Most of the popular oak cabinets you are seeing now are rift cut oak. you have what looks like flat (plain) sawn oak.

Did you not get a sample door to examine, before ordering your cabinets? Where is your KD in all of this?

Post a couple of those inspo picks you spoke of.

I asked because I want to know why the color and grain variation looks so dramatic? These are in my kitchen. These were initially made and looked great, but then they out a shiny oil based top coat on them even though i asked for a matte water based top coat they remade them and now they look like this. I’m wondering if they used a different cut of wood or something? first pic is how they originally looked. the second pic is the new remake

They aren’t choosing ‘pretty’ wood and your inspiration had a white or grey wash prior to being sealed. That was obviously not done on yours. How did you vet their work? Did you approve finish samples?

None of These are inspiration photos these are actual photos in my house. The pantry cabinet above was done beautifully in my opinion and then they put a glossy top coat on it even though i approved a sample with a matte water based sealant. They remade the pantry with new pieces of wood that look totally different

What @wsea said. Apples to oranges. Rift cut oak vs plain sawn. Rift cut is more refined, more uniform.

Do you think the first pantry cabinet was made with rift cut and then they redid it with planes on? That’s what I’m asking. What is the difference in the cut of wood between the first pantry cabinet and the second one?

To my eye, neither one is rift cut. Looks to me like different panels were used when they remade the doors.

Is this your kitchen? It has a completely different finish than the pantry cabinet.

Yes, different panels were used. They completely rebuilt the cabinet doors. I just don’t understand how the wood could look so drastically different with those huge white streaks. In their defense, I never asked for rift sawn. I showed them inspiration photos and asked for white oak based on a sample of wood that they showed me. I realize wood is natural, and every piece can have unique characteristics, but I would not have chosen white oak had I known that there were going to be huge stripes of white on the cabinet front. I liked the way the first pantry cabinet looked even if it wasn’t rift sawn. I’m extremely disappointed because I liked the way the cabinets looked when they first built them, and then after they put the wrong topcoat on and had to rebuilt them, now I do not like the variation in the wood. Now they are wanting to use veneer on the inner panels so that they can get the woodgrain to look more consistent. I feel like either way I’m going to be settling for something I’m not truly happy with.

Yes, that is in my kitchen. Ignore the stain and the finish. They were playing around with stain and white wash to see if they could make the cabinets match better. I told them I didn’t think they were going to be able to do anything with stain to correct the vast variations between the light and dark streaks. Like I said, now they’re wanting to replace the center panels with a piece of veneer to get them all more uniformed looking.

Now I’m not sure what to do and am tempted to have them replace all the cabinet and drawer fronts with paint grade wood, and just paint it all to match the rest of the perimeter cabinets.

They are new woodworkers with no showroom I assume?

He’s a cabinet maker who works with the company we’re using. The rest of the custom built cabinets he’s made are beautiful and well made. They have a great reputation in our area. It does seem like they’re inexperienced with white oak though.

Ok with the new information i guess you were not using a comparison of rift vs plain., which the assumption i made. i agree your orginal doors were nicer and more uniform than the replacement. I’m not sure there is any recourse unless you specified as such, though depending on the company they may replace again.

They are inexperienced and so are you. You shouldn’t be choosing finishes per se (oil versus water) you should be selecting from finished samples and re selecting until it’s right. I also think their board selection is sloppy and amateurish. Too many cooks and no one has been to culinary school.

Goodness. Try answering the questions without being nasty! People make mistakes, ask questions, and learn.

Totally agree! The people with “pro” behind their names seem like “pro jerks”. I would think most normal people doing remodels are inexperienced. That’s why we hire people, ask questions and come on here for advice. If you don’t have anything helpful to say, keep scrolling.

Why does the grain pattern of these white oak cabinets look so different than inspiration photos i see everywhere?

Respectively, how could anyone here know the answer?

Name the company and how about a link to inspiration photos?

I will not be naming the company, but here are a couple of inspiration photos.

Was the cabinet guy feeling frustrated / angry on the 2nd try and used a poor selection of wood?

Possibly. That was a thought I had too.
Our contractors are being great and want to get it right, but their latest suggestion on how to solve the issue is to use veneer sheets on the inner panels to make sure the wood is more consistent.

You are comparing low end cheap plain sawn rustic oak with high end rift sawn white oak. Starting at a 200% upcharge. And then some, if you want it Pinteresty and full of those details. Which you obviously do.

You don’t get 200K cabinets for 15K.

Probably some back yard wood worker who lets some painter stain them in the house instead of the shop booth, and doesn’t even understand the different cuts of wood. I bet he buys his wood at Home Depot or the local lumber yard rather than a high end specialty supplier. And uses Minwax. 🤣 But, they were probably budget friendly!

Someone has to care about the details, and lay them out for the cabinet maker and contractor to follow. Contractors are not designers. And if you don’t have a designer, you are the designer by default. Which is what happened here. You didn't know enough to do the design work. You assumed. The problem is in the mirror.

Next time, hire a kitchen designer. Or obsessively research minutia for 2-3 years first.

Veneer is probably a good solution, not a downgrade.

Can you add a link to the inspiration pics, especially the second. Engineered oak flooring is often European Oak, with less open grain when flat cut. It's Q. robur, a different species from the N.A. white oak US cabinet makers are still using. The second picture looks like it could be something worth checking out.

Did you pay the giant cost upgrade for high end custom rift sawn? Because not one thing in that space is quality custom, or rift sawn. Time to get your money back, and go to a different cabinet maker.

Wow! you can tell the quality of the entire space from those 7 cabinet doors!!?? You’re amazing!

The replacement cabinets look completely different than what was originally delivered - and very different than your inspiration photos (although, it appears that two different types of white oak were used in your inspiration photos - the top photo looks more like rift sawn and the second one looks like plain sawn).

Most people want rift sawn white oak these days - which has driven the price up quite a bit. However, the plain sawn cabinets in the second inspiration photo are very pretty.

It does seem as though someone was irritated about having to address the issues with the finish of the original cabinets - and selected really bad rustic white oak.

I don't know much about wood finishes - so, I'll ask what may be a dumb question - why couldn't the finish be sanded off the initial cabinets vs. remaking them?

I would be very UNHAPPY if I my replacement cabinets turned out like the ones they've installed at your home.

If the type of oak wasn't specified in the contract, you did provide two inspiration photos - while it would be very difficult to argue that you should have received rift sawn white oak - I believe that an expectation of plain sawn (vs. rustic - completely unmatched white oak) is reasonable - and what a "reasonable person" would expect (if viewed by a judge - I'm not a judge - however, I am an attorney + my SO is an attorney and he agrees with me).

Stain penetrates deep into the wood. Especially an open grained wood like oak. It doesn't sit on the surface like a paint. You don't really "sand it off" of an open pore wood like oak than you do try to change the wood that's underneath the stain. You could put it through a planer, but doors that are already cut and shaped, that's not really going to happen.

No, the originals were not rift sawn. If the OP wanted rift sawn, it would be specified by her and her kitchen designer, and be in the contract, in multiple places, with diagrams and specifications. Her pocketbook would have also noticed, as the price upgrade wouldn't be small.

The quality of the cabinet maker would need to be pretty different as well. Unfortunately "custom" does not mean the same thing as "quality", and never has. People mush the two terms together in their brain incorrectly You can have very low quality items, made just for you, and they are just as custom as the fine furniture quality that costs 600% more.

Also, some people only want to participate in the blame game after their "

expecting a mind reader" assumptions aren't met. Rather than pay for design help up front to take away any assumptions and create a shared understanding through documentation and samples. Then they get pizzy because their Crystal prestige cuvée assumptions cannot be had on the Diet Pepsi budget.

If the complaint about the original cabinet was sheen level could that not be sanded off? I’m thinking a glossy sheen that has penetrated pores wouldn’t show much. Is the original cabinet still extant?

If the "main issue" was sheen, spraying a thin mil coat in matte of the same brand, on top of the existing shinier coat, would have cured that. It would chemically bond. Zero need for a knowledgeable pro to replace anything.

I'm sorry that I don't have any answers for you, but I just wanted to say that I am sorry that they replaced those cabinet doors with well-matched consistent wood with these ones. I would be upset too. How frustrating that they couldn't / didn't just fix the finish.

Minardi - my question re: sanding the original cabinets was with respect to the sheen of the finish - I understand that stain penetrates wood (especially open grained wood like oak). I wasn't sure if a new matte top coat could be simply sprayed over the old (I started questioning whether that was possible since it seems like a fairly easy fix vs. building all new cabinets) - so, I added my question about whether the current finish could be sanded (or scuffed) or whatever was needed in order to spray a matte finish.

Can you get the first set of cabinets back? They looked very good in my opinion.

Not sure why one would care about oil vs water finish. Cabinet shops want to use finishes they have experience with and are willing to stand behind. Maybe this shop's go-to finish was oil-based. Nothing wrong with that.

Shiny finishes can be matted or resprayed. Mixing oil-based and water-based finishes (e.g. water-based clear over oil-based stain) can be a problem.

Why were the cabinets re-made? Was there a demand that the oil-based finish be removed? Or that the shiny finish be matted? Or more like this is all wrong, do it over?

Here is my speculation. Cabinet shop built the first set of cabinets, did a nice job with well selected and finished - and likely more expensive - wood. Customer objected. Contractor forced the cabinet shop to re-make the cabinets - maybe at the shop's expense? Cabinet shop re-made it but this time strictly did it "to spec" - oak, with the specified finish, okay done. Contractor, having already forced its cabinet shop to re-make once, is now looking for an inexpensive way to make the problem go away.

I wonder if veneering the inset panels is a good solution. Wood expands and contracts, will the edges of the veneer show when the panels contract, or lift when the panels expand? Depends on what the panel is made of, I'd guess.

Let me try to answer some of these questions. Im really not looking for any more ”advice”.

I’ll start from the beginning. Our house was destroyed by a hurricane in July. We have been undergoing a total remodel while living in an apartment. This was obviously an unplanned remodel, so YES, we are inexperienced and are doing our best with design, etc.

To be clear, I DID NOT ask for any specific type of white oak (rift, plain, quarter). At the time, I didn’t know any different. I looked at pictures and knew the “color” or “tone” I liked. Our project manager brought over several different types of wood to sample. Based on the sample, I chose white oak. Now that I know more, I believe it was a plain sawn piece (with the cathedral graining). I like the look of that. The cut or style of white oak was never discussed. I just assumed the grain patterns would look similar to the wood sample I looked at (cue snarky remark about me making assumptions). The color and finish, however, was discussed at length. I had a custom stain that we sampled with a matte water-based top coat. We loved the way it looked. This is what we approved. The cabinets were built and we were very happy with the way they looked. A few days later, the painters slapped an oil-based polyurethane on top WITHOUT my stain. (Refrain from telling me your thoughts on why I should’ve used oil based instead of water based. I don’t care what your thoughts are on this. That’s what I wanted.) They looked orange and shiny. One or two of the painters did this “accidentally”. They’re not sure how it happened, but took responsibility. My project manager said they couldn’t get all the oil poly off to his liking and that the cabinet maker would need to rebuild them. I assumed they would look similar to the first set. (Keep in mind this is not my entire kitchen. Most cabinets are paint grade wood. We had the pantry cabinet and a peninsula done in white oak.)

When the cabinet fronts were rebuilt, they looked like the ones above, with large streaks of light and dark and virtually none of the cathedral grain that I liked from the original sample. Our PM knows we’re not happy and he is working to resolve it. He also agrees that they don’t look good. It is clear to me, and as many of you have inferred, they are not experienced with using white oak. I know this now, but that’s where we’re at. I may end up asking them to remake in paint grade wood and just paint it all the same as the perimeter cabinets. We’re ready to be done and have our house back.

This has been a grueling process that we did not choose. I was looking for advice. Many people here had helpful comments and I appreciate that. There’s also a lot of condescending snarky comments telling me I’m clueless, my contractors are clueless, my space is not quality, etc. That is totally unnecessary and mean. The rest of my project looks beautiful and we are thrilled with the quality. Mistakes happen. I was simply trying to understand why the wood may look so vastly different the second time around. I think i have a good grasp of the situation now.

This should be a helpful space, not a space that makes people feel stupid.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to delete this thread or I would so I would stop getting comments. I’ll probably just delete my account and move on. No more remodeling in my future…God willing.

Probably would have been good to provide that context up front.

Consider just painting the existing cabinets. Maybe with a leveling primer.

A true custom cabinet maker selects the wood, makes the doors in house, then finishes the product in his spray room, and installs it in the customer's home. He is responsible A-Z. A fake custom guy buys doors from one source, drawer boxes from another, builds faceframes in someone's house, and then has a painter finish the stuff from all the different sources. Painters aren't cabinet finishers. And all that does is create about 4 different necks to choke, instead of 1 person being responsible for the whole thing, A-Z.