person. No underlying yellow at all. if you don't want the oak to absorb too much stain, thus reducing the visible graining, you first need to "fill" the grain. That can be done with a light coat of varnish or shellac or diluted solvent. Or even using gel stain. Your cabinetmaker is the best person to ask about this.

Linelle: your description perfectly captures the difference between my sample and what I'm looking for! My sample is flat and lifeless. What I want is for the wood to look rich and alive. The example I chose may be red oak. I know white oak can be just as lively as red oak though. There are plenty of QS white oak photos that look rich and full of figure. It's the rift white oak that I cannot find good photos of! ILoveRed: I have seen the photo of the tall cabinets in the first kitchen and it is gorgeous! It doesn't show the detail of the wood as clearly as I need but I'll add it to my photos. The second kitchen you found has some really good photos. Thanks so much for finding that for me! omelet: I'm not an expert either but I agree with you - the cut determines the figure of the wood more than the finish. But take a look at the figure on the unstained backside of my sample door: Unstained, it has a lot of wonderful richness and unexpected fleck in too. If they didn't leave the backside unstained I would have never known that RS white oak could look so lively and have such lovely figure. In one of my other threads, we seem to have figured out that they used a mix of woods and cuts on this sample door. The side rails look like RS white oak, top and bottom rails QS white oak and center panel is plain sawn red oak. That's a fantastic suggestion to post on the flooring forum! Off I go...

Hi, Sophie, Scherr's will do the clear coat. They will also do any Sherwin Williams stain. By specialty finish, if you mean the ceruse finish, I am talking to a local cabinet refinisher about it. He does not build cabinets. But I don't think it's likely we will go that route, for a number of reasons. Fori, thanks for weighing in. We will be ordering some sample doors. I have some white oak samples, so if we decide to stain, I may try some of the stains out before asking them to put them on sample doors. I feel the need to narrow the options down a bit first. The clear finish that Scherr's uses comes in two sheens: dulled rubbed (flat) and medium rubbed (satin). Does anyone know if the flat finish would hold up as well as the satin, be as easy to clean? Does the sheen determine durability and cleanability as well as the shine level? Thanks again!

I think the middle ground in terms of stain is what you are looking for. When I read "walnut", I think of a very dark "walnut" color. Natural (no stain) are light but the color Oak & Broad posted, seems in the middle. I had a dining table made for me and it is a combination of maple (very light) with walnut inserts (dark brown contrast). FWIW, I had a LOT of custom white oak cabinetry built and had them stained a warm medium tone color and I love the color. My oak floors are natural but that is because I wanted them to specifically contrast because I had so much other stained wood. I think a very dark stain - e.g. what I think of as walnut would hide the beautiful grain of rift (or quarter sawn) oak whereas a medium stain enhances it. These are my quarter sawn cabinets stained what I think of as a warm medium tone. This is the chair which as "inspiration" for my cabinet stain. I knew the color I wanted but wasn't able to communicate it through words or any pictures I had found and then eureka - there was the color residing on a chair I had inherited from my mother. I went through a bunch of stain samples and none of them were what I was looking for. I was sorting through some stuff with my designer in terms of whether I would be using after the remodel and I looked at the chair and realized it was the exact color I had been attempting to describe - the light sections on either side of the middle. The cabinet maker actually took the chair with him so that he could replicate the stain and then he brought me a sample door to approve :-)