Kitchen Cabinet sticker shock!

I braved the gale force winds last night and trudged over to the Lowe’s in Gowanus, the only pedestrian in all of Brooklyn as far as I could tell . . . and sat with a lovely and very knowledgeable kitchen designer, Alica, for about three months, blithely choosing what seemed to be fine kitchen cabinets, but none marked with prices!  Surprise, when the project was totalled up, it priced out at over 16k!!!  Boy was I surprised, since I was at LOWE’S, and consider myself to be a reasonable, down to earth person, that I had just selected a set of 16 thousand dollar cabinets! Brownstoners, what can a girl do to keep the price down on her new kitchen?!  I don’t want to buy total garbage, because I don’t want to ever do this again in my entire life, and I’m still kind of young . . . here are a few specific questions:  -is there any reason to buy solid plywood cabinets as opposed to particle board (mdf) boxes?  -are all the roll outs, drawer dividers, etc., worth the money?  -what are decent budget brands? OK here is where I may reveal myself to be a moron, but everyone talks abotu ikea kitchens – on their website it looks like there is only one style/model available.  How is this possible?  And they all look freestanding . . . and I going to actually haev to go in person to Ikea to figure this one out? -is it worth the money to get a second set of uppers so I take my cabinets all the way to the top? -how ugly IS IT to get a standard depth refrigerator?  why would i really want to pay more to have less, with a cabinet depth? -if i get a really good kitchen will my kids get in to a better college? -if i get a really good kitchen will i be a better person? OK thanks for your collective wisdom.  Please limit the consideration of my personal growth to kitchens and cabinets.  A trip to Lowe’s is enough to take in in one week.

elm_bk

in Bath & Kitchen 13 years and 1 month ago

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brokelin | 13 years and 1 month ago

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if you want cheap, go with ikea, you will get higher quality boxes, for less money, as they are not the chippy kind of mdf …. all presswood products are not created equal.  i had them in a place I owned…for a budget kitchen, they cannot be beat.  I had solid wood in my door style, though, and they no longer have any solid wood door styles.  so i would order separate wood doors, no mdf, from elsewhere were I to install an Ikea kitchen now…not just because they look better, but also for durability, as the doors take the most beating, as the cabinets remain in place and are not moved.  as far as I am concerned, Ikea boxes are the only good budget option.  If I wanted something beyond that, i would do the semi custom ones noted above.

elm_bk | 13 years and 1 month ago

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Thanks everyone, this is amazingly helpful!  i think I’m a better person already, and I don’t even have the kitchen yet!  cgmodern, you have the exact style of cabinet front that I want, so i’m going to check out Scher’s first thing.  As for Build It Green – I love them, and have been in many times (and check their new items daily!) – but haven’t had luck finding a set that would fit my dimensions.  A lot of them have corners etc. and I have a galley w. island.  Im’ not quite bold enough to mix and match with different sets . . but I’ll keep my eye on them.   Thanks too for the marble suggestion – I’ve also been looking for a good source of marble, for at least the top of the island, though i don’t know if i’ll be able to afford it when all is said and done . . . thanks again to all!

sakeboy | 13 years and 1 month ago

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I just finished a kitchen w/ Ikea. They sent a guy from their partner company, Traemand, to take all the measurements. They made a simple proposal for me and emailed it to me. The cost so far was under $200, which was a fair price for that step. They wanted $2,000 to install it. I already had capable guys working for me and they volunteered to do it. I modified Traemand’s plan and brought it to Ikea to create a shopping list. The only mistake I made was that Ikea sells standard 30″ cabinets… and also 30″ cabinets that are actually 30.5″ once assembled. So the cabinets didn’t match up. The Ikea kitchen people didn’t know about this discrepancy, but I bet the Traemand people would have. This cost me time and paid labor. It got done in the end, but not without hassle. The upside, other than price, is that you can have a kitchen up in a few days instead of waiting a month for Lowe’s and hoping it’s correct when it arrives. Time was a big factor for me. I don’t love particle board, but with all the other unexpected expenses in my renovation, I didn’t have a lot of choice. Lowe’s does have a less expensive brand, the kitchen woman there just flat out told me that the higher price of the other brands is just brand name markup. I also was annoyed by both Lowe’s and Ikea’s counertop policy–you have to pay for a minimum amount whether you need it or not. This gave me an extra errand to run–sourcing a smaller piece of countertop as an offcut. I ended up with City Marble on 18th St in Gowanus, their rep Sarah was very helpful.

CGmodern | 13 years and 1 month ago

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Yes we assembled the Scherr’s cabs ourselves…it’s pretty much just like ikea assembly only stronger and better fittings, and much better plywood etc.
I had originally heard about Scherrs because they also can just provide you with doors to fit right onto ikea cabs..in case you didnt like ikea doors. I found ikea to be a little limiting as far as doors were concerend and someone told me about scherrs. basically you just tell them which ikea box you have and they make the door to the exact size with the hinge holes drilled so they go onto the box exactly like an ikea door. I was seriously considering this, but for the hell of it had them do an estimate for the boxes with every bell and whistle i wanted and it was incredibly affordable….under 10k for 2 walls of lowers and 1 wall of double height uppers including tons of fillers strips, huge end panels (to box the fridge), custom inserts, highend drawer slides, paintes 2 different colors, etc.
serious worth checking into. PLus you’re not tied to ikea box sizes….these are fully custom sizes.

slopefarm | 13 years and 1 month ago

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I will add to the Ikea chorus. We put an Ikea kitchen in the rental unit of our house — more stylish and about 1/3 price per cabinet of kraftmaid from Lowe’s. Prices vary by style and you can go quite a bit higher at Ikea, but I would start there. I think there are more styles now than when we did this. Dress it up with a decent countertop and tile backsplash and no one will think you went the cheap route. We actually showed the apartment to a prospective tenant who had just been hired as a manager in the RH Ikea before it opened and she did not recognize the kitchen as Ikea. Most prospective tenants say the kitchen looks so much better than the usual landlord crap — and that’s with formica counters! Plus, you bring it all home same day in boxes. It all fits in a step van. No waiting months for delivery. Just make sure you have an installer who knows how to deal with it. Build it Green is another good suggestion. We did our kitchen before BIG was in BK, so we never seriously explored the option. I should add that we did buy bathroom vanity cabinets from Lowe’s and the manufacturer kept building it wrong. We lost months and months trying to get it right and in the end we still neeed the contractor to modify one of them.

dylanfan | 13 years and 1 month ago

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I’ve done five kitchens with IKEA cabinets and really good appliances, and everyone loves my kitchens, and I have sold some of these places and gotten a really good price, and my son got into an excellent college.

CGmodern | 13 years and 1 month ago

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were originally thinking of going the ikea route… but wanted boxes that are made better, sizes that actually fit our kitchen and everything painted gray.  So we went with Scherrs Ready to Assemble cabinets from North Dakota. I can’t say enough about what a great decision this was. We got FULLY CUSTOM cabinets painted a color of our choice for an unreal price…along with some of THE BEST customer service i’ve ever encountered. Scherr’s built RTA cabinets based on our architects drawings, with a few rounds of shop drawing revisions, delivered everything flat and we assembled (as easy as ikea only with better materials). There were a few doors that needed to be redone based on our error… they gladly redid them and worked with us when i even wanted to switch all of our drawer glides…and credited me for the ones i returned. Truly amazing people to work with. And the price was bananas for the full custom cabs we got.
They even created some funky pieces based on my ideas like sheet pan slots etc., pullouts, and extra storage above the fridge. Obviously i highly recommend them. They have lots of different styles so check in with their website. www.scherrs.com
http://designsmitten.blogspot.com/2011/04/k-i-t-c-h-e-n-d-o-n-e.html  

http://cdn.brownstoner.com/4f71e8cbd3616-processed-left_whole.jpg

deano | 13 years and 1 month ago

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I find the Ikea kitchens are nifty – they make a single range of cabinet “bodies” (i think you can get them in white or blond fake veneer) and then all the variations are in the panels & doors you hang on the front; and these are typically all you can see in your kitchen.  There are well over a dozen patterns/finished for the doors — not huge, sure, but enough for most buyers to find something that works.  The hardware (hinges, drawer runners etc) are reportedly much higher quality than the price point would suggest, and assembly and installation of the units seems to be a well-accepted standard now.   I think their popularity is one of the bigger drawbacks – people come into your home and will often recognize that it’s an Ikea kitchen.  if that’s an issue for you, be aware there’s also a cottage industry of companies who make alternative doors/fronts/panels that will exactly fit the very standard ikea cabinet boxes.

nintzk | 13 years and 1 month ago

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I’m remodeling a kitchen right now and also looking to buy new cabinets. From what I can tell, cabinets seem to be one of the biggest rip-offs in home renovation. What is a cabinet? It is a box with a door on it. That is why you see only one kind on the ikea website. It is the cabinet box and then they offer a bunch of different types of doors (also the base cabinets don’t have to be free standing…there is like some scroll bar on the bar that allows you to change it…not a very well organized website.) Search on Google for cabinets…there are a bunch of cabinet direct websites that basically offer cabinets for around $2000 for a 10 x 10 kitchen. This appears to be the price unassembled. Depending on the company and where it is located, it may offer measurement and assembly for an additional charge (from what I’ve read, you can assume the cost of assembly is the cost of the cabinets…so add another $2K). Im using a very reasonable contractor who does a lot of the work himself for some of the renovation I am doing. Whenever I mention stores like Lowes and Home Depot he says they are “for rich people.” He wants to take me to some place out in queens (maybe the Bronx) where he bought cabinets for his own apartment. If you want to give him a call, his name is Jacob and he is a very nice guy (he has a pretty thick accent though so sometimes its difficult to understand him). His number is 646-322-0612 and mention my name (Alex from 322)

rh | 13 years and 1 month ago

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What you should have done is marched yourself across the street to Build it Green to see what second hand cabinets they have in stock. If you’re not a fan of used (or close out new cabinets at places like Weinstock (or is it Weinstein?) on McDonald), then you have a few options. Lowe’s does have less expensive brands. Damn if I can remember the name of the cabinets we got a few years ago for under $3000, but they weren’t bad. I don’t recall seeing wood at Ikea but I’m sure someone whom has bought Ikea recently can fill you in better. Solid wood>Particle board any day of the week.