Kitchen Ideas

Reply to: By "old", I was referring to 1920's. :). Your house should be quite square and level by comparison. Inset style cabinets are shallower as the door takes up an inch of depth that would otherwise be available for dishes etc. Check the manufacturers specs on (inside) depth before you buy. Many companies also offer 15" deep wall cabinets at modest price increase if you have the space for them. "Paint" will hold up well and offer you at least a shot at repairing any future damage. Stained wood is much harder to match anything bigger than a small scratch or dent. Either way, look for a brand that offers "conversion varnish" finishes. These are both clear for stains, or solids for paint colors. They chemically cross link, resist moisture really well and typically hold up the best in my experience. Also avoid cabinets with poor interior finishes. Lots of them come with a "melamine" wood-tone paper lining that peels off in large sheets in the not so distant future. Get finished plywood interiors if you can afford them, or at least the heavier spec melamine (it resembles Formica). -Dan

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Reply to: Answering the quality question requires a bit of an editorial, so bear with me. This is really long, so if all you care about is the bottom line pricing without any of the hundreds of other considerations that go into it, skip this. —————— Modern cabinet construction is absurdly over engineered, for bragging rights and pride, not for functionality. If anyone remembers the old 50’s built in place cabinets, that still exist in many homes, you’d understand that no one “needs” 3/4” plywood box construction, dovetail drawers, and all of the complex wood joinery that have become buzz words to sell you things. Those old built in place cabinets don’t even have backs or sides. The entire cabinet’s strength, and 80 years of existence, relies on the face frame. Most were nailed together, and had a few nailing blocks mounted to the walls. No screws, or glue, or fancy joints. This is why many carpenters insist that face frame cabinets are “superior” Well, yes, if you’re looking to use a minimum of materials, for a budget job, using those old methods will do it. And it will be “strong”. It will just lack functionality and durability in the finish. That’s where we start to see the differences in price and usability. How “strong” does something need to be? Even inexpensive 3/8” particle board sides faceframe cabinets will pass KCMA construction tests. They will last for decades, just fine, if the construction methodology used to create them is correct for the material choice used. This is the specs for plenty of “budget” cabinets, and it works well. The functional wear differences in any framed cabinet are in the corner reinforcement for stability, the hardware used for glides and hinges, and the finishes. That’s where ALL of the money differences reside. 1/2” box sides do get you a bit sturdier box, without the corner supports or I beams being more critical. Furniture board vs plywood is functionally irrelevant and a sales red herring for box construction. Any line that uses a 1/2” box, and isn’t import RTA, will be a pretty good cabinet box. The money is in the doors and faceframes. The quality of wood for the faceframes and doors. Lots of sap wood vs heart wood. Select vs Standard. Low priced woods that are soft used as “paint grade”. its why the price deduction for losing the cabinet box and just ordering a faceframes and doors is maybe 15%. How many times the door is sanded, pretreated, stained, wiped, clear coated. The quality of the finish chemicals and the time taken to finish correlates with cost. Take a nylon and slip it over your hand. Rub your hand across something like a Shenendoah tinted varnish colored cherry cabinet’s exposed end grain on a stile. Then do the same with a like like Plato. Butter. And the high quality wood, with a depth of finish! THAT is the main difference between a OK, Good and Better cabinet. OK won’t even get close. But, it’s OK for many many people. It’s somewhat similar with frameless cabinets, but the box itself becomes far far more important. The box on frameless provides all of the structural strength. The quality of materials and joinery make a difference between OK, Good, and Great. Frameless furniture board with confirmat joinery is a standard everywhere but the US, where we cling to framed cabinets. It’s a good system. But again, the box is everything. So a 5/8” standard furniture board with knockoff import hardware will not be as good quality as will 3/4” high density low formaldehyde brands with German hardware. Ikea is frameless, and uses OK box materials with Good hardware. It’s not Great, because Blum does make it to a price point. But it doesn’t need to be Great, because the vast majority of people simply can not tell the difference between Good and Great. The doors are the same way too. Gloss melamine Or Thermofoil are low cost OK ways to achieve a shiny slab door. There are Good and Great ways of doing that that will cost more money. Nothing has the luster and translucence of a polished acrylic door. It’s like a pearl, in that it has a depth to it. Polished polyester resumes paint is another possibility. None of those things are available in a budget line, because they aren’t budget options. Some better built lines offer laminate and Thermofoil doors, but like the boxes, laminate and Thermofoil come in different quality levels too. Their quality is objectively better than IKEA. Where IKEA shines is not their OK quality boxes, or Good quality hardware. Their appeal is with their transparency and accessibility to the DIY crowd. That allows creative and handy people to do their own customization for some things. Their hanging rails and leveling legs make an OK installation possible even from the inexperienced. Again, most people can’t really see the differences in installation levels, but they do exist. If they had more parts available, and tweaked a few others, Id rate the install possibility higher. One huge drawback of IKEA is that you need to be creative and handy to use them. Putting them together is only a part of it. The % of population that owns and uses tools has been steadily dropping, and hardware stores have shifted from marketing to the DIY crowd to the Do It FOR Me crowd. “IKEA hacking” to make something exist, or work, that’s readily available from other cabinet lines, appears to be yet another source of pride and bragging rights than it is about any dollar saving. The other big limitation is the limitations. The sizes are absurdly limited compared with even a very budget basic cabinet line like Woodstar. The number of doors and finishes that they offer is also quite limited. That limitation of choices has led to a whole cottage industry of selling 3rd part IKEA doors. Remember my point above? That the doors are the most expensive part of the cabinet? By the time you deal with that added expense, and the other limitations, a better optioned cabinet with the aid of the in shop Kitchen Designer blows them out of the water. But again, the choice to use IKEA is often not made objectively, but emotionally. Just like someone choosing Plain and Fancy rather than Diamond. “Good isn’t Best” is an emotional choice, when Good is objectively Good Enough for function. Pride in accomplishment, and bragging rights about self sufficiency has a big value to many people! I’m not discounting that at all. That's something that Ikea succeeds very well at tapping into. Im trying to remove the emotional component from it here, to objectively discuss that the emotional attachment exists as an element. It IS science that people who are involved in a project rate their efforts higher than if they were rating a strangers similar results. (I bet someone steps forward to call me an IKEA hater over mentioning the IKEA Effect.) The bottom line is that Ikea is an entry level quality cabinet. And that entry level quality is good enough to last for years and years without “having” to purchase higher quality to achieve longevity. If you are handy, don’t mind contributing time instead of dollars, and the doors that IKEA offers are something you like, it will be a Great Value for you. If you are either not handy, or don’t like the doors, or have size challenges, exploring other options would be better for you. The cost of your own limitations affects the value that Ikea provides.

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