i love the look of fir, too! One of my favorite design blogs is Chez Zerbey, (http://chezerbey.com/house-tour/) who use a lot of fir in their house. I have been waffling between fir and mahogany veneer doors that go on ikea cabinet boxes. The doors are from semi handmade in the LA area-- they have a few more pictures of fir cabinets on their website (go to "doors"->"classic" and select fir). I visited the factory recently and was impressed by the quality. The owner noted that solid fir is a soft wood and can get easily dinged. One internal conflict i'm having over this is matching the yellowy fir to a maple butcherblock over part of my kitchen. I'm afraid the two yellows will clash. Here is a link that might be useful: semi handmade doors

Rockybird - I think it depends on how wild the graining in the wood is. The wilder the grainer, the more apparent a deliberate mismatch is. Sochi's lovely cabs (I think) are plain-sawn walnut, and so the graining is pretty wild. I think for Sochi's application, it would be visually distracting to have an intentional visual break since the pattern is so swirly and unique. If you are going with plain-sawn walnut, my guess is that any mismatch on slab fronts will be instantly noticeable by the eye. My kitchen cabs below are quarter-sawn walnut, and so the graining is more subtle. Because the graining is more subtle, the deliberate break in the graining with the trash-pullout (which goes vertically instead of horizontally) is more muted and less apparent. I have some cabs in another part of the house which use plain-sawn walnut, so the pattern is a bit more swirly than the quarter-sawn walnut in the kitchen. (alas our plain-sawn walnut is unfortunately not as heroic and drama filled as the veneers in Sochi's kitchen!) For cost reasons, we decided not to try and match up all the grains. So, in order to visually distract the eye from seeing the mismatch in grain, out design called for horizontal kerfs to be milled into the drawer faces, which you can see below overpowers any visual sense of grain mismatch.

Thank you everyone for your feedback! I hadn't thought of frame less but found the shape of Beverly's drawing (Beverly you are quite the artist!) in a frameless mirror for a really great price. Hopefully something like this will work?http://www.bellacor.com/productdetail/decor-wonderland-ssm1140-samson-frameless-bevel-mirror-613171.htm

Grain should run vertical on cabinet doors. When cabinet doors are made from solid wood the boards are joined vertically, as engineered products are meant to simulate wood, they too should run vertical. Slab doors can be specified to have horizontal grain flow, when the purpose is to have the grain flow across all cabinets. The question becomes is non-standard actionable in this situation and I honestly don't know. It is strange enough that I expect it is, but I have no idea how they will respond. ETA: The same goes for drawers only horizontal.