Choosing cabinets
When it comes to choosing cabinets, there's a surfeit of choices, but the first step in the process of deciding is deciding on a price range and a cabinet grade. This will highly affect the rest of your cabinet choices, as some cabinets will cost more than you can spend, and others are not a high enough quality.
Kitchen Cabinets
Choosing cabinets for your kitchen is a big part of building and designing a kitchen. There is more to cabinets that color and style. Choosing your cabinets will get you started figuring out how your kitchen will be organized. There's high cabinets, wall cabinets and base cabinets. High cabinets come in different sizes and can include a larder, storage for a vacuum, big bottles, bulk goods, and more. Wall cabinets can be extra high or narrow. Base cabinets are the backbone of your kitchen design. Thus, the first step to choosing cabinets is to consider the type of work space you want to create.
So, decide what you want by thinking of the rule of thumb: store it where you use it. Or in other words, do not create your cabinets to store your soap and have them put in right next to the fridge. Make a plan that divides the kitchen into four activity areas: the cooking area, cleaning area, food area and storage area. Following this way of thinking will keep you from having to go through an obstacle course in order to get a meal on the table, and will help you choose the cabinets that are best for your specific needs.
Cabinets are the costliest part of a kitchen. So, when you choose your cabinets, you will want to make sure you choose ones that you will like. A great way to ensure that you will like the cabinets after they are installed as well, you should bring home a few samples of each part of the kitchen: cabinet doors in different stains, tile samples and countertop samples.
Cabinet Storage
When you choose your cabinets, don't try to match them with your adjoining rooms furniture pieces. You will most likely be changing them in a few years, so pick something that works well with anything, and remember, it is cheaper to buy a new couch then it is to buy new cabinets. So, focus on filling your needs for storage space, and your needs as far as durability and use go.
When it comes to choosing cabinets, other than the size, you also need to pick a style. Cabinets are all basically the same except for the doors. So, decide on a door style. Contemporary? Traditional? Or something else? Then decide on a wood. Which wood? Well, the wood you pick will directly effect the price of your cabinets, but you will want to buy quality or plan on replacing them soon. Last but not least you will pick a stain. What stain? Light or dark? What you pick stain wise will be based on your personal taste.
The three main divisions or grades of cabinets are stock, semi-custom, and custom. There is much overlap between them; the only hard and fast distinction is price. Custom cabinets are the most expensive, stock cabinets are the least expensive and semi-custom cabinets are in between, but are often the best choice as they are often as nice and high of quality as custom, but the cost is significantly less.
Custom Cabinets
Custom cabinets, have cabinet boxes made with higher grade materials, the finishes are hand applied, there is a greater choice of wood species and stains, and the detailing is more refined. Most of the higher cost however, is due to the custom factor--custom cabinets are made to order in any size requested. Thus, if you can find cabinets that are semi-custom, that you like, you will save money.
Stock cabinets have fewer choices of wood species for the doors (but they can be stained to mimic other woods), they also have fewer coats of finish that are machine applied, and less expensive materials are used for the cabinet boxes.
The critical distinction between stock and custom cabinets is the sizing. Stock cabinets only come in fixed sizes, so there is less flexibility in designing a kitchen with them. Since custom cabinets can be ordered in any size you want, the sizing issue may point you in one direction over the other.
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