There are several options available to you when you are searching for cabinets for your home. Here are a few.
A cabinet store/showroom.
Here you will find a salesman who likely never built or installed a cabinet in their life. He or she will provide you a design based on the layout of your home. They are cabinet dealers for pre-manufactured cabinet lines. They will have several options to fit your budget. If they advertise custom cabinets, they will have the manufacture build specific size cabinets, but they are not truly custom. Pre-manufactured cabinets come in 3” increments ranging from 9”-48” base cabinets 12”-48” upper cabinets, and 9”-60” vanity cabinets. Their custom line will make odd sizes. They will upsell full overlay cabinets, soft close hinges and drawer glides, plywood box construction, and different door styles. What they are not telling you is the actual quality of the product you are buying. They are salesman, their job is to sell. The more they can charge you for the cheapest cabinets the more they make. Pre-manufactured cabinets can have all the upgrades and still be of poor quality. Cheap soft close hinges and drawer glides, a bad finish, and poor customer service after the check clears. After installing thousands of homes for cabinet salesman I’ve learned many problems with buying cabinets from a cabinet store. One being they may or may not have a contractor’s license. The installers they use may or may not have a contractor’s license. If they only provide the cabinets and a design, you are at the mercy of the cabinet installer to do a good job. Once the sale is complete, their job is done. You can buy the best cabinets the cabinet store has to offer and get a bad install. The salesman has no way to fix it because they don’t know how, and the installer is no where to be found.
I have been in plenty of difficult situations as a licensed finish contractor installing for cabinet stores. Unhappy homeowners when they see the poor quality of the cabinets. Me not being able to install because the job was not measured and designed properly. A salesman does not have the attention to detail a licensed finish contractor does, nor the level of responsibility to do a good job.
A medium to large custom cabinet shop.
A custom cabinet shop buys lumber, plywood and hardware to build truly custom cabinets. They have all the machinery and equipment to build any type of cabinet imaginable. The owner has made large investments into the business to be as efficient and productive as possible. With leases on the building, equipment, payroll, insurance, the overhead is high which means high cost. They must hit their numbers to make a profit every month, which is difficult. They typically go after large job after large job from custom home builders to stay afloat. They take on as much work as they can handle, and often, take on more than they can handle. Mistakes are made due to too many variables, people, moving parts. The quality is good and the installs are usually good, the customer service varies from company to company.
General Contractors and Interior Designers.
If you are going through a general contractor or interior designer to get your cabinets, they are getting their cabinets from a cabinet store or a custom cabinet shop. If they are getting your cabinets from a custom shop, they are marking them up. If they are getting your cabinets from a cabinet store/dealer, the salesman, the general contractor and or the interior designer are marking them up.
Krieger Cabinetry
I installed cabinets from cabinet salesman and custom cabinet shops in thousands of homes for over 13 years before starting my own small custom cabinet and woodworking shop. I learned what to do and most importantly, what not to do. With the shop and all the equipment paid for I can take on small to large jobs for less.
I prefer to deal directly with homeowners. This way I have control over the end result. You getting what you pay for. I measure, design, build, finish and install. This works best for you and me.