I build custom cabinets and furniture in Los Angeles. I mostly build my own doors because everything I do is non-standard. However, there is nothing wrong with a cabinet maker outsourcing doors, if fact, in some cases it could be better. The large companies that build just doors have specialized, very expensive, very accurate equipment. Some are better the others but clean corners, tight joints, square and flat doors are what you should be looking for. The cabinet maker and his reputation should be responsible for the quality control not you. The drawbacks with out-sourcing are they all tend to use very similar profiles. That said, these profiles are similar to the look of the lower to middle-end national brands and that's why they're used. Second, when it comes to stained wood doors they're not going to be as discriminating as a custom guy should be at selecting matching boards. With the finishes like the ones on the national brands sold a HD and Lowes this doesn't matter. They do much to hide the wood with conditioners, toners and glazes. Of course, with a painted door, matching the grain wouldn't matter. There inferior quality shows up in a different way with paint cracking at the stile and rail joint. This leads us to the other thing you have to worry about once you get your doors. Having the finish done. The two things you notice on a cabinet door is the door style and the finish. The finishing skills of most custom cabinet shops are not on par with their woodworking. Some have finishing departments and do a good job. Some outsource their finishes. Some do a crappy job and say "what did you expect for the money". Quality finishing is a specialized and complex trade all to itself. I spend a good part of my time perfecting finishes and replicating the finishes of the highest price cabinets on the market so I can speak to this with experience. I will also be outsourcing some of my doors but they will be custom profiles that I will specify and be very involved with at every step. John

The size of the molding is also contingent on the house style, room size and it's age. I have a 1949 colonial with 8 " base molding with a shoe molding at the bottom. Ceiling only has a picture hanging molding(1 1/2"), no crown. New kitchen addition will have a 4 5/8" maple crown with a rope insert. You want the crown molding to be proportional to the room. Ron

Yep, we're in the U.S.---it's a Fisher & Paykel refrigerator, though, which is sold pretty widely in the North American market. (I was actually somewhat astounded to call their 800 number and find a Kiwi on the other end!) I later found the installation guide she was looking at on their European website, and it does indeed have different directions, although the model number is identical across all of the markets...so no clue. I've seen some kitchens in the FKB that have this refrigerator enclosed in cabinetry, and I don't think anyone did anything special (or at least, didn't discuss it if they did!) so I'm inclined to just give it two inches above and be done. We're actually building a super-sized fridge opening anyway (we want the opening to accommodate a standard 36" x 72" model if needed in the future) so it will have a full 5 inches open above it inside the cabinet with just a small front panel covering the space...and we may need to pull the upper out an inch from the wall to align it with the side panels anyway (probably with blocks behind it), so hopefully that be more than sufficient. We'll see...

@numbersjunkie is correct, you will have very little room at the top for crown moulding. Our ceilings average around 95" and we only had 1" to work with. And that was only because we only have 17.25" between countertops and bottom of light rail (with is 3/4" high). We used a 3/4" cove moulding like this one. We made it work, but it was not easy. If I could do it over, I might consider cutting down the 40" cabinets to be a few inches shorter. However that would have created extra work also. It is such a shame you only have 30"/40" options with Ikea cabinets now. I'll try to document what we did to install. Actually we have not finished this project, and one cabinet might not work because the ceiling was off there, and we have even less space. 1) We found some wood pieces that fit in between the top of cabinets and the ceiling. We cut them the width of the cabinets and had to and screwed in from the top. We have a drill press which made that easier. You might be able to glue them if screwing is too difficult. You can see the primed only wood on top of the cabinet here. The cover panel is pulled forward to meet up with front of door which is not attached. NOTE: This piece was added before the cabinets were installed. 2) We had to add a 2nd piece of wood to that to bring the full width to the front of the doors. You could possibly add just one piece of wood if you don't need the trim to match the front of the doors. Or you could attach the first piece of wood so it juts out above the top. You can see why we needed the 2nd piece of wood in this picture with the doors on. We painted and then screwed the second piece to the first piece. (The screw holes will be covered up by the trim.) 3) We attached the trim pieces: Unfortunately the paint is not matching like we thought it would. Our cabinets were painted SW Extra White, and that is what we bought to paint the trim. But the cabinets are a conversion varnish, and the color ends up different. If you did a color match at the paint store hopefully it would be the same color. Things are little messy up there still, but we will clean it up when we are done with everything.