Kitchen Cabinet Comparison

I met with the Kitchen Cabinet people at Lowes last night to "finalize" the majority of our kitchen in order to make sure that the estimate I created online was actually correct.

First things first though, this is the inspiration photo, you can see it in it's full glory here: We'll change some of the things (i.e. one of the women in my office suggested that small children and glass cabinets on the bottom don't mix well...I agree with that as we plan on turning that into an eat-up bar.)

The man I worked with (Mike for anyone who is in the Olympia area), was really great. We don't have our final plans yet (as they are undergoing some modifications) so all I had was the printout from the internet...instead of just telling me that I didn't have the right information he worked to create a blueprint from scratch. I appreciate when people don't just say no because they don't want to go the extra step.

So, I learned some really good things about kitchen cabinets yesterday the most important being that of the brands that Lowes sells Kraftmaid is the third most expensive. The least expensive (which I am quickly learning is the non-offensize way to say cheap) is Shenandoah. I was okay with this as I really liked their crown molding options but, they don't offer the Silhouette Glass Pattern which is a necessity in my book. (As a side note: Shenandoah doesn't outsource any of their labor which is how they are able to keep their costs down, or at least this is what Mike told me).

The second least expensive, the one I am going with, is Diamond Reflections Cabinety. There were a couple options that I liked about Diamond, even over Kraftmaid. First, they offer my Silhouette Glass Pattern. As an added bonus though, they have really broken the code on cabinet organization. Third, they are extremely durable...he demonstrated for me how kids can hang on open drawers...something I never did as a child but I am told children do quite frequently.

All that being said, phew! It was a 3.5 hour process to design the cabinets (silly me, I thought it would only take about 30 minutes). I'm sure it will take even longer when we go to officially order asthis is just the estimation phase but it's nice to have the groundwork layed.

Grand total for our "estimate" kitchen was $19,053. I asked how much Kraftmaid would have been, just as a point of reference and he said he guessed about $22,000 and Shenandoah about $17,000...

If you enjoyed this post get free updates by e-mail or RSS.