Expensive for Chinese. You can do better by going American.

Seems high to me too. I paid

Agree that price seems high for RTA.

That seems ridiculous high to me. Our Barker Cabinets came in at $10,500 for 16 cabinets. Those included 4 drawer stacks, full height pantry cabinet with roll outs, finished end panels including 3 full height finished end panels ($$$), crown, light rail, high quality Blum hardware with soft close doors and drawers...and delivery...you can definitely do better.

I am going to go try a difference Fabuwood dealer in the area and get them to quote the kitchen. I just cant see why they would come in 6k over MSRP for these RTA pre-assembled cabinets.

I just recently got a quote on Fabuwood cabinets and I don't think they were RTA. I have pretty much the same amount of cabinets as you and I was given $14,000 with install. I wasn't really interested because they were Chinese but the cabinet guy wanted to give me a price on them, he did recommend them. I want made in the USA though.

Bored tonight.......

Just figured out the cost of your design using Kabinart, a semi custom brand I offer from Nashville Tn. I have had an account with Fabuwood in the first store I set up with a partner I walked away from who turned out to be an evil person. Another story....

The dealer cost for Fabuwood at that time was .34 plus freight. We had to assemble it after we got it. They would only assemble for deliveries made from their building in the suburbs of Ny....

Most dealers are very aware of the cost and competition... I am surprised you would get a price that high. If you are looking at an RTA brand and realize that it is you normally are trying to get the full overlay look at the partial overlay price of the American brands that are entry level in cost...

$12,576 would be our price for the Lancaster from Kabinart. That would be a solid wood door, all wood box (meaning plywood) with solid wood dovetail drawer box with soft close guides and soft close hinges.... This price includes the crown shown on your plan, toe kick, finished ends as needed, and a touch up kit. Meaning I did not purposefully lower the price to make it look better knowing additional items would be required to make a complete install....

Most dealers are very aware of the competition.. Fabuwood should be a lower price then that.... I have a 45% margin on that price meaning dealer cost is around 7,000

Its a gutsy move to price fabuwood that high. Either they see you as a sucker or they really do not want your business and priced it high to politely say no thanks....

Fabuwood is not a rock bottom priced RTA cabinet they are in line with JSI and others like them....

You should be able to get semi custom cabinets from various brands that are entry level in price and quality for less then the quote you have been given...

Thanks everyone especially David. That really puts it into perspective. David, I sent you an email.

Thanks again.

This post was edited by vonecu4 on Mon, Apr 14, 14 at 13:14

I'm sure I could do it in Aristokraft for half of that. Made right in Indiana too.

I have almost the exact same layout, slightly smaller. We went kraftmaid. We have 2 drawer stacks, pull out trash, 36" sink, lazy Susan corner, 24" tall pantry, 12 " pull out and 8 uppers. 15 pieces all together. We did stained maple in a shaker door, did not upgrade to plywood boxes, light rails but no crown molding. Our total was just over $5000 delivered. Hope that helps!

We buy 10-12 kitchens every year and have good experience with forevermark(tsg) brand of RTA's. Their platinum line(pacifica in cherry and few other colors are pretty good and reasonably priced. Its a good buy if you can get 50% off mrp with free shipping. stockcabinetexpress.com is a good place for best prices and talk to Fred.

I am trying to bump this conversation a bit. I've been doing A LOT of research on rta cabinets and I have gotten a lot of good information on this website. From what I have seen, the top RTA cabinet manufacturers are JSI, Fabuwood, and maybe TSG (Forevermark)? One that I have seen davidindc say was a good line before was Clark & Son (Faircrest), but I can't find much useful information about their quality/durability so far. Does anyone have any feedback on this list (additions/removals/one better than others)? I'm really just trying to focus in on the top RTA lines out there so I can choose from those lines and find the best pricing. Also, I have been trying to focus in on maple fronts for durability, do you all think the wood type makes much of a difference? Thanks!

Define top? Sales? Quality? Service? Value? Price?

Good question. I would say best quality but in the lower price range. I would consider conestoga, scherr, and barker in a higher price range. And then JSI, TSG, and Fabuwood in the lower price range. So I would like to know who the best quality manufacturers are in that lower price range that is competitive with JSI, TSG, Fabuwood, Faircrest. Does that make sense? Sorry I wasn't more descriptive in the first message!

American made quality or chinese made quality? The two are apples and oranges. Most import RTA looks good at first glance. Appearances. Flash, and not substance. The voids in the plywood cores and the formaldehyde used in their assembly won't show up at a glance. The poor quality hardware performs OK for 6-12 months, and then the drawers start being hard to close, and the door hinges start exhibiting metal fatigue and snapping.

Do you want actual quality to live with, or the appearance of quality until your flip is sold and you've collected the check?

Sophie - I am interested in any RTA cabinet in a similar price range, even though I know that probably doesn't exist in American made RTA cabinets. Also, you seem to have first hand experience with the chineese RTA cabinets breaking down. Could you share the manufacturers of those cabinets that you have seen breaking down after a year or two? I just saw a 2 year old set of cabinets in a home that were made by JSI that still looked good and operated very well. Thanks!

When I set up my new showroom, i had all of the vendors from everywhere coming out of the woodwork to court me to carry their lines. None of the imports, either assembled or RTA, made the cut quality wise after I did my examinations and tests. If they were at least half decent in hardware quality, my Aristokraft line would beat them in price. Good particle board is better than bad plywood any day, and most were not good ply. Pull out one of their adjustable shelves, and you can see the actual core of the ply. Do some testing with that plywood shelf. It delaminated worse than any of the particle board cabinets that I tested! It also had skips and voids in it when I cut it in two. None of the finishes came close to being anything but poor to mediocre. Most were tinted top coats to mask the quality of wood used underneath.

I made the decision to carry no import cabinets. I can do American made, assembled for less and have much happier customers. Any replacements do not have to come all the way across the ocean. Just Indiana.

It seems that every time a local dealer has told me that they have cabinets that are competitively priced with the chineese rta, they always come in at least 2 to 3 thousand more. The closest I have found so far are American Woodmark Cabinets at Home Depot which were probably within 2000 of say a JSI cabinet. I'm all ears if someone has an American cabinet suggestion with plywood boxes and similar upgrades to the chineese cabinets for a similar price.

I'm in perfect agreement that bad plywood is much much worse than good particle board. Too many wood snobs don't really understand or care as long as they hit the buzz words though. If you want cheep cheep cheep, then you're sure gonna find it. But, you don't get something for nothing. If AmWood was 2-3K higher than the cheep cheep cheep, then you need to increase your cabinet budget. Your bottom line isn't sufficient for the quality that you say you want. If your bottom line is more important, then don't gripe about the quality level you're gonna end up with.

I'm not complaining about the quality I would get, I am only asking which of the RTA lines is the best based on people's experience. If you truly have personal experience with RTA cabinets falling apart, I would love to know who those manufacturers are. Most of the time when people speak about quality problems with RTA cabinets, the information is always very generic. I would love to know some specifics. Are they really all the exact same? Or are there some that are better than others?

If I were you, I'd look at ikea. I think it is likely the lowest price you will find with decent quality.

Thanks for the suggestion crl_ and I have considered it, but their modern looking cabinets just don't line up with what we like. I wish they offered something more traditional.

Try pricing IKEA boxes combined with doors from Barker, Scherrs or Semihandmade (there are probably other sources that sell doors pre-drilled to work with ikea cabinets, but those are the ones I'm familiar with). That will up the price a but, but should still be a lower price option with good quality for the money.

Edited: I should add, when I say "familiar with" I mean I have seen them mentioned on this forum often enough to remember them. I have ordered sample doors from Barkers and am satisfied with them (hopefully our GC has put in our Barker cabinet order) but have no personal experience otherwise.

Had to buy a floor scraper the other day for a job I was doing. Was at Home Depot getting other stuff so I bought their "cheap" 7.00 version. It lasted about twenty minutes on the job before it was trash. Next day bought the real one at my flooring supply for like 23.00. I'll have that one for years and countless jobs. Point is which one was cheaper. Now I had to buy two. You're asking which cabinet line will fall apart first. Who knows. Big awareness lately of excissive formaldehyde levels in Chinese flooring at the lowest price point (Lumber liquidators). Pretty good possibility same adhesives used in the lower priced cabinets as well. I guess when we start seeing two headed kittens born we'll know for sure.

Its easy to get a traditional look with IKEA plus custom fronts. Check out the places crl listed; I have heard that scherr's will bore hinge holes to IKEA specs, and others may too. We put Conestoga fronts on IKEA cabinets and it was not terribly hard even though they were not bored to IKEA specs. (I did buy a few cheapie IKEA doors to use as templates, and that helped a bunch)

The only problem I see with IKEA boxes is that it seems like you pretty much have to go with white doors, right? I was hoping for a natural wood look. Also, aren't IKEA's boxes made in China too?

You do not have to go with white doors. They SELL doors that aren't white. I believe with the new line the boxes only come in white. But the doors are full overlay so you ca use whatever color doors you want.

I am not on the made in China is all junk bandwagon. I don't know where ikea cabinets are made. Ikea cabinets have a long standing reputation as an extremely good value. And they are made to iKEA's standards--check the specifications on vocs, etc. Have you done any research on ikea cabinets? There are a lot of reviews out there.

Three years ago we redid our kitchen -- with a similar floor plan to yours. We did solid cherry RTA cabinets. All solid plywood with thick shelves. Blum hinges and slides. 21 cabinets -- bottoms were mostly drawers. They were and are beautiful and have held up very well with our family of 4 people who are very hard on things. We used Conestoga cabinets (made in Pennsylvania) through Cabinetmakers Choice. http://cabinetmakerschoice.com/. They were recommended by several other GWers at the time. Cost was under $9,500, including shipping. Very happy customer. My old posts were under KrabbyPatty.

bcwaibel...thank you for the feedback. The specifics you provided are helpful! crl_, I have done a little research on them, but the white boxes with real wood doors is a put-off for me. I know some don't mind it, just a personal preference. Also, I can't lie, I really have trouble with putting particle board in my house (even though I know it may be true it could hold up better, I just dislike the stuff).