At Home In The Woods

[firefighter9208]

I personally would not have cabinet slides that automatically close. I can imagine opening a drawer, turning around to get dishes out of the dishwasher, and turning around to put them in the drawer and it being closed.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I wouldn't want them.


Chris

 

[PAGUY]

My neighbor is a custom cabinet maker and the cabinet slides that close automatically refers to the last couple of inches not when fully open. We all experience drawers that when pushed shut at times leave a gap and not fully closed that is where those slides come in handy also they close that last couple inches slowly so there is no banging shut.

 

[woodlandfarms]

Sorry for the confusion. PAGUY's guy has the right info.

 

[shane]

Me personally, I would go with wood drawers. I like my cabinets to have a feel of furniture.

I would not agree to the 50/40/10 pay schedule. 50% up front if fair and normal. I would not go for the 10% install because you won't know if anything is screwed up until then and by then the cabinet maker may be bankrupt, dead, or just too busy to get back to you in a timely manner. As long as somebody is owed a big chunk of money they'll have your best interest in mind to take care of your needs. I would only agree to 50% up front and 50% when every little detail is completed.

 

[dcyrilc]

My experiance is 20 years out of date, but 50-50 was always common around here. 50% up front and 50% upon completion.

As for the drawers, I've always liked wood. Have to second the opinion on 1/2" 9 ply birch or maple. Some cabinet makers try to get by with 5 ply...insist on 9 ply. It's much stronger and finishes cleaner.

 

[eepete]

50-50 on pay. House before this, the cabinets were delivered and then the guy went belly up. So had to pay for an install, and it was much more than 10% of the job. Basically, when he's delivered the cabinets that 1st 50% is in materials. If he's adamant about it, I could see a 50%, 10% on delivery, and 40% when happy. That way he's got a few bucks in his pocket after the work of building them. Seems like most cabinet guys live on the edge

Nothing to add on drawer types, not an area I'm very knowledgeable about.

Pete

 

[jinman]

These drawers have metal sides and bottoms made of man-made material coated with melamine

I'm guessing that the bottoms with melamine are to allow easy cleanup and some amount of moisture protection. What I'd want to know about those bottoms is if the edges, where joined with the sides, are also protected by melamine. "Man-made" material sounds like particle board to me. If water can find its way into any joint of particle board, you'll get swelling and failure. If the drawer bottoms are sealed well, this might be a great system, but I'd want to know every detail.

BTW: My oak cabinets with oak laminate sides and drawers were delivered onsite unfinished and the painter stained/finished them to my liking. After they were finished, the cabinet maker sent a crew back out to install them. Isn't this a normal practice? Do cabinet makers often do their own finishing?

 

[woodlandfarms]

In my experience, yes. A busy cabinet shop will have in house finishers. The cabinet bases were installed, then the fronts came out. Hung and tested. Then all was removed and painted... But for us that was the weak point and we are paying a handsome price for someones failure.

 

[PAGUY]

Today I asked my friend the cabinet maker what he expected and he said 33% -33% - 34%. The best cabinets will be cherry or oak wood and he belives dovetail drawers work out to be the best bet.

 

[Pops15]

Obed,
Cabinet drawers and hardware fail for a few reasons.
Fronts coming off is a common problem. That is usually caused by someone slamming a drawer shut that has a heavy load in it.
Hardware failing because its overloaded, or cheaply made is another common problem.

I don't have any first hand experience using metal drawer sides, but I wasn't favorably impressed with what I saw in the link you posted.
Poplar is a good choice for drawer boxes. It has good straight, fine grain, it's strong, and it finishes nicely. Go with poplar drawer boxes, dovetail joints, and plywood drawer bottoms that are rabbeted in on all four sides. Some guys try to get by without rabbeting the back of the drawer. The bottoms sag with that set up.
The drawer slides they showed with the metal drawer sides looked like the cheapest of the cheap. Use only high quality full extension slides. I like the self closing slides that mount under the drawers. They have easy to operate levers that release the drawer for removal. Another thing I like about the under mount slides is they stay cleaner.

50% down is normal. I suspect the 40% upon delivery and 10% upon completion is because the cabinet maker doesn't want to be on the hook if you're not ready for installation when he delivers the cabinets.
Without having more details I wouldn't say 10% wouldn't cover the installation so I'm not going to say that pay schedule is unreasonable.
If you're not comfortable with the pay schedule you can try to negotiate a different one. Personally, if someone I haven't worked with wanted to negotiate terms that were much different than what I normally specify I'd probably tell them I'm not interested in doing their project....even in this lousy economy.

Jim,
Many if not most custom cabinet shops do their finishing in house.