Do you mean regular face framed cabinets vs. frameless or are you thinking of inset doors? (Inset into the frame.)

Not me. I paid to get rid of my framed cabinets and go frameless. My kitchen isn't any bigger, but I'm 4x happier. I didn't consider inset for the same reason -- as well s the higher cost.

If your kitchen is 4x larger, make sure you don't make it so large that you create functional problems just for the sake of having a big space.

Yes, I mean face-frame where the cupboard doors are inset into the frame. I love the classic style it brings to the kitchen.
Thanks for the concern, lascatx. The kitchen is 4x bigger since the other kitchens were so small. The kitchen, servery and pantry were drywalled this week and I walked through it and it's big but not enormous. I have various "zones" so it should be functional.
Glad you're happier with your kitchen. Ultimately, that's all that matters.

Whether or not its worth the 20% extra can only be measured by how happy you're going to be if you get them, and how much regret you'll have if you don't. We are just starting our reno and faced the same decison. We concluded that we would save a few bucks now, but deeply regret not getting the framed if we didn't- so we did. If budget isn't a big issue, get what you want!

I really love the period look of inset cabs so to me it is worth it. My present kit is small so one thing I did was no toe kick space except at the sink. It made the 3 drawer stacks deeper so I lost no space. I also had the stiles made as narrow as they could. My uppers are deeper too. In the past 7 years we did 2 kitchens and I did inset in both. I found having the cabs custom made was more reasonable one stained, one painted and no regrets.

I'm getting inset cabinets and I cannot wait. I only had the price compared to partial overlay door/drawers and it's only $500 more to dothe inset. I'm not sure what the charge would've been for frameless, but I don't know, 20% sounds high.

The only thing with inset is measure your dishes. Since the doors are in the boxes you lose that space and my dishes wouldn't have fit so I changed to 15" deep uppers. I just loved the look and for $500 DH said go for it :)

"I mean face-frame where the cupboard doors are inset into the frame."

Those are called inset cabinets. "Framed" refers to the type of construction. All inset cabinets are framed, but not all framed cabinets are inset.

I have beaded inset cabinets and love them. I believe it was a 15% up-charge. $15,000 more sounds too high if you are otherwise comparing apples to apples. You could also do full overlay for the lower cabinets and inset for the upper. I've seen that and it looks very nice.

Like so much else in kitchen planning, it's a trade-off. With ours, we could stay within the cabinet budget by choosing either insets or having the boxes made of plywood instead of particle board. (I think we paid 10-12% extra, not 20%.) The look was important, we decided, so we went with inset and made just the sink cabinet out of plywood. Others would have made the opposite choice, no doubt. Some would have considered them both to be important and expanded their cabinet budget, and compromised elsewhere.

The question of whether it's worth $15K to you has to take into account not just how much you like the look and whether you have adequate storage. Ask yourself what you would otherwise be doing with that money. Will you be giving up something else you need or want more? (A high-end range and venting system? Vacations? A car, or goodly chunk of one? College fund contributions? Charitable donations? A grand piano? Artwork?) Are you borrowing the money, and if so, with the interest added, how much are those inset drawers and doors really going to cost you by the time they're paid for?

I'm very happy with our insets. They seem to fit this old house and repeatedly make us smile. It was worth the cost to us.

I love the look of inset cabs, but $15k sounds very steep to me for something purely cosmetic.
We had plans drawn for our house that ended up being $120k over budget, so the front porch was the first and easiest thing to remove from the plan because it was simply for looks.
Your new kitchen may be 4 x the size of your old ones, but you will find that you will use every inch of it over time. It may seem big when you first unpack, but you may also wish you had more space a year or 2 from now. If you are paying $15k to have less storage space, then that is something you had better really want and find it very easy to afford. Someone may pay you more for your house someday if they love the look, but no one will give you an extra $15k. You have to know this was done purely as a splurge.
And even if you feel you will stay here "forever", the only thing we know about the future is that it can be unpredictable.
I would say to only do so if it is well within your budget and is not taking $15k that you could better use elsewhere (like paying down the mtg, putting it aside for the next car, etc...). If it were for my house and my family's money, I would not do it, but you may be in a different financial situation so it is your decision and all of us here are just giving food for thought.

I really really wanted inset but after looking at them and the full overlay, I realized that if I was not building a home, I would never notice the difference. I saved so many pics of kitchens that I love but it wasn't only because of the inset cabs. The majority were inset but some weren't. Some of the full overlay give an inset look when there is strategic molding down the side. You prob don't understand what I mean and unfortunately I don't know how to explain it properly. Good luck to you!

I think the inset is a classic look and if you like it you should go for it! Many custom homes have Inset Cabinets.

You might want to check out "Crown Point Cabinetry" or "Best Cabinets" becasue these guys specialize in Inset Cabinets and sell direct anywhere in the USA.

Here is a link that might be useful: Inset Cabinets

That is a high price to pay for inset. I am also surprised that a few posted on here that it was just 500 more over a partial overlay. I must be dumb to be able to find cabinet company that will do it for the little for my kitchen and bath business.

Generally it is a 10-20% up charge for the company that offers the cabinets as inset instead of face framed full or partial overlay. I did a kitchen design for a house in the DC suburbs a while back for a kitchen that had 60' of walls to cover with cabinets. I could do it with Bridgewood custom Company for about $32,000 fully loaded and 9'6" to top of the walls and 10' to the top of a 7' wide hood. In Geppetto to go inset and fully custom where all cabinets were about 8' long per section built in the plant the price was $60,000. I made about 7k on the lower price and 15k on the higher. I did not get the job it was for a contractor who quit on a crazy homeowner.

If I had used Geppetto for both quotes the cost difference was about 20% using Geppetto against Bridgewood the spread was much more as bridgewood is a better buy if inset is not required.

I read all the time that inset has less drawer space and loss of usefullness. My inset drawers from Geppetto are the same width as any face framed full overlay or partial overlay cabinet. When you are hiring a good company and you do inset with lots of accessory trim you should be gaining storage space not losing it. All the trim should be built into the boxes as useable space and not modular fillers that look fancy.

So if you are quoted 15k more and losing space.... run away

We have both, so I can offer some comparisons! We used flush inset cabinets on a wall where we have lots of uppers and floor-to-ceiling cabinets, so they're almost all doors vs. drawers (just four drawers) so there isn't much of a loss of space. We used frameless on two other walls where all but one are drawers and space was critical. I love the framed cabinets for the look---those are the ones you can see from the rest of the house---but the frameless drawers do definitely hold more (I was measuring drawers today for inserts, and there's a big difference!) I'm not sure there's really any way around this, short of having really skinny stiles.

And I would NOT pay $15K more---!!! That's way more than our entire kitchen full of cabinets! Keep shopping around. We were fortunate to find a cabinetmaker who was relatively new to flush inset and did not charge extra for it (and we were also fortunate that he did a beautiful job on them, with only a few glitchy things) but even the quotes we got from cabinetmakers with lots of experience and from larger shops were no more than 15% more (most were around 10% more, and one of the shops had a special at some point while we were looking where they waived the upcharge, if you can wait for sales).

Other random factors to consider...
- Flush inset cabinets can be finicky in odd weather---if it's wet or humid out, the doors can swell and stick. Not an issue with frameless or full overlay.
- You can mimic the inset look pretty effectively with frameless or full overlay (though remember that full overlay has many of the same space issues for drawers as inset)
- Frameless cabs stick out more than flush inset if you have standard depth cabinets, though if you go custom you can of course adjust this accordingly. But a 24" deep cabinet will actually be 25" deep in frameless once the doors/drawer fronts are on, and 24" deep in flush inset with the same interior depths on the drawers. That inch (and the associated inch of counter) mattered for us, since our inset cabinets are in a major walkway. This is something I didn't really think about in choosing styles.

HTH!

Check out the link below- I posted it a few days ago - my kitchen has beaded inset and framless. I love the look of the inset but get the most space with the framless in all my drawers and lowers and pantry. I have only had ONE person catch that the entire kitchen is not beaded inset! Because all the uppers are inset that is what the eye sees. Plus I did have my entire china hutch done in the inset because I really love it.

The only thing I have to say about inset is there are a few bruises to the wood on the frame where we have hit it while putting dishes away. I'm sure that when the kitchen is a bit older it will look less obvious.

If you want me to take a close up photo of a section of the kitchen let me know. CJC

Cabico, cherry, shaker, quartzite finished kitchen

http://ths.gardenweb.com/forums/load/kitchbath/msg011351109083.html?3

I only had "cabinet style" thoughts. I knew I'd be using previously owned cabinets for my own remodel so I scoured places like Green Demolitons and Habitat for Humanity for months.

Eventually, I got a truly amazing deal on cabinets. I paid probably 15 - 20% on the dollar and got enough cabinets to do my kitchen and dining room in exactly the configuration I wanted.

I had decided when looking for cabintry that I would accept either full overlay or inset with a preference towards inset. The cabinets I got were a beautiful full overlay. Everyone loves them... but they are slowly driving me batty. As DIYers we installed them and then UNinstalled them and made some modifications to try and pull them more tightly together. We are currently at a pause with them because I can't decide if I want to move forward with them or keep looking for inset.

So, just my story of irritation and mild regret. If you want inset you may REALLY want inset.