Kitchen Cabinets

After my sister Jessica helped us assemble the upper cabinets and Dan helped us get them hung, we realized we needed to adjust the height to match the full height cabinets. Dean came over and after helping get the full height pantry and refrigerator cabinets assembled and in place, we got the other upper cabinets down and rehung. Dan returned and he and Sarah started assembling the base cabinets.

Now that we’re up to this point, let me take a step back and fill you in on how we wound up with these cabinets. Our GC told us he had a great “Amish” cabinet maker that would make and install beautiful custom cabinets, which sounded great right up until we got a quote. I’ve mentioned in previous posts about the struggles we went through trying to control costs on our loan, and this was one of the items. We started looking at “ready to assemble” cabinets (RTA). Again our GC had a recommendation, but just looking at their website I wasn’t thrilled with the finished product. I wanted custom cabinets, I just didn’t want to pay for them! The other thing I got stuck on was inset doors and drawers. I don’t know why, but I really like the look of it and most of the RTA cabinets don’t offer them.

However, I found a company, Cabinet Joint that not only sells inset door and drawer RTA cabinets, but they’re fully custom, real wood and plywood construction, whatever finish, species, and door style you want. They’re not cheap either, and we have a big kitchen with a lot of cabinets, but it was thousands cheaper than the first company, about 30% less.

Sarah and I went over colors and finishes and settled on a warm cherry stain for the kitchen, a dark chocolate color for the powder room and linen, “ashen gray” for the main bathroom vanity, and “shale” for the master bath vanity. We placed our order back in July, but there was a twelve week lead time until they arrived in October. Since we still didn’t have our floors installed, we couldn’t do much with them until that was wrapped up.

With the floors done, we switched to all cabinets, all the time, since trim work is supposed to start as soon as our interior doors are in. There are a lot of cabinets, and each one needs to be assembled, glued, stapled, door hinges and stops installed, drawer hardware screwed in, then it gets attached to the wall, doors are attached, drawer boxes are put in and the drawer fronts carefully attached. Finally the toe kicks and knobs and pulls complete the job.

There are two big pantry cabinets in the corner of the kitchen, then the main run starts with the refrigerator cabinet, a smaller full height pantry, and small upper and base by the stove. After the stove, there’s a corner cabinet with upper, two wider cabinets with uppers, the sink base, a gap for the dishwasher, a trash pull out, and a double base cabinet. Finally, there’s a buffet with three more base cabinets. As I said, it’s a big kitchen. If you weren’t counting, that’s about nineteen cabinets, plus the three bathroom vanities and a linen cabinet.

The bank loan pays for things as they are completed as part of draws, but the cabinets needed to be paid for up front. As a result, I paid for the entire cabinet order out of pocket, and then got about half reimbursed by the bank. We’ll get the remaining balance reimbursed once when everything is done, so even though we don’t have to have all of the drawer fronts, toe kicks, and hardware on for trim to start, we want these complete so we can get that money back. We’ve bought a lot of stuff for the house over the last several months, and some of it has been floated on credit cards pending that check.

Not everything went completely according to plan in this process. The videos say you can rest your stapler at an angle and it will be perfectly aligned, but in our case this led to staples poking into the back of the cabinet. The linen cabinet didn’t quite fit into the alcove, so we had to remove the drywall on one side, plus it’s a bit short and so we’ll have to cover the opening at the top with trim.

I carefully cut the plumbing holes and installed the main bathroom vanity and then realized it wasn’t centered under the light, so I had to move it three inches over, which meant cutting a bigger hole in the back. Fortunately all of my other plumbing holes worked out pretty well. The master bath vanity doesn’t exactly match the spacing of the lights, so we’ll probably offset the sinks to align with the light instead of the vanity doors. It’s a 72″ double vanity with drawers in the middle and I’d originally planned for it to be 24″+24″+24″ and instead it’s more like 30″+12″+30″. Oh well.

We’re very grateful for all the help we got in this process, Jessica drove up all the way from Lafayette for the day, Dean and Dan both came over multiple times, and Dean lent us some really useful tools. I learned quite a bit in this process, made some handy jigs for installing hardware, and think I’m well enough versed that we’ll likely build our own closet organizers.