Originally we had planned to buy the ready made cabinets from someplace like Home Depot or
Lowes so that we could put them in quickly and move into the house that much sooner. Also,
we didn't know how we would be doing financially, so we figured that we could install the
cheaper cabinets and vanities now, use them for a few years and then replace them with
better ones when we had the time and money. What we found out was that because we had
a very custom home, many of the off the shelf cabinets were not going to work or we were
going to end up with some strange configurations, so we ended up going with custom made
cabinets that cost a little more, but they were installed so it freed us up to work on
other things.
Here are the kitchen cabinets before the doors were installed.
The first thing you want to do when you think about cabinets is to decide on what type of
wood you want and what finish you want. Once those two things are decided, they will limit
what pattern you get in the cabinet doors and drawers. You then need to figure out what
your dimensions are in the area that you are going to be installing cabinets and draw a
couple of different configurations to decide which one you like the best.
Merrillat is a popular cabinet maker and they have a very informative web site. Margaret was
able to come up with 99% of the layout based on the information on the web site. With this
information she was able to shop around at the different cabinet makers until she found one
that she liked. When you do decide on where to get your cabinets, make sure they have some
sort of computer program that will allow you to see what your finished cabinets will look
like once they are installed.
Here is the how the cabinets looked on the computer before they were built.
Installation of the cabinets took about two days and also included putting on the counter
tops. Make sure that you have the sinks holes cut out in the counters to match the sinks
you have ordered or you may have to have the counter tops re-installed and this could delay
the final plumbing. Unfortunately this happened to us and pushed back the final plumbing
six weeks.
Here are the finished Kitchen cabinets
Once the cabinets are installed, you can start to see how good of a job you did getting your
walls perfectly straight as small gaps may show up where the vertical backs of the cabinets
meet the walls.
Here is the master bath cabinet before all of the drawer fronts were installed.