Okay, well I'm mostly a lurker, but here is my experience. Between the ages of 6 and 9, I broke my hip 3 times and spent a total of 10 two-month stints in full body casts (from armpits down to the pelvis and then down the right leg to the ankle). Talk about no bending! I was also nonweightbearing and had to be kept horizontal at all times. Dad used just some scrap lumber and built a smallish table with a fairly large top that stood about as high as halfway between the floor and the top of the mattress. I would then lie sideways on the bed with the top part of my head off the edge and my neck still firm on the mattress. Mom would gather my hair and use a a pitcher to pour water over, with the excess water splashing (mostly) into a large tub placed on the fashioned table. I believe we scooted a plastic sheet (from the baby department) between me and the mattress and then taped down the side of the mattress to prevent it from getting wet. Primitive? Yes. Efficient? Not so much. But it did work. However, at age 6, happily my hair didn't need washed as much as it would now. I recall the biggest issue I had was that the back of my hair was always full of knots and tangles (aka a rat's nest). I hope you find an option. I absolutely cannot stand having unwashed hair! Mandie

If you have some wood very similar to the top in grain and color (perhaps replacing a board that's not visible) you can hide them. Google "dutchman repair" or similar to see examples. Basically you route out the knot area using a router to 1/8 to 1/4 inch deep and replace it with a piece of clear wood. The trick is making it invisible. If you look at "clear" plywood you will see football shaped inlays that represent a bad job of replacing knots. If you use a curved, irregular shape that follows the grain, carefully matched grain in the replacement piece, precise joinery, and perhaps some touchup paint to extend grain lines across the repair you can make them nearly invisible. There was a detailed article in Fine Woodworking several years ago on doing this. Most woodworkers deal with fixing mistakes eventually, and this is a common method.

baileyandbella, We sprayed our doors with Sherwin Willians Prep Rite, Seals and Bonds latex and SW Pro Classic. Our doors were bare wood, so keep that in mind. It went like this, prime backs, prime fronts, first coat back, first coat front, second coat back, second coat front. We waited 24 hours between each front coat, and our doors look great! It was not blotchy. We used the Wagner Paint Crew sprayer, and DH was the one who sprayed. The key is to have even strokes, keeping your wrist steady, so it is not moving back and forth, but painting with your arm. I hope that made sense. LOL. Any way, here are some photos: Garage set-up; doors are on wooden blocks, and we didn't move them until they were dry enough to handle. Then we moved them to other side of the garage to fully dry and moved on to the next set of doors. This took a while, as we had 69 doors and drawer fronts to finish. Here is a photo of our peninsula with finished door and drawer fronts: (kitchen is not finished, so try to ignore all those things like blue tape and missing toekick--LOL) We did not intall our doors for about 2 weeks before installing the doors.

What color are you going to go with? depending on that, with a good epoxy, you may never see it once its all finished. with that in mind, i would suggest you wait until its got the stain down plus a coat of finish before you decide to replace boards. to a certain extent your GC is right about character grade, and also the other posters comments about the installer should have caught that bad boards before install is also true too. but the fact is, it was installed and its still possible to move forward and still possible it will turn out just fine.