We chose rustic maple in chestnut from Medallion for our new house. The hazelnut was just a little lighter. Chestnut has some red undertones, hazelnut has yellow. The home store (Menards) still has Premium Choice, Premium, and Criterion. We went with the Premium Choice as it was the only one without furniture board - all plywood.
Online I only found the Designer series. This should be close to our cabinet and color even though this was the alder. We chose maple because we wanted a hard wood with the rustic look. We picked hickory for the floors

{{!gwi}}

check out charlikin's beautiful stained maple kitchen. I believe they used Kraftmaid.

This thread has several pics of stained maple cabinets

Here is a link that might be useful: cabinet thread

Hi remodelfla! Thanks for thinking of me!

Yes, my cabinets are Kraftmaid Ginger Glaze Maple. Nice medium color with a kind of rich glow to it - I love this color, and I looked at *everything* before I chose it!!! (Click on the link remodelfla provided to see pics.)

Maple takes stain very well - the only problems I've heard are when you go into the dark colors, but even there, if you're with a good cabinet company, I don't think it should be a problem. But you want medium, so definitely no problem.

I actually love the minimal grain in maple - it's one of the reasons I chose this wood. It's also one of the hardest woods, so it should stand up to some (ab)use.

Red Birch? It may have too much grain movement for you, but if your only concern about cherry is that it goes too dark red as it ages, red birch doesn't darken (and isn't very red, in my opinion).

Charlikin, that's the color family we are aiming for - maybe a little darker, but somewhere close to that.

The thing is, I really love the look of wood grain when it's diffused and fine (not grainy like oak) so that's the compromise I personally make with Maple. But the tradeoffs (color and durability) make it pretty much the only choice left, although the color part seems to be debatable. When I brought a KM toffee door from HD to my old cabinet maker as an example of a color we could do, he said, "that is ugly. Downright ugly and horrible. Look at that finish - you can't finish Maple like that and have it turn out decent. I wouldn't even do this for you, and I'd never warrenty it. Yuck." That's what I mean by debateable. Haha, and we may end up going with that "yuck"...for lack of a wood with a fine grain, durability, and in the brown/yellow/medium hue color family!

DH is the one who is opposed enough to the red to eliminate cherry, although it lingers on the table for me. I think it's gorgeous. I don't like the color red, never have (I am a yellows and greens girl), but DH abhors it, but he said if I got it he would come around just for me. But would I be happy if it turned deep, deep red? I don't know. I know a brown stain would mitigate it somewhat, but the natural color of the wood would still come through, and all the cab people I've talked to say you can't control how the wood will age and the color that it will end up being in the end - it depends on the tree used.

We have maple with a chestnut stain. It's made by Schuler/Medallion and we purchased through Lowes. It does have some red undertones.

{{!gwi}}

{{!gwi}}

Um, needsometips08 - your cabinet maker sounds a little on the opinionated side... ;-)

Funny you mention Toffee - that's one of the colors I was considering. It's actually the "base" color for my Ginger Glaze, which is a wash of transparent color that goes over the Toffee (and then adds a little dark glazing in the corners). The back sides of my doors don't have the wash and so they are still Toffee.

The difference in color is that Toffee is a little lighter, a little yellower (in the Lowes sample kitchen displays) and/or a little pinker (the sample door in *my* kitchen turned *pink*!). I liked it in the store, but it was totally wrong in my lighting. If you're at all fussy about color, make sure you see a sample in your own kitchen.

Our remodel will be in Diamond's maple in a Whiskey Black glass with the island a maple in heirloom black glaze. We chose maple for the lack of graining and the evenness of the staining. We take delivery of the cabinets this week.