What web sites offer medium high quality cabinets and low prices? I have a few applications where I want to compare custom against making due with something off the shelf.
For material I want a strong plywood with a high quality real wood veneer. No fiberboard!!!!
You ask odd questions, or at least phrase them oddly. No fiberboard - got it. What about particle board? 'Strong' plywood? Is that a grade? Medium high quality and low prices. All of that is subjective and provides no helpful information.
Check out cabparts.com or some such and roll you own and see if that works for you.
R
First off custom may be an inferior product compared to an off the shelf product from a big box store. All things being equal, Quality custom will always be more expensive to buy than off the shelf. Almost with out exception off the shelf items are going to have the majority of their quality in the face frames, doors and drawer "fronts". Behind what you see it is anybodies guess as to what matrerial and what quality it will be.
So basically you probably need to decide if you want to pay for a quality custom job or take a gamble with what you end up off the shelf. At least with custom you can specify the materials and hopefully get a good pro to do the work.
Having said all that I build lots and lots of cabinets. I am currently having a home built and it is going to have the "off the shelf cabinets" but not by choice. If the builder would let me build and install my own cabinets I would be better off.
Tell him to use the cheapest Ikeas and to charge you the Ikea price and not a penny more and then you rip then out and do whatever you like and the Ikeas will do fine for shop or garage or whatever cabinets.
That's an odd one. Maybe he's figuring that you'd delay him, delaying getting the CO and delaying him getting his final payment.
Ask him if he'll install the cabinets with the minimum number of screws to 'tack' them in place, and not screw the countertop down. After the CO, pull that stuff and donate it to a local Habitat for Humanity Restore. They'll come and pick it up and you can take the deduction for the full cost of the cabinets (have the contractor give you the invoice).
R
Just go to home depot or lowes. They have various grades, good retun and warrenty policies, you can touch and feel what you are gona buy and they have fair prices since they do such huge volume.
I am not a builder, so I don't know the precise language to use to identify different building materials and construction techniques.
For me particle board and fiberboard are both equally low quality products, and I want to avoid both. I asked my cabinet maker, and he said that he is using a birch plywood that is A grade on top and C grade on bottom (but he thought it was actually a B grade). That is the same quality of construction I would want to buy in an off the shelf product, even if it cost more than fiberboard or particle board. Does that help you identify the type of construction I want?
I am looking for off the shelf, completed cabinets, made of birch or equal quality plywood, with real wood veneers. Does any web site sell those?
W, This was very confusing to read since you top-posted. Good luck with your cabinets.
B.
Hard to believe that Swing would do you that way.
Dave in Houston
****** ROTFLMAO !!!! *******
Robert
The reason I top posted was that my news application has a bug and on some posts it doesn't quote the text I am responding to. It would be even more confusing to have my response run on together with the original text, undifferentiated.
The message was very small in any case, so really it was not that hard to read both parts.
How do you know how much time I or anyone else spent trying to decipher your message?
I went back to the message you objected to and turned on a stopwatch. I read every word carefully, slowly, deliberately, and it took me 24 seconds. Assuming someone was confused by the arrangement, I guess that might be a minute. So to answer the question: I know because I tested it objectively.
But the other point is that if a message confronts you that you don't like - for any reason including layout - you also have an option to just ignore it. I do normally bottom post, and the only times I top post are when the newsreader is not helping to arrange quoted text.
Why don't you just have "your cabinetmaker" manufacture the cabs? He's obviously invested some time and interest in your project. Even if he's 25% -50% higher it seems as though you would be a lot better off. I recently had a client tell me that my prices were higher than Ikea, and in my nicest, most concerned voice I told her that you get what you pay for and that I use "green" products as much as I can with low VOC finishes. That sold the kitchen right then and there.
RP
The sides of a cabinet are called gables. There, that will get you started.
Zinggggggggggggggggggg
I have installed countertops on many DIY projects for people who took the time to put it all together with some thought. I have seen IKEA and Home Despot off-the-shelf kitchens that were a lot better than some shlock I had to put MY nice work onto made by 'custom professional' impostors. Most of the guys here will agree that it is all about the installation.
I did buy cabinets from the cabinet maker. It was he who suggested that for the simpler cabinets - such as those in a bathroom - that I might be better with off the shelf. But he didn't know of any website that sold frames that were a higher quality birch plywood construction.
So I'm investigating using a mixture of custom and off the shelf.
How about one of us trots over to your place and whip some up for you? Sheesh.
You've been given a number of approaches and you're not having any of it. Here's the short of it: you want custom, but you want it cheaper and in stock. Yeah, that should be no problem.
Sorry, there is no free lunch today. You'll either have to pony up some more money, do some work yourself, or settle for a stock cabinet that's available in YOUR area. How much do you think it costs to ship an assembled cabinet? That's why I replied the first time with that cabparts.com link. They'll make any damn thing you want, prefinish it, drill holes for hardware, and ship it to you in a flat box for a reasonable cost, and all you have to do is assemble the thing. You'll have exactly nothing to do in the way of layout or measuring.
If you're not up to that, settle, pony up or waste some other peoples' time by calling some cabinet shops and see if they're running the free lunch special.
R
Hold on. I asked for a vendor that makes high quality off the shelf cabinets. I never said once I wouldn't pay for quality. My criteria was to find someone who made the cabinets from higher quality components like birch plywood AC grade, rather than MDF or fiberboard. Of course quality costs more. I was willing to pay more for higher quality. What part of my post made you think otherwise?
I appreciate the reference to cabparts.com. That did look like fiberboard though. Their catalog was confusing for me.
Ikea has a modular system for cabinets, but it looks like most of their product is MDF / fiberboard. That's not what I want. I was hoping to find someone who has a similar modularization system that uses (and charges for) higher quality construction. Maybe that vendor doesn't exist, or at least doesn't expose their product to the end user the way Ikea does.
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