You can also buy cabinet doors and use them as facing on your Island.

Can't point you to a specific thread, but the topic of upgrades to tract homes has come up frequently over the years. This is where builders make their money. They (over)price things that they know buyers, especially young buyers, want. For example, laminate countertops are standard, but quartz is a big upcharge - more than quartz costs! Blue islands are trendy, so they charge for that.

Resist the temptation. Put your upgrade $ into things that are tough to change like better insulation. By the time your house is finished people will have moved on from blue islands.

Benedicte Bouchardeau, Thank you!!!! I would like to to buy the cabinet doors in blue but Lowes and Home Depot do not appear to sell just the doors. They sell entire cabinets. Do you know where i can buy just the doors?

@ellengross2 - First, yes you can have them painted. How much trouble that will be depends on the particulars of your island and the doors. If you are not having the face frames painted and are just painting the doors, then it will likely be fairly reasonable. If you are having someone come in and spray it will be a bit more.

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If you are going to simply replace the doors and/or add doors to panel areas, then you can order painted doors through many places online. The Cabinet Door store offers several Benjamin Moore colors so you can order new doors and possibly paint the face frames yourself with the same color paint. There are several other options.

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Finally, I questions some of the statements about upgrades. Certainly, it is the way that production builders make profit and they make a great profit from doing it. However, when you actually do the math on the upgrades you can get a much different picture. For most people, a $4,000 upgrade isn't $4,000 out of pocket... it is more like $24 a month out of pocket and it is never going to be more than $24 per month (assuming there is no change in down payment), which is $288 per year for 30 years or $8,640 total. That is a lot of money, however, stick $1,200 in a mutual fund with an 8% return and you will end up with $12,000 in that same 30 years.

Just because the builder is overcharging you for an upgrade doesn't mean you are better off doing it outside the contract.

That is just too complicated to read for the average house owner . IMO the same color everywhere for cabnets is timeless and I never want wood cabinets painted . So save money get MDF painted cabinets you will bless that day you did that since humidity changes vreate isses with painted wood. I think HD is full of you know what if they can't order doors. Since if you had a damged door they could replace it. I do not think 4K is god value for what you want but it depends on how much you think you need this.Those doors will be kicked and dinged in no time so IMO not a choice I would make

@Patricia Colwell Consulting - Where did the OP suggest solid wood? So far as I know, no one here has suggested solid wood doors and MDF adds no dimensional stability over plywood. So only if the OP is using stained raised panel doors would solid wood be considered.

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I suspect that the average home owner is perfectly capable of understanding the time value of money and, in fact, it has been common wisdom for a few thousand years. Have you ever heard the expression that a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush? If you are capable of grasping that, then you are capable of grasping the time value of money.

I will attempt to make it easier though... If I offered you $2,500 today or $24 per month for 30 years, which would you take? Now, keep lowering that amount today until you would rather take the $24 per month. That is the amount you should be willing to pay to change it after closing. For most people it turns out that financing it into the home loan is preferable.

We're cash buyers so I don't work out NPV, but I wouldn't pay $4k for something that's worth $1k. And I wouldn't pay $24/month for 30 years for something I'm likely to want to change in ten years!

@latifolia said, ”I wouldn't pay $24/month for 30 years for something I'm likely to want to change in ten years!”

This is the trap that too many fall into. The only choice is between sacrificing some large chunk of money today, versus a much smaller amount monthly. The value of the upgrade itself is outside of that.

Suppose the OP can pay $2,500 to achieve this outside the contract. If the OP would rather pay $24 per month than $2,500 in a lump sum today, then they should always finance regardless of the time over which they like the island. The time over which they like the island is immaterial to the decision on how to pay for it because it doesn’t vary between the alternatives.

For $4000 the builder will be installing panels on three sides of the island (call the "enhancement package"). Without the "enhancement package" the builder will only install cabinets on the side of the island that faces the kitchen cabinets. The first picture shows the blue island with the $4000 package. The blue will be on all 4 sides on the island. The red arrows in the second and third pictures show where the sides of the island will just be white. So if i don't pay the $4000 I will only have blue cabinets on one side of the island. I want to know if I can buy the blue panels to match the one blues side of the island.

sides that will not have the cabinet finish.

https://st.hzcdn.com/simgstmp/2290448603bb6ff3_tmp-1242/

to make this even more complicated, to get the blue island, I will have to pay an additional $2000 to "upgrade" to this cabinet

instead of this cabinet

So an additional $6000 to get a blue island. I'm trying to find a cheaper alternative to get the blue island.

How about just adhere some matching molding and have it all painted by a professional painter?

@ellengross2 -

This doesn't appear to be an industrial (cabinet) coating. If this is just a sample you found on the internet that is fine, but if this is actually a picture from one of the builder's homes it appears they are simply adding on a wainscoting and painting it. It looks like it is actually painted drywall, but that could just be the picture quality.

Can the look above be achieved? - Yes.

Can the look above be achieved for less than $6,000? - Most probably, but how much less really depends.

Adding wainscoting panels to a wall is not a big deal. You can even make the panels with stuff from the manufacturer to get a match... However, the builder could construct the wall in a way that makes it harder to do that. I think your best bet is find a finish carpenter in your area and discuss the project with them.

A note on paint, it is difficult to match sheens on various products. So you might be able to build the entire thing out of MDF and paint it with a decent trim paint and get a great match, or you might struggle to match the sheen and end up with something that is obviously different. Your best bet is to try to order a sample door in the blue color and see if you can get a good paint and sheen match after it is dry. If you can then constructing that panel wall above is not really a big deal.

I appreciate the terrific advice everyone has provided. @bry911 Thank you for the amazing feedback. The picture of the blue island is from a home they are building in the development. Now I'm wondering if the builder will only permit the "enhancement package" on the more modern New Haven line because the wainscoting matches the straight lines of that line but will not match the Irvington line. I was planning to get the Irvington line and hope a carpenter can match it or obtain matching panels from the manufacturer.

For a cheap and easy alternative to panelizing that wall you could use their grooved panel to make it intentionally different.