Planning my kitchen rebuild and at the last minute I'm reconsidering if building modular cabinets is really the way to go or if I should just build them in place. I've built stand alone cabinets before and I'm familiar with the process but it looks like built in place cabinetry would use a good deal less sheet material and who doesn't like to save money. But I'm not familiar with building cabinets in place so it would be something new to learn. What do you guys think?
Buy an upper end set of cabinets at IKEA. No, I am not kidding. That stuff is totally credible. Use their on-line planner and be done with it, then blow the rest of your budget on a quartz countertop. Biggest bang for the buck...IMHO. Then, use the time you save, building a nice armoire or hutch to feed that woodworker beast inside of you.
Ikea has a poor reputation. Unfortunately the closest Ikea store is 150 miles away, a bit too far to go see if we like their cabinets. Looking at their website I only see one style of cabinet, Akurum.
When I started in the trades in the early 70s, built in cabinets were the rage. We built library walls, nooks, built in hutches and display cabinets. From time to time depending on who I was working wtih at the time, we also built kitchen and bath cabs as well in place.
Later I was assigned to another cabinet guy that used to run a cabinet shop. We built everything in modules. They were easier to build, easier to install, and easier to finish.
I haven't built anything in place since unless there was no other choice.
I like Rob's idea of buying finished cabinets. For most folks, even if they can build them they ruin their work with poor finishing.
Ahhhh... and finishing in place. If you do it correctly you will be disassembling all of your work anyway, so why not build it and finish it in pieces? Finishing one modular drawer bank at a time is much easier than the entire side of a base section that is in place.
Think of managing your spray, the fumes, the drift, etc., that will go through your house and A/C system. (Of course, I am assuming you wouldn't brush a kitchen full of cabinets, including doors, drawers, interiors, etc.)
Prefinished cabs handle all that or you. If you don't like IKEA or others, try to find a local cabinet distributor of finished cabinets and see what they have. There is actually a lot of nice stuff out there these days.
I've done both. In fact, I am nearly finished with a built in place cabinet on my screen porch.
I can't see that you would save much in sheet goods. OK, you can skip a back but you can do that with modular ones. You also wouldn't need inside ends; that too could be skipped in modular ones but you'd have to have open frames to attach one to another. Built in place ones should have them too for strength if the cabinet is of any size.
Built in place means the horizontal pieces are going to be a PITA to fit because if there is a side as well a back wall because of the corner taping.
As you can see, I think modular is easier. I *do* build an in place plinth to set them on so I can avoid making toe kicks on the cabinets.
IKEA has different qualities, that I have seen. I am no fan of IKEA, but I was surprised at the consistent quality and finish of their kitchen cabinets. A client of mine buys and flips expensive condos in Toronto and always has the kitchen all ready for one of my countertops. (Well, the new guys will be doing this now)
There are other choices that a dealer can bring in for you.
Having said all this, it all comes down to the installation. A mediocre set of cabinets installed properly is a better deal than high- end materials banged together and finished poorly.
IKEA has come a long way. Their famous schlock is harder to find, and better products from them have been on the market for at least a decade. But it is hard to shed a poor reputation. The kitchens I have seen from them are as good as most mass-produced cabinets out there. The doors, drawer fronts and end panels are finished expertly with very durable finishes. The range of colours is pretty good too.
Their kitchen sinks are 20 ga and you might as well make them yourself from a roll of tin foil. Crap.
A set of well built shop made "modular" kitchen cabinets will generally outlast the house. I've yet to see a set of "built-in" kitchen cabinets, ten years later, that has stood the test of time with regard to things like doors and drawers still fitting like new.
That's not to say that built-in's can't be every bit as long lasting as shop built, but, IME, it is relatively rare to see it these days, mostly due to lost skills in the workforce.
BTW, should you be looking some design and planning tools for your cabinet project, you may find something useful in my "Kitchen Cabinet Components and Models" link below, particularly with the dynamic wall and base cabinets which can be re-sized to fit available space:
You bet ... houses settle, wood expands and contracts, and walls move, so here is the reality of the situation:
The square, well built, "modular" cabinet box, shimmed level and properly hung on non-square walls, walls that are going to move a bit sooner or later during the life of the house, will still be square after said wall movement, and all the parts, doors, drawers, drawer fronts will have a much better chance of surviving wall movement and still fit like new.
Component pieces of built-in cabinetry on that same set of walls are going to move with the walls, in differing amounts according to their location, to the detriment of ALL parts fitting together like they did before the inevitable movement/settling.
You said a mouthful there. I painted out the most inexpensive solid wood line that HD sold a few years ago (I don't think they sell the line anymore - they were unfinished white oak) for a contractor friend of mine and they looked like a million bucks. They were very well made cabinets (surprise!), and were installed, trimmed, and adjusted by his ace.
On the other hand, I have seen way too many cabinet replacements where the modules were just ruined. Misplaced screws and nails, no attempt to level the cabinets on the floor, not a wedge to be seen on the backs of the uppers, trim in the wrong position, etc.
Unless I just need one or two I never build them anymore. My favorite cab guy does it too cheap, and he's good, too. But he doesn't install. I have gotten a lot of work form him troubleshooting poor installations and in some cases rehanging his products.
He won't install anything any more. He can't find guys that meet his standards and he told me it was too hard on him to see his nice cabinets hung poorly.
BTW, a couple of years ago I put in a whole kitchen of Kraftmaid cabinets. I was surprised at their quality, and the trims matched the cabinets exactly. They were well made throughout, the hardware was nice, and were finished inside and out. When I go them hung, I touched up the visible hanging brad holes in the moldings and was finished. They looked really nice, and as you said, they spent the money on some green granite. With the reddish colored cabinets they had, it reminded me of Christmas, but it still looked great. More like a library than a kitchen when the lights were dimmed.
Cost savings of not using me and my buddy as a tag team of custom cabinets and custom finishing: +/- $2500.
They were happy to apply it to their $6K granite bill.
Finished up the kitchen in our new house a few months ago. When my wife suggested IKEA, I initially shrieked and uttered expletives. After giving them a good hard look and reading a lot of reviews, we ended up going with IKEA. If you get a chance, go around a store that's had their kitchen "vignettes" installed for a while and you can pretty quickly figure out the strengths and weaknesses; open the doors and drawers poke around inside and look for any rub spots etc. These things see quite a bit of wear; especially on the "oh honey, this blobbity blob cabinet is neat ones" -- i.e. corner lazy susan's, tall pantries, tall drawers for garbage cans etc). The closest IKEA to us was just about to undergo a complete overhaul when we were looking around -- so everything had been well pretty abused without too much obvious effort at repair.
Sure, IF I had time I could have built very nice cab's for about the same money (depending on how you reckon the value of time). And yes, if built them there would be more plywood and less particle board. And yes there are better cabinets that can be had COTS for a lot more money. Had a friend who work in a cab shop by and his opinion was that they would really have to struggle to get comparable cabs at comparable price. To loop back to Robatoy's post, after building up a kitchen-full, there's a lot of optimized engineering going on that makes it easier to get a good installation. Particularly I like the way the upper cabinets are mounted to a steel T-track which you can really lag to the studs; lift the uppers into place, tie them together, fine tune the lateral adjustment to your hearts content, level everything then torque the t-bolts down. Maybe this has become standard and I don't realize it. But there are lot of "howto's" that still have people setting cabinets up on temporary rails and blocks before they are screwed to the studs. All the hardware is Blum- branded and almost all the doors (and all the drawers) have soft close dampers by default. Dampers aren't available for some of the frankenstein double hinge corner doors. I'm still undecided about the drawer box construction (metal sides, melamine coated particle board bottoms) but the easy drawer front adjustment (metal screws in metal hardware) is nice given that the design is frameless. One other nice feature is that all the insert gadgets are designed to play together and are pretty well thought out.
Somewhere else in this thread it was pointed out that there's only one style of cabinet. That's probably true, but the "style" referenced is the base carcass, there are quite a few door drawer front styles.
We'll see how I feel about the cabinets in a few years, but so far I'm not unhappy with them.
Okay, good argument, thanks. The cabinets I have now are built-ins that I believe are original to the 1960 house and they are coming apart, I believe due to house movement.
A plinth is a platform, the height of a kick 4". Made as a frame, it can be scribed and shimmed so that it is level. Then the cabinets sit on top and overhang in the front by about 3.5". Here's 2000 words:
As Robatoy showed. Except they don't have to be that fancy, depending on what you are doing.
Mine are PT 2x4s front and aft Tapconed vertically to the slab with PT cross pieces nailed to the fore and aft. There are two more PT 2x4s screwed horizontally on top of the vertical ones. All "show" edges have 1/4" cement board nailed/screwed to the 2x4s. Why? Because I put Saltillo tile on the floor AND on the vertical sides of the plinth.
We owned a second house a few years back. It was a mountain cabin that had been designed and supervised by an architect for a client. I was surprised to find that the cabinets in the kitchen, baths, laundry room and pantry were all Kraftmade box cabinets. It was almost impossible to tell except for a couple places where there were filler boards. The quality of the Kraftmade cabinets was very good and probably better than most custom cabinets that would have been made in local shops.
Interestingly, we are in the process of trying to purchase a
1-story home here (health issues) and the cabinets in it are also Kraftmade. I had the opportunity to talk to a custom home builder and he told me that if he had to make a guess, that box cabinets could be found in virtually all of even the most expensive homes, with only library shelving and custom units like entertainment centers or media room built-ins etc. coming from custom shops anymore.
Around here most of the high end custom home builders use site built cabinets, from kitchens to closets, because, bottom line, they are cheaper when factoring in labor, materials and installation costs.
That's whats so sad about walking into one of these "high end" homes up for resale four or five years later and seeing the results of all that eye candy trim with gaps in it (none of the guys ever heard of coping and inside miter), warped doors that won't close all the way, and drawers that don't fit.
Damn thig is that people either are incapable of seeing it, or refuse to see acknowledge it.
Not to be argumentative, but while Kraftmade are indeed some of the better, factory made boxes, I can spot them a block away.
I've heard it remarked on many an occasion, that, after having now owned kitchen cabinets hand crafted with high quality materials, like the ones Leon and I put in houses, folks, who used to walk through HD and think how good the Kraftmade cabinets were, now think they look "cheap" ... and that's a quote. And I agree ... after building/seeing/using/owning hand crafted cabinet boxes and components, Kraftmade simply no longer looks like "quality" goods.
I also agree that for most, if the choice is between built-in kitchen cabinets, or 'factory made' cabinet boxes and components like Kraftmade makes, Kraftmade is one of the better ways to go these days ... then again, ask me how many millions of dollars worth of houses just our kitchen cabinets alone have sold, some more than once. :)
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