Like my granite, I had decided on my kitchen and bar cabinets a few years ago. I wanted them to be made of lumber harvested in northern Wisconsin or the U.P. and found what I was looking for with Menominee Tribal Enterprises - MTE for short. For those of you are don't know, Menominee County in Wisconsin is almost all an Reservation for the Menominee Nation. Their forests have been sustainably managed for 100 years. If interested, read more here.
When I called MTE sometime in 2016 (wow, 4 years ago!) to learn more about the process of having them build cabinets for me, I found that they had discontinued making custom cabinets and were now selling stock cabinets through dealers. They hooked me up with Michael Hunt at Top Shelf Cabinetry, one of their first distributors. So, Mike designed my kitchen & bar to be made from MTE cabinets and I gave him my down payment in October 2019.
In December he gave me the bad news that MTE was no longer making cabinets due to being unable to find dependable employees. But being an ethical man, he said he would build them for me himself for the same price and MTE was still selling lumber that came from the Menominee forests. Thus started an wonderful experience of watching the superior craftsmanship and artistry of Michael Hunt at Top Shelf Cabinetry. I ended up contracting with him to build all of my cabinets.
For the main floor, I picked yellow birch as my wood, it is at the lower end price wise, is variable in color (heartwood vs. sapwood) and in some ways looks like hickory. For the lower level I picked rustic red oak. As for style, I went with the clean lines of shaker. For the bathroom & sauna area cabinets, we used the old bead-board from the cottage for the doors.
Then came time for picking colors. OMG I am HORRIBLE at trying to figure colors. Fortunately Mike has a pretty darn good eye for that and we finalized the following:
- Kitchen & Bar - birch with a very light pecan stain to bring out the reds and keep it from yellowing
- Laundry, Guest bath cabinets - birch with American Walnut stain which is darker and has red undertones and looked great with the flooring
- Master Bath - birch with Charcoal stain. This is very dark but it goes very well with the Wisconsin Red granite. The best choice would have been gray paint, but I wanted natural wood - not painted.
- Lower Level Kitchen - red oak with an ageing accelerator instead of stain. This actually interacts with the lignin in the wood to give it an aged look.
- Lower Level Bathroom & Sauna Area - Mike got a custom stain to match the old aged pine bead-board from the cottage.
So this carried over to the trim and doors - American Walnut in the main floor and a custom match to the aged pine bead-board from the cottage for the lower level.
Here are some photos from Top Shelf's shop of the cabinets under construction.
Lots of drawers. Notice the rounded corners and sides.
I really love the variation in wood color
Love the grain patterns
And the pièce de résistance is the vanity for the powder room which Mike concocted out of the old barrel. 
Barrel with old wash pan for sink