Hi All, I've used Ikea Akurum for my kitchen and 3 of my bathrooms. Love them all. Finally doing my last bathroom and now it's Sektion. I have successfully hacked the cabinets to make them floating but am wanting to use the Sektion Ekestad 36x96 cover panel as a counter top. The top would be 50x22. It's the guest bathroom and it won't get much use. I will probably spray some clear enamel on it for protection and I also have a good exhaust fan in there. However, I have family who visit for weeks at a time. Do you think it will stand up to the moisture?

@tmnca My floors are Goodfellow Original - Nature Series - Maple in Sierra The more you order, the more the price goes down. I paid a little over $4/sq.ft. It took me forever to find one I liked. I visited almost every flooring store in the nearby city. I literally spent months looking at samples. The sample of my flooring that I saw didn't have much variation but I like the colour. When I started opening the boxes for install, it had a ton of variation which was exactly what I was looking for so I was really happy. Opening each box was like Christmas for me haha! They look the best at night under my recessed lighting. It's almost as if it brings out features in the wood that you can't see in natural daylight. It does scratch easily though. Not scratches that you can see (although I did put a massive, extremely noticeable one in my kitchen but that was entirely my fault) but ones where if you look at them on an angle in the light they show up. Regardless, it's not going to stay perfect forever. I'm still in love with them. If you are installing flooring yourself and it has a lot of variation, it's not like just slapping down a floor. My husband and his cousins were doing it and I had to be there to select each piece to go down. It made it more time consuming but you don't want a bunch of plain pieces all bunched together. Just like the variations in the wood, you have to do variations across the floor. For places like the kitchen where the cabinets would be sitting, we put the most plain pieces down and saved the variation ones for places that you can actually see.

@alerievay -- We ordered samples. Honestly, I'm not sure its worth it to get the SemiHandmade glossy white over the Ikea glossy white. The Ikea white is very nice; sturdy and a lovely finish. The SemiHandmade walnut is gorgeous though; the grain is beautiful. I think that the wood is where SemiHandmade really shines.

The answer, is "it depends". You may need them for clearances. The Electrolux ranges for instance need a bit of a filler and a cover panel. This is where you have to read the appliance specifications. You do not need them for counter support though, if the rest of the design properly provides for that. Any exposed cabinet side needs to be finished with cover panels, and that thickness needs to be accounted for in the design. Any uppers adjacent to a hood will have exposed sides. If exhausting is not possible, and you are left doing a recirculating vent, I'd urge you to choose a hood both wider and deeper than the cooking zone below. You want the best capture area possible since you will not be able to exhaust the effluent.