Mine are on the security system and I love it. We have numerous keypads and hear the chime when the doors or windows or whatever happens to be on the system, are opened. Maybe having your windows on there is a good idea too with children? Having two floors and possibly a basement,you'll need a few keypads to hear the chime. You don't need a monthly monitoring for the chimes to work. You also don't need to change batteries as it has a rechargable battery in the system. You can also install low voltage smoke detectors on the system and have that work in conjunction with the security system. Without the monthly monitoring, the smokes still ring, but obviously the Fire Dept. won't be automatically be notified. So, there are a few pros and cons to the whole decision.

Well, I won't say that I love my flat 50-yr-old hollow doors but I've made them tolerable by painting. For all the reasons listed above, and mainly because I'm able to paint it myself, rather than wait for you-know-who, I have painted mine. BUT, not just white to match the existing trim--they just looked SO stark and well, plain. In my living area, my walls are painted BM Truffle which is a sort of latte color. Trim is white & I painted the doors a dark chocolate brown (BM Kona). It's a really nice contrast beside the lighter brown walls and the white trim sets it off nicely. Of course I would LOVE the paneled doors, but this is a 100% improvement over the ugly wood stain that they were before. Another idea I saw is creating a paneled door yourself by gluing picture frame moulding onto the door to create the panels. Since I don't have a miter saw, I didn't try that but it really transformed the door for very little money.

There are some that have the "chimes" hidden inside. That might help make it a little more discrete. Below are some terrible pictures of the one we installed in our dining room. We opted to stain it to match the woodwork in the room, but you could paint it out to match the wall color (or trim). The inner workings (with the chime bars, etc): With the cover on: We bought it at Lowe's, I think.

the nice thing about the existing doors..with lip overlay---- the frame of the cabinet that shows is visually insignificant with nearly flush lip style overlay. The full overlay door will be thicker so any reveal of the frame is pronounced ..... the point is you still have framed cabinets so I wouldnt bother and would just keep what you have. Id change the hardware / get a backsplash and call it done.... anyway the other weird thing will be a protrusion of your thicker door at top... right underneath the detailed molding. Not really a great look. Goal for the question at hand is try to minimize the reveal dimension of the frame part of your cabinets with your size selection of doors.....its not the door size relative to other doors...but how much frame shows in one spot and the difference elsewhere across the run.....as said w thiicker door/ shaker style....you will notice any reveal of the carcass framing. Is someone helping w this? Good Luck. . a square raised panel door allows edge profile selection so you could work it better with all the molding you have a tthe top. I think If I had to do this ..I would get that aspect coordinated a little better.