Thanks Bee some very sage, calm advice. I have calmed down a bit and can see that I need to cross that bridge when I get there. Hopefully never!! I had never thought about using an auto body shop to chrome plate the latches. A good idea, but do they do that? My latches are polished nickel and while the difference is slight they are different. I have chrome faucets in the kitchen and don't mind the difference so food for thought. Thanks for the suggestions. Pottery Barn did contact me. I gave them my phone and email but they chose to do it via email. I would have preferred a personal phone conversation. They of course apologized without ever suggesting that they made any error or that their marketing needs any adjustment. They offered me $50. I have not responded yet but will likely ask them to still explain why I was told my order was available for "immediate shipping". A large company such as theirs must have ability to keep track of stock electronically. Also, I will probably take the money but may just donate the gift certificate to my school for the raffle baskets at the Spring Fair. I am presently boycotting purchases from them. Can't say I may not purchase some bedding or knick knack in the future but definitely NOT hardware or anything I may need to replace with an exact or similar copy.

Elmwood has a fair number of 5 piece MDF doors. Note that their standard door backs are melamine for MDF doors. You have to specify matching backs as an upgrade. As said miter on paint is not a good idea. Nice idea about the 2 pc MDF door. There is MDF and then there is MDF- grading varies enormously- what changes he most is the density of the mdf in the interior compared to near the surface. This leads to the warping that ajc is referring to. There are companies that only make MDF doors, some of those exercise great care in ensuring consistent density of the material when it ships in. I doubt that most wood door mfg do that. I toured a mfg in Canada that has stringent standards for density consistency, of course it costs. Until I started with Elmwood I'd done very few painted MDF doors, didn't like the quality of what was ever available to me. My experience with MDF was generally working with it, not in doors. So far I've only done the one piece MDF-no problems with warping after a year, we'll see. So it I'm not going to offer a suggestion as to what you should do. I personally think that painted doors should show the seams with age on rail and stile doors. We've been looking at them that way for centuries. Not everyone feels that way though (guess you don't :)

From the attached link: Raised Panel - Solid Even though the panel is called solid, it is not usually made of a single piece of wood. Wood expands and contracts with changes in humidity, and this can cause the door to split and crack. To counteract the problems of natural movement in a solid wood center panel, the panel is usually constructed using several pieces of solid stock lumber glued together. The wood strips used to construct the panel may not all match in graining and color. As in the case of the slab door, the door's strength comes from the manner in which the pieces of solid wood are reversed as they are glued. The panel is then cut on all four sides, so the center is higher than the edges. The face of the panel is usually flush with the front surface of the stiles and rails, with the edges forming a tongue which fits a corresponding groove cut into the door frame. The groove is slightly larger than the panel's edge to allow the panel to float in the frame. This simply means that the panel has room to expand and contract during humidity changes, reducing the risk of the panel cracking or splitting. I gather from the Woodmode site that this is how they construct raised panel doors as they describe their raised panel doors as being constructed from solid wood. How big an issue the movement of the centre panel in a flat panel door will be probably depends on geography (I have seen some dramatic examples here that am sure would not be acceptable to many folks while I tend to think the hairline cracking I have seen is part of the charm and patina of age of painted cabinetry. In terms of Woodmode they do kiln dry all their wood which may in part explain why they have not have felt they would get better performance from an MDF centre panel that some companies are opting for. I also think it is a market issue a lot of Consumer's in the US have a real aversion to composite wood products regardless of the possible benefits (this does not really carry over to Europe or Canada). Cabico and many other Quebec companies offer 100% MDF doors for paint finishes (same opaque finishes are usually available on maple at Cabico). Lots of their MDF door styles are raised panel. Here is a link that might be useful: Explanation of door styles

Well Kanga, as you've seen from this thread...there are people who would change your wall color, change your cabinet color, who would do any number of different things with the island. lol. No point in thinking about what a future owner might or might not do. In your shoes, I'd be thinking about the kind of kitchen I'd like to have in my NEW place. Exciting.