To contractors: Where should I buy kitchen cabinets?

Hello, I hope I can be of some help, for my parents JUST finished replacing their entire kitchen (cabinets, appliances, countertops). At first, they shopped around with Home Depot & Lowes & local lumber companies. They had the kitchen designed by someone at Lowes. & in the beginning, it looked like they would be buying everything from Lowes. But after a few months, Lowes started to get very pushy & were basically forcing my parents to hurry up & buy everything right now. So my parents said to hell with Lowes & went to a local kitchen designer company. Which, ironically, the head woman of that company, used to work for Lowes & had trained the kitchen designer there, but she left because Lowes was very rude & forceful when it came to very large purchases ($20,000+). My parents looked at & liked Medallion cabinets. Which is what they bought in the end. They bought them through the local kitchen designer. A local lumberyard also had some great cabinets & a lot of local lumber yards will have sales & huge discounts on cabinets that are display pieces. So if you are looking to save money, that would be a place to shop. I guess my biggest piece of advice, DO NOT BUY FROM LOWES or other big retail chains. They will seem nice, but if enough time passes, the manager will tell the employee who is helping you, to hurry up & close the deal, since it is a lot of money. I don’t think retail chains understand that when people spend that kind of money, it takes a long time to make sure everything is perfect & you want to make sure that when you spend 20k in one shopping trip – it is exactly what you want. I hope I was able to help a little bit & I wish you the best in your kitchen designing.

I would recommend looking at Huntwood cabinets. They are built in Washington state, shipped worldwide. They have cheap ones all the way up to high end custom. I have used them in dozens of kitchen/bathroom remodels and never had a problem. They can be as cheap or as expensive as you’d like. Good luck.

My husband works for a home improvement supply company, and I can assure you the ready made is a less costly than custom, and better quality.

Most contractors will steer you to a custom cabinet supplier because they get a kickback or word of mouth referral sharing.

@yarnlady, I wish that were true. I have been doing this for twenty years an have never gotten or met anyone who has gotten a kickback. I refer people to suppliers I know are honest purely in the interest of helping the customer get a good product at a fair price, and getting the supplier to stay in business.

Thanks everyone! Since I’m new to buying cabinets, I’m wondering what the medium price range is? How cheap can replacing cabinets be, and how expensive?

I need to have an idea so I can be wiser about my shopping, because I know that certain features are obviously more expensive….but I don’t have any ideas of what good prices are..

There are so many different ranges it is impossible to give an answer. Ikea has a great guide.

I’m a contractor and I personally don’t like to get Ikea cabinets because I have to assemble them. I usually get quotes from at least 4 places. 2 big box stores, and two others. I’ve never found the big box stores to be competitive, but maybe in some parts of the country they are. In this economy you also want your cabinet maker to stay in business long enough to get your cabinets to you. I wouldn’t pay any money up front to a company I didn’t have a really good feeling about. The cheapest cabinets are always used, most sizes are standard, and you can usually make do, especially if you have good woodworking skills. The low end good quality price would be used, for around 1000.00, materials only.

Wow this question is old! I ended up getting Kraftmaid, and I’m so happy with them! I know I paid a bit more than sensible people would, but I feel I got everything I wanted and that it was well worth the price. :)

Where are you from. If you and anybody else here are in NJ, MD or PA, try going to one of InstockKitchen’s Kitchen Cabinets showroom and you won’t be disappointed. They used to cater to contractors and builders but now caters to the general public and up to now everything still goes at wholesale prices. By the way, their cabinets are made out of all wood so you won’t have to worry about durability.