I think it's worth a trip to the cabinet maker's showroom so that you can take a look at how far they will open if that's a big concern to you. Truth be told, in my previous kitchen, the doors didn't open as far as what the new ones do and that was one (and probably about the ONLY!) issue that I really never had with them. It was what it was and it wasn't a functional problem for me. When doors open, they have a bit of "give" with the hinges, so it's not as if they are going to break off if they are reasonably swung open. You find that most of the time when people open a cabinet, they don't "guide" the door opening the full way - they open it a bit and allow inertia to take over with the rest of the opening process. I think that everyone in the family will quickly get used to how far the cabinets open. There's a learning curve any time you get something new because it works/reacts a little differently than what you're used to, bit it in cabinets, doors, windows, appliances, washers, dryers, cars, etc. Solve the problem with how far the bases open by getting mostly drawers...it's what most of us do because it's much more functional overall.

Don't feel you have to enforce vertical symmetry with the need to line the coolers up with the stacked bottles. If slightly wider ones are cheaper and would work, the go with that without a qualm. And i think having them the same dimension actually weakens the overall design, a bit. You'll notice that in colored picture, the bottle stack and the cooler doors don't line up, and it still looks well-balanced. Notice, too, that there's even an optical illusion-created discordance between the stacked bottle rack on the right and the strongly vertical-orientation of the glass-paneled doors to the left on the other side of the TV. So just making those two sides match didn't result in an eye-sweet balance, no matter what the tape measure may say. In your case, I think the strong apparent verticality of the coolers' slab doors may make them seem narrower than they actually are, creating a top heavy look to the wine racks above. This violates the general sense we have that things should be bolder, and stronger-appearing on the base, and successive layers should get lighter, narrower, smaller, or whatever. In our second drawing, with the coolers moved inward, the optical-illusion of their narrowness is resolved. Also it may just be artefacts of the layout but the D-shaped raised trim pattern on the sides of the narrow lower doors strikes me as unattractive. Also door hinging should be book-matched, or disguised to look that way. HTH L.

Cotehele kitchens is one of my favorites! Personally, I am not in love with full overlay. I really like inset. Used to be in love with inset. Then, since inset never loved me back, I got over inset. Last kitchen we had half inch overlay and I loved the cabinets. I got the wood and stain I wanted, along with the door style, and I was happy. This time around, I was very upset that the cabinet company I was going with did not offer half inch. Only in one door style. A five panel raised that I did not love. I wanted slab doors in half inch overlay. Because of cost, and really...because I couldn't think of actually having full overlay, I went with the five panel raised door in half inch. And I am so excited to get them! To me, full overlay looks very 90's. It is the norm/standard and I don't think it is hideous or anything. In fact, I swoon over many kitchens with full overlay. Just I think that 1/2" works well as traditional, modern, classic...the works!

Here's Chad's answer: "I do not work for Blum, nor did I design the hinges, but I assume that the compact hinges are not really designed to have two back to back doors being opened at the same time. This is just not a common occurrence as one set of doors would typically be closed prior to opening a separate set of doors." He makes it sound as though my need is odd, but given the responses above, it seems to be known by the GW experts to allow double clearance when hinges back to each other. So I'm surprised that the experts at Barker aren't aware of it. And I'm a bit disappointed that they are sidestepping it instead of saying "good point, we'll update our measuring guides to warn others about this." Oh well. I'm not going to hit them up for new doors or anything. We can remedy the issue on the 4 sets of doors that back up to each other. And I'm not so anal that I care about those doors being closer together in the middle than others in the kitchen. I'd rather live with that than paint 8 new doors. :-)