Wood expands and contracts as it absorbs and looses moisture. During heating season the relative humidity tends to go down (the warmed air can hold more moisture, and without a source of moisture the RH goes down). During the cooling season the humidity tends to be higher. The air from an A/C coil is at its dew point (that is why it gave up water as condensate) and even after mixing with the warmer air in the house the RH is still higher than in the heating season. No finish can completely stop moisture movement in and out of wood. It can be slowed down, but not stopped. The movement is a percentage of the width of the board based on the change in its moisture level. Wider boards move more. You can minimize the movement by how the wood is cut from the log also. Quarter sawn wood moves less in width than flat sawn wood, but it still moves. You could try and apply more paint to the now exposed wood, but depending on how tight the tongues are in the grooves it may be scraped off when the wood expands during the summer. If you manage to get paint into the joint, it can also lock the tongue in position in the groove. When the wood then shrinks further splitting can occur (and the tongue having the smaller cross section is a common place for a split to occur.

Hi Laurie, Well your cabin sounds absolutely adorable and I hope a lot of people chime in to help you come up with some fun and easy solutions. I love soft cream as a wall color too, and think it's a lovely match for the walls and knotty pine. I'm not a big fan of wallpaper or sponging, so my 2 cents would be to nix them. You are spot on about putting the wood print next to the real deal. And I just think you can do better. Instead of wall paper or a paint treatment, I would keep it simple and find a pretty pale sage color to paint that corner. Something that will offer a nice complimentary contrast to the knotty pine and cream. I love the idea of hanging the painting painted by your grandfather on one wall though I think if it were me, I would to find a frame that is more similar in color to the knotty pine. On the other wall you could maybe hang a series of 3 or 4 smaller prints in similar type frames that have pine cones in them. For the trim, it's really hard to say. In most cases I prefer a lighter trim, but I'm thinking with the pine, a darker trim might go better. I hope when you finish your room you remember to post a picture or two, I love seeing the finished rooms! Good Luck!

I think if you did a fairly dark gel-stain approach on the frames, you might get away with new dark-stained wood doors. But maybe not - it would be a risk. I agree with suzannesl and marcolo. I understand feeling hesitant to rip out cabinets in decent shape structurally, but it sounds like these are not functioning well for you and were not exactly heirloom pieces anyway. I have a similar situation with my cabinets and decided, with input from some of the posters here, that it was worth it to just replace them entirely. Putting in the time, effort, and $$ to "put lipstick on a pig" would not have made me happy in the end.

Well...since you want stained cabinets, one has to ask what is the style of your house and how will the interior design be executed? There's a lot more to a sensible answer to your question than simply playing spin the bottle. For example, if you are going to have a lot of stained interior wood throughout the house, besides the kitchen, then there's some consistency in having stained wood cabinets. On the other hand, if most (or all) of the trim in your interiors is going to be painted, but your cabinets are going to be stained, you have a situation where your kitchen is going to contrast and stand out against the rest of the house. I have Alder cabinets, and the doors have various knots, holes and textures. The cabinets are finished in a middle value brown finish, with black hardware. It looks OK, but it's really not my favorite. Too rustic. Too brown. Perhaps those qualities will fit right in for your interiors. Good luck!