House for my Parents

[timberland]

I have done two houses myself, all I do is electrical and A/C, sub out the rest . Works great for me. Oh, I also paint the outside with a sprayer, the caulking and prep is the most time consuming, painting with a sprayer is a breeze. Oh, forgot one other item i tackle, tile floors.
I prefer custom made cabinets from local cabinet shop, big savings $.

Looks good Ed.

 

[Obed]

I have done two houses myself, all I do is electrical and A/C, sub out the rest . Works great for me. Oh, I also paint the outside with a sprayer, the caulking and prep is the most time consuming, painting with a sprayer is a breeze. Oh, forgot one other item i tackle, tile floors.
I prefer custom made cabinets from local cabinet shop, big savings $.

Looks good Ed.

The custom cabinet shop that built our cabinets was price competitive with Lowes and Home Depot. Plus, we were able to get features that you can't get from the pre-made cabinet dealers. For example, our 6 foot long bathroom vanity cabinet is one open space inside. The pre-made cabinets for that length would come in two independent sections which means you have a partition in your cabinets and don't have the storage flexibility you would have if the 6 foot cabinet consisted of one long section. Custom cabinet shops in other areas of the country might cost more than ours do, but in our area, I am not sure what advantage one would get from using Lowes or HD.
Obed

 

[EddieWalker]

My experience with custom cabinets is that they cost about the same as what you can get at the box stores, but then you have to pay to have them finished. Depending on the finish, that can add significantly to the cost of the cabinets. I'm also of the opinion that there is no way to get as hard or durable finish on a cabinet in your house compared to what they can do in a factory with ovens to bake on the finish.

Eddie

 

[dstig1]

A proper pre-cat sprayed finish is like iron. Nobody bakes finishes on wood. You'd warp the wood/chipboard. The best you see is cured finishes that use uv or microwaves to speed the cure. Note it is just for speed....

 

[dave1949]

We have custom cabinets and they are very well made, and cost competitive with off the shelf including finished and installed, of course that depends on the cabinet maker. Custom cabinets are great for allowing design flexibility, non-standard depths, heights, widths, etc. Or, if you have innovative ideas that are out of the mainstream, cabinet makers love to make those things. I think those are the qualities that custom cabinets offer.

 

[EddieWalker]

A proper pre-cat sprayed finish is like iron. Nobody bakes finishes on wood. You'd warp the wood/chipboard. The best you see is cured finishes that use uv or microwaves to speed the cure. Note it is just for speed....

Here is the link to how Kraftmade does their cabinets. Maybe bake isn't the right word, but it's the one that they use.

Durakraft 14 Step Finishing Process - KraftMaid Cabinetry

As a contractor, remodeler and handyman, I get called in to do all sorts of jobs. I see issues and have to fix them that most others are not aware of. When I walk into a house, I notice all the bad stuff, but never say anything unless it's what the client calls me in there for.

With custom cabinets, I hear all the great things about them, but when I look at them, I see all sorts of issues. I realize that most of you don't have this with your cabinets, and it's probably just a local issue, but of the dozen or so big name cabinet makers in the area, I don't want to use any of them. I also don't want to hire out anybody to finish them, or do it myself. I know what I can do, I know what it takes to do it right, and I know how much better the finish is on those factory cabinets.

I'm surprised that costs are the same in other parts of the country. I wont debate if the materials are the same, or even if the finish is equal. But for my parents house, my advise to them on what to spend their money on, I'm going with the pre-made cabinets.

Eddie

 

[dave1949]

Here is the link to how Kraftmade does their cabinets. Maybe bake isn't the right word, but it's the one that they use.

Durakraft 14 Step Finishing Process - KraftMaid Cabinetry

As a contractor, remodeler and handyman, I get called in to do all sorts of jobs. I see issues and have to fix them that most others are not aware of. When I walk into a house, I notice all the bad stuff, but never say anything unless it's what the client calls me in there for.

With custom cabinets, I hear all the great things about them, but when I look at them, I see all sorts of issues. I realize that most of you don't have this with your cabinets, and it's probably just a local issue, but of the dozen or so big name cabinet makers in the area, I don't want to use any of them. I also don't want to hire out anybody to finish them, or do it myself. I know what I can do, I know what it takes to do it right, and I know how much better the finish is on those factory cabinets.

I'm surprised that costs are the same in other parts of the country. I wont debate if the materials are the same, or even if the finish is equal. But for my parents house, my advise to them on what to spend their money on, I'm going with the pre-made cabinets.

Eddie

It makes sense to go with the flow in your local area. I think we were extremely lucky to find the cabinet maker who did ours. We visited two reference customers and could see the quality, attention to detail and the evident outstanding customer relationship.

Check out Larry Heller if you are around Central Maine and need cabinets or furniture.
Here is our small but functional kitchen: http://www.midmainefurniture.net/newpage33.htm

You can follow links to Dave and Sharon's pantry and Other Projects.

 

[CurlyDave]

Obed sort of touched on this point, but I had a friend who was a custom cabinet maker when I lived in CA.

He said that the only real difference between custom and high end factory made cabinets was that custom ones had more storage space than factory. The reason was that with factory ones each unit must be a stand-alone configuration, with walls on both sides. Custom cabinets can put one divider in the same place, where two factory units butt up against each other.

If the kitchen is large enough, I like Eddie's plan to use factory cabinets. In a smaller kitchen, custom would add storage area.

We ordered Kraftmade from Home Depot when we rebuilt our house in CA. The only real problem was that delivery times were very long, and each piece of trim, each filler, etc. is a separate item. Add-ons to an existing order are faster, but they still take several weeks to arrive.

It took two four-hour sessions to get all the cabinets ordered for a medium-large kitchen and two baths. I was fed up with the process long before we were done. Plus, when we got the cabinets there were extra trim pieces, so we paid for more than we actually used.

 

[EddieWalker]

Thanks for the info on Kraftmaid. Would you use them again? Of the different brands out there, prices seem to be about the same for the same quality of build. None seem to be better then the other in that price range, so I'm leaning towards Kraftmaid because of their reputation, size of the company and history of being there. New start up, unknown brands and discount cabinets scare me.

Eddie

 

[CurlyDave]

Thanks for the info on Kraftmaid. Would you use them again?

I would use them again with no hesitation. The cabinets were of good quality, and the few things that were wrong (warped doors, one door with knot that showed through the paint) were replaced with no problems.

The replaced items came in a week or two, which was much faster than the original delivery.

As I said before, add-ons took longer, but were still faster than the original order.