“Are the panels wood that we can refinish in the color of our choosing< or at the panels plastic and you get what's delivered?? BUying fridge tomorrow Sunday, August 21, 2016!”
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A bit late for a response as this is 2018 but maybe this will help a future buyer. "This Model is Panel Ready-- This refrigerator is designed to be customized to match surrounding cabinets with customer-supplied custom panels and handles (not included)." What Kitchenaid shows you in the product photo description is not what you get. They show you a finished fridge. What they should show you, is the unfinished front of what you are buying - the black metal doors, with peel away, sticky strips, and thin metal frames along the door edges, that will hold your panels in place. You supply the front panels and handles. (You don't really need the Kitchenaid handles if you have a carpenter designing your cabinetry for this refrigerator. You can order something to match your cabinet hardware, or something that doesn't look like a collection of grab bars, and likely for far less. We did this.) Interestingly, if you go to the section on the store page, of items bought in concert with this unit, they will show you front panels for every other appliance, except this. From where are these to come?, if you do not build them. I thought at one time, they were offered, but I have not see them offered on the Kitchenaid site recently. Also, as for "counter-depth" - lots of discussion on this, everywhere, with lots of unhappy people. Me too. I knew we needed fronts, but to turn this new fridge into a rehab project from the get-go, was unfair. On a personal note, as to how we are handling this (or thought we were): We made our counter tops 30". We had brought the cabinets out, during our redesign so that we could leave things in place, further back and still have work space. This was to accommodate this fridge too. We left a niche in the drywall too for accommodating tubing, electrical circuitry. None of this mattered. It is really all about the doors. You need to give the doors space, or the doors will not openly fully, and so you are left with the front about 3" out beyond the cabinet edge . You can push this fridge back into its built in area, but your doors won't open. At the least, what might have been nice, since you were to be left with this unit sticking out, calling to you to look at its dark edges, was for the sides to have been done in a stainless, instead of textured black. We are likely going to paint the parts showing, to match the fridge color (white), once we make the panels. I wish I had left the fridge on the doorstep, when it arrived, and spray painted it before it came into the house. It would be a hassle now to do this. BTW, the specs for making the panels are included in the refrigerator information or online. Good luck.
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