Ok, I had some free time today and went by HD and Lowes to look at Kraftmaid installed kitchens and the other MasterBrand lines. Since they're everywhere, I'll compare to them. I would guess they have some of the same issues since some joints looked similar to my cabinets after I had cleaned them up. I would say that my cabinets showed it more and had more instances of it. But, once cleaned up, I don't really notice it until I look for it. The shelves cleaned up decently well. I don't think I'll notice them now that they're cleaned up, but the Kraftmaid and co. lines had much cleaner shelf ends. As for the cuts in the base bottom that I showed, I've only tried half of the rep's trick, so I can't say how that worked out. I have maybe 4 instances of it across all the cabinets. I really don't care for it, but hopefully it will clean up such that it's barely noticeable. Again, it's all a tradeoff: price, wood family, door style, finish quality, durability, interior quality. I feel that in the end I traded off a bit on interior quality as compared to Kraftmaid such that I could to better on many of the others. I do wish it had been a little better, but I would not have wanted to spend any more than I did (budget) or traded off on finish and durability. See the pantry pics at the end of this. My cabinets are Wellborn Forest. The doors are the Madison door style made of cherry. Finish is ginger with smoke highlights. LWO, you had earlier suggested a simple raised door using a warmer finish than my floors. I hope I got it right. In any event, I LOVE the look! Thank you all for looking this over. I know all of you had very different opinions of this than I. I suppose that's my engineer's mentality coming through. I don't believe in perfection and everything is a series of tradeoffs. I aimed here for the tradeoff that best suited my goals. Before: From Shared After (the angle is a bit different as is visible in the grain pattern, but this is the same joint as above): From Shared Before: From Shared After (it doesn't jump out anymore, whereas before it did): From Shared Pantry: From Shared From Shared From Shared Justin

My fiance and I have been looking to buy our first home for almost a year now. We have been looking for an older home (pre 1930's), because we love the historical feel, especially victorian architecture. A lot of us have that same dream. When I was a teen, I was dating a guy that was in a fraternity that was out of a beautiful Victorian. I remember the stairway, the flowers that were engraved in the wood. I remember the "dome room" and while it was a PITA to put furniture in, amazed me every time I went into it. I remember beautiful moldings, everything was etched and 3 or 4 fireplaces. It had a decent sized kitchen from what I remember, also had a servant room. Man I loved that house and swore that one day, if I could afford to have the house moved I would. The house was located in one of the worst neighborhoods. You had to lock your doors to drive there and run in the house. I bet that in it's day, it was one of the grandest houses. They ended up knocking it down, don't know when but I drove by about 16 years ago, there was nothing on the lot. Anyway, a lot of us have the same dream, to own a beautiful, grand house. Reality is the lack of things needed to live in it in today's world as Tricia said. Since you are not married with kids yet, it wouldn't really matter much, you would probably get by fine. Once you have kids and they start getting older is when you will notice how hard it is to raise a family there unless you luck out and get a house that has larger rooms where you can make closets, or one that has a decent kitchen. I wonder then if my fiance and I should actually change our dream to accomodate the current economy and the deals available? IMO, this might be a good idea, at least for now. Being newly married can be stressful. Unless the 2 of you are currently living together, you have to learn to live with your partner. How do both of you handle stress? Buying a house that you are working on all of the time is very stressful and could eventually start pulling you apart. You'll come home from work some days so tired but you have to sand & throw another coat of spackle on, or paint, or run out to the home store to buy supplies. Hubby & I worked on our last house starting 2 years after I moved in. We removed paneling, faux brick, painted, put in floors as well as putting a new floor frame on a concrete slab in the laundry area to build it up so that we could put a floor down. By the time we sold we were tired & cranky. Add to this a roof, electric upgrade, plumbing, which was a job in itself since there was only 1 shutoff valve, which meant we lost water for the day. We also did central air, a hot water heater as well as new furnace, and had planned to redo all of the baseboards as well. Are there any houses that are in between the old house and new construction for a compromise? You might be able to live a little bit more comfortably and not have to work as hard. It will also give you an idea of how the 2 of you work together as a team (or not). You can save the Victorian house for later on

The water v. cabinet issue has lots of people talk about it, but you kinda have to experience it to see the difference. Full disclosure - I have had some sizable leaks in two different brands of cabinets, including a valve break. Neither were ikea. I have ikea now. This was a monetary decision made after a lot of discussion. We modified all of the base cabinets by adding additional structural parts. I am prepared to ditch the sink cabinets if it becomes necessary and right on to kurtg that a sink base is the one place where the cost of actually doing any replacement completely overwhelms the value you can recover from the warranty. Some of the other things said above? Edge banding is for visual appearance, not a moisture barrier. Unless you are very fortunate, and the glue fills every millimeter of seam, it will not keep out water. YMMV on seams from an original manufacturer. Most cabinet plywood can beat up most particle board for moisture resistance. This is particularly true of ikea where one minute of water exposure to a cut edge is enough to cause deformation. The caulk idea expressed above is cute, but not really practical where pipes enter the bottom of the cabinet. Plus when almost every edge on the entire cabinet is a cut edge, its pretty difficult to make this work. So, how do I know it deforms? Because I tried it. A couple of those trials were yesterday on a cabinet part purchased within the last month. Dunk for a minute, wet sponge sitting on the surface and a decently long dunking of an end. I also tried other materials - like mdf, another companies particle board, hdf and two different types of cabinet plywood with differing cores. Ikea particle board was easily the worst at absorption and deformation. Hdf was easily the best at shape retention - no deformation even after 24 hours of immersion. In decending order of goodness: hdf, osb core cabinet plywood, mdf, home depot type veneer ply, other makers particle board and well behind that, ikea particle board. I will say that water sitting on just the coated surface - the really damp sponge test - took a long time to penetrate something over 10 hours. Water will penetrate all melamine coatings eventually. The problem isn't the coating - its what's inside of the coating. The particle board will tolerant no moisture. This isn't special to ikea. Other brands that use particle board cabinet bottoms (like one of the kinds I had) can also deform from standing water or continually being exposed to water or cleaning chemicals. The amount of time needed for deforming and the results depend on quality of the coating and the quality of the particle board. If you get a good long dunk, expect ikea to be destroyed. The low density fiberboard back is another weak spot. It has a very thin coating that is easily damaged. How easy? Piece of blue tape or slight bending or slide across a counter face down kinda easy. Will disintegrate on exposure to water. Intended as a dust back. It isn't structural - low density fiberboard has no structure. One of the famous weird things that gets said is the cabinet back will stop the cabinet from racking. It's laughable - the concept that this very soft stuff nailed into particle board - that can be pushed back out or bent by any small child - would be capable of structure. It's much more likely the racking will pull the nails out. Also from above, ikea base cabinets have two sides, a bottom and two puny cross pieces. The larger the cabinet, the weaker it is (even with the back attached). I very much doubt the bottom can be removed and the cabinet still has the same structure. They (being cabinet companies) used to sell, and some still do sell, a sink front that was framed - the actual sink cabinet was then built in place. But that was before big sinks and wide cabinets. Some of the large sinks and some of the countertop materials need some decent support up top. It can happen, but relying on just the two small mdf cross pieces with one fastener per end into a side piece held up only by cabinet connectors doesn't sound likely of being able to provide it. Mdf isn't known for its wonderful structural qualities either.

Either in the top spec line is a fine choice. It does you a disservice to be comparing only on price though, when you are not comparing apples to apples components, and are in fact comparing the lesser spec'd secondary line of Mouser with the much better standard line of Dura. My vote would go to Dura, simply based on the long time family ownership group still being active and not swallowed up by corporate holding companies. And the fact that they simply don't do a dumbed down lesser spec'd line with a much lesser warranty like Mouser's Centra. With Durasupreme, what you see is what you get, with no flimflam of different specs for different levels to mislead you.