You could shrink the 12" cabinets if you made them pull outs. We had a 9" wall cabinet next to the fridge and it wasn't very useful but a 9" pull out can hold a lot of stuff. OK, not as useful as a 12" cabinet, but it may be the lesser of two evils. I think 21 3/4" double doors will be too thin.

What about storing your spices in that tiny cabinet or maybe slide in your oven pans. I am sure your will come up with some ideas of your own. Good luck

I think the 21 3/4 door width will be just fine. For the hood cabinet, it is more important to balance the overall look from wall cabinet to base cabinet.

I have found that the cabinet doors look good in various sizes. Some of mine are going to be much smaller than the this. Sometimes we get "fixated" on a certain size and then panic if that has to change; I know that I have :).

Would you have been as concerned if you had thought it was going to be a 21" cabinet all along? Probably not.

Are you saying the cabinet will be 21-3/4" wide overall and that it will have two doors?

If so, how wide will the two doors be on each cabinet?

If not and they will only have one door, then I think they will be fine. As a general rule of thumb, my KD put one door on all cabinets less than 24" wide, two doors on all wider doors. My upper cabinets range in width from 18" to 23"...all have one door each. I have full overlay, so my doors are bigger than yours and I have no problems with their size. (Inset doors are narrower than doors on frameless and framed overlay cabinets.)

If you'll have 2 doors/cabinet, then how wide is the frame around the cabinet that the doors are inset into? Your doors will be approx (21.75" - frame on both sides) / 2 = ???
I'm guessing the doors will be around 10" wide each.

Then, you have a 2" frame around the door...so that means... 10" - 2" - 2" = 6"
The doors will have a 6" panel in the middle.

Is the above correct? You might want to ask to see a door that's that narrow...it might be OK, I don't really know!

Oh, and you might check the Finished Kitchens Blog (FKB).

Click the "FKB Categories" link in the navigation panel on the right.

Scroll down to "Special Features" (at the bottom) and look for "Inset Doors". Click on it and you will be taken to a list of all kitchens in the FKB with inset cabinets.

Maybe you'll see some there...

Good luck!

I think a one door 21" and some odd will be fine.

Thank you so much for the input! Buehl, thanks for the tip on the FKB -I have spent a lot of hours there but never saw the special category for inset doors. I went this morning and found two with cabs that I am estimating are close to my width. Do you think these are close to 9 - 12 inch width? In claudia_nj kitchen look at the cabs on each side of the gorgeous range. see link below.

I can't figure out how to put in two links so I am just pasting the second one here and hope it works. http://finishedkitchens.blogspot.com/2005/08/angcs-kitchen.html. Look at the cab to the right of the hood.

Many thanks to those who post their pic in the FKB to help others.

At this point I am probably setting my expectations. I took the family into the empty kitchen to look at the cab designs taped to the wall and told them the options - either skinny cabs with special custom cabs or bigger double door cabs with no custom cabs. The response was unanimous, immediate and adamant - they want the original design and are sure the skinny cabs will be ok. These may turn out to be the skinny cabs that love built!!

Again thanks so much for the help - I don't know what I would do without this forum!

Here is a link that might be useful: Claudias nj kithcen

It looks like Claudia's kitchen has 12" cabinets flanking her range.

The cabinet to the right of Angc's range also looks 12" or 15"...but I'm not sure. It's whatever the base cab is - 3"