i love the look of fir, too! One of my favorite design blogs is Chez Zerbey, (http://chezerbey.com/house-tour/) who use a lot of fir in their house. I have been waffling between fir and mahogany veneer doors that go on ikea cabinet boxes. The doors are from semi handmade in the LA area-- they have a few more pictures of fir cabinets on their website (go to "doors"->"classic" and select fir). I visited the factory recently and was impressed by the quality. The owner noted that solid fir is a soft wood and can get easily dinged. One internal conflict i'm having over this is matching the yellowy fir to a maple butcherblock over part of my kitchen. I'm afraid the two yellows will clash. Here is a link that might be useful: semi handmade doors

Oh, I'd love to see this too. We have already selected stained cherry cabinets (medium "toast" stain), and are getting ready to select a stain for our new oak wood floors. Not sure whether I want to go lighter or darker!

Hi there everyone! I just found this forum last night while I was searching online for some cabinet reviews. I wish I would have found this months ago.......or even a year ago!! We are in the middle of a complete kitchen redo. The kitchen has been gutted and we are stuck on our cabinet choice. Our old house had a medium stained maple cabinet with dark glazing and distressing and we had pine plank flooring. The kitchen was very open and received quite a bit of light with higher ceilings. Although it was a lot of wood, it didn't seem dark and we liked it. Our new home however has lower ceilings, isn't an open floor plan (although the dining area is attached to the kitchen, but not open to the great room if that makes sense) and doesn't get as much natural light as our old kitchen. We did install the same flooring as our old house so it's a medium colored pine plank flooring. My husband wouldn't mind having the same wood cabinets but I'm thinking it will just be too dark so we are exploring other options. I've been searching and searching for kitchens for months now and I am drawn immediately to white kitchens while looking.......like a French country look......not contemporary. We have distressed furniture in the dining area and I don't think the contemporary look will blend well with the style of our home. If anyone on here has a French country type kitchen with white or off-white cabinets would you mind sharing a pic with me please? We are stuck with trying to decide between glaze or no-glaze and distressing/no distressing. I also will have some questions about the layout of our kitchen but I'm trying to get a drawing made up to post before I do that. Thanks so much in advance for your help!!

I had almost the exact dresser as pic #1, although I used mine in the family room as the TV stand and extra storage. I think they are both so pretty! I think it is a great idea to use one in the kitchen! Laughablemoments and Jillius are right on with some of the concerns. The drawers did sag and stick, and eventually one did separate the front from the rest of the drawer. I was storing all kinds of random stuff in them and the weight was too much, although except for a few extra baking dishes, none of it would you think of as particularly heavy. A lot of the furniture of that style, from that era, was massed produced and rather cheaply made (relatively -- for example, the dovetails on the drawers are not very deep and the bottoms, sometimes even the tops, are thin.) So you will have to look at the piece you are considering carefully. I would definitely consider using the frame and drawer fronts but do a sort of Ikea interior drawer thing. The new old dresser that I am using now does have pretty smooth sliding drawers, for wood -- I rubbed paraffin on the parts and will have to do that periodically to keep them working smoothly (learned that from my grandma). Do you like Duncan Phyffe style? I have an old mahogany veneered dining room suite (buffet, server, china cabinet) that I think could work well in a kitchen, although I don't know if the veneer would hold up in a kitchen-- my buffet has lost a chip or two. I don't think, for the curvy dresser, that you need to worry about matching any top to the curves. If you place a straight edged piece on top, that projects only slightly past the wood or to the edges of the most forward curves, the curves will still show and look like nice detailing. I would round the front corners to match. I see marble topped dressers and buffets on craigslist and estate sales a lot. By the way, when I put my old dresser on craigslist, even with the broken drawer I had a bidding war and it was gone within the hour!