Money is no object? Easy--solid wood custom cabinets. We were fortunate enough to have them in our last house & when I say solid wood, I mean they took a slab of clear maple and routed the design out of it and put in on hinges & attached it to the solid maple frame. Then they used solid wood slabs for the shelves inside. Those cabinets will likely outlast the rest of the house. Unfortunately, I don't know where that cabinet maker has gone--that was 12 years ago. Now we're in your boat with our new build and the cabinet confusion. Features I would want: painted cabinets with rubbed edges & a glaze, wall cabinets height to the ceiling, accent glass cabinets with lights, custom hood, giant island, slide out shelves in the cabinets, full height pullout trash cabinet, soft close drawers & doors, dove tail drawers, ornamental pulls, ornate corbels, organizers in the drawers, plug mold, pull out hampers in the laundry, cubbies with doors for kid's coats, bookbags, etc. As far as the cabinet maker doing the install--if the cabinet maker will do the install, I'd go that route. Some cabinet places call themselves custom, when they're really not--they sometimes do a semi-custom job or they consider sitting down with you & planning your layout with you to be the 'custom' part and the cabinets are standard sizes made in a factory somewhere else owned by someone other than the cabinet guy you're dealing with. If you find yourself with the semi-custom guy, I'd probably still use him. If they're made in a factory and the design was the custom part then I wouldn't think it would matter. I will point out that some cabinet dealers give you a break on the materials price if they install. I would definitely check out all my options in this respect. Think about the rooms the cabinets are going in. Do you need fancy cabinetry that matches the kitchen cabinetry in the laundry room or will a similar looking MDF cabinet do? How fancy do the kids' bath cabinets need to be? Because cost almost always plays a factor, I would spend the money in the areas that you live in the most. Check out the link below to another GW posting on the best advice someone had collected from the site. There are many references to cabinetry. Hope this helps! :-) Here is a link that might be useful: Some of the best advice from the braintrust on this forum

I painted my raised panel honey oak cabinets with a double bead detail. (I don't care for honey oak) I got some 1x1's and laid them on the basement storage room floor, put the doors on them and worked like an assembly line, 6 doors at a time (total 18). I did the doors first and then the drawers. - clean every inch thoroughly with TSP (2 tsp. TSP, in a gallon of water) to remove any grease. Wipe completely dry. - sand to give good adhesion, including around all detail (I folded a piece of sandpaper to get into the nooks and crannies - clean all the sanding dust with tack cloth, then wipe with a clean slightly damp cloth - I did a coat of a good primer. I used a 1" high quality brush around the details and in the "groove" of the raised panel. Then,a small roller (not foam) on all the flat surfaces. I let it dry for 6 hours, flipped the doors over and repeated on the other side. - painted with CIL Smart Classic White , doing the same process with the brush and roller. Be careful not to "glop" the primer or the paint and use light brush/roller strokes. - did 3 coats of paint, sanding between each and wiping with a very slightly damp rag to remove the dust. I was only able to do 2 coats on 1 side a day (6 hours drying time each coat), so it took a long time to do 18 doors and 8 drawers, but I was happy with the results. If I had to do this over again, I would use paint/primer-in-one and probably only do 2 coats of paint.

Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that the sink would fall into the cabinet when the sealant tears; it will, of course, be supported by clips or some other means. You're right that the full 1/4" of movement wouldn't affect any one part of the seal. At a minimum, the front and back edges would see about 1/8" of movement, while the part towards the middle of the counter might be quite stable. Even so, 1/8" is a lot. Yes, silicone is stretchy, but when you're playing with a shred big enough to handle, you are not duplicating the forces that are in play when the sealant is pressed into a flat layer that's 1/16" or less thick. Yes, the seals around drop-in sinks fail the same way, but the failure is further from the water, in a place less prone to cause problems. I realize that people do mount sinks this way, and I think they're pretty to look at. I'm not saying your whole kitchen is going to implode, but I am saying that you can't expect this installation to be as long-lived and trouble-free as an otherwise similar installation in a stone countertop.

There is water resistant as well as water proof (exterior) MDF. We use the water resistant type on almost all we do. It does not swell when gets wet. The problem is probably nobody will make you a door using it.