I vote for the flat panel door. I think you can go either way for the drawers. Slab drawers may look less busy. Good luck!

I guess it really depends on your personal preference, what kind of style you are going for, what kind of pulls/knobs you plan to use, etc., but I like the first, recessed panel door the best (and the 5 panel drawers). However, I notice it looks like you have some narrow drawers and some space limitations in your layout. When I was considering getting my cabinets refaced several years ago, by the time I looked at the total cost, it was not that much more expensive to get brand new cabinets, frameless to give me more room, full-extension drawers, and other features to increase the functionality. Have you priced the option of getting new cabinets?

I'd get the flat panel door and standard drawers. How did you come up with the refacing choice? as opposed to paint/gelstain? It should look really good, by the way...but the cabinets look pretty good. Do they put on hardware? is something applied to the back of the peninsula? [just curious]

Hi juliet...

13 yrs ago I refaced my kitchen with natural maple..just thought a picture may help your decision..I went with a raised panel.

This kitchen was completely remodeled 2 years ago and now I have shaker cabinets and standard drawers..both I find much more easier to keep clean due to the simplicity and lack of "ridges"...

KA:)

Your proposed changes do not actually change much of the feeling of the kitchen at all, and you will be spending a lot of money for the privilege of going from medium oak to medium maple. Save your money all together and leave what you have there and just paint it. It would look great painted a medium espresso brown and would work great with your granite. The grain of the oak comes through the paint and it looks like you've had them restained a richer darker color. And it's thousands cheaper than refacing.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of saving your money here. No reason to spend it on almost lookalikes to what you currently have. Just paint or gel-stain the existing cabinets and you'll have a whole new kitchen. Painting would be easier to make look right DIY than gel-staining.

I agree with herbflavor, live_wire_oak and hollysprings. Save money. Refacing is often as expensive as new cabinets. I was stunned at some of the estimates I got.

As the others have pointed out, the cabinets you have look pretty good in the photos. You already have flat panel doors, so if you reface you'll essentially be changing color only for a lot of money. The worst that might happen if you paint or gel stain first is that you won't like the results, and you can then decide to get new doors or cabinets. Keep us posted, and good luck. You'll find great help and resources on this site, so welcome.

PS - If you want to change the style of your cabinets, you can do that with new doors, face frames, or even RTA cabinets. There are some great online sellers such as Scherrs, Barker Door, Cabinet Now, etc, etc. But that's a topic for another day... :)

But I looooove your appliances--'cause they look just like mine. :)

I like the recessed panel and slab drawers, which has been mentioned, is what you have now. I also love painted cabinets, and agree with other GW members who've recommended saving your money by painting or gel staining. You can search the forum for many threads on painting or staining cabinets:

google search on painted cabinets

Here is a link that might be useful: google search on gel stained cabinets

I had that fridge and electric stove too!

I don't know about gel staining, but I do know about fancy cabinets. Until you've had them, You Don't Know how many little places there are for dust, crumbs, and cooking grease that may not have been caught by the recirculating fan. You can sort of get a toothbrush in there, so if you put a damp paper towel against it and use the toothbrush to sort of move it along, it sort of works.

So, another vote for plain cabs!

Another vote for Why?
I would only make a change like that if you were going to a completely different look.
I don't care for many raised panels because they're too busy for me. That's my opinion, though.

I think your cabs are nice and clean looking. I'd start by staining them.
If you stain and don't care for the look, it's easy to try paint. It's hard to go the other way!!

I like your existing cabinets. If you paint or stain them and put on new hardware they will look like new. I would spend my money on appliances and a new backsplash, maybe some paint.
Renee

I have raised panel and the optional drawer front and do not find it difficult to keep clean at all. To me it is easy and with the cabinets being maple they don't show much of anything on them. The more detailed custom look of them are my favorite thing about my kitchen.

Thank you everyone for your advice. We've decided to go with the flat panel doors and optional door fronts.

The reason we decided to reface was we don't like painted doors and we wanted full overlay doors. We also don't want the doors to be much darker, which is the only way stain would work. We also like maple better than oak. We are taking the center stiles out of some of the bottom cabinets so we can have full-width pull out drawers. We are putting doors on the back of the peninsula to dress it up. The left most door will open so that we can access that blind corner.

Before we got our new counter, we thought about replacing the cabinets and decided to reface instead because the existing cabinets are structurally sound and we didn't really want to change the layout of the kitchen. Replacing all of the cabinets would take more time and make more of a mess.

Our existing cabinets look ok from a distance, but close-up you can see the wear. They are 25 years old and some of the trim pieces around the edges of the cabinets are actually plastic.

Thanks again, Juliet

I'm considering the same project. I see you have face frame cabinets like me but I can't seem to find anywhere that shows how to go to a full overlay so I would love to see some pictures if you don't mind.

Where did you get your doors?

Thanks

pbishop - Pasture19 posted some names of companies that make doors upthread, but we didn't feel up to doing the job ourselves. I'm posting a link to the company we're hiring showing some of their before and after photos. They're really busy so we're not actually getting our kitchen redone until early May.

Here is a link that might be useful: Signature Woodcrafters