We have had Medallion in 3 homes in over 20 years and have ordered for our current build. The only issue was with knife hinges, we are getting cup hinges instead. I did have minor finish wear on one door with a knob pull after 10 years. Glassware cabinet - constant use.

You need the top of the line for the all plywood - no furniture board. We had basic oak for first, oak, cherry, and are getting rustic maple and maple. There are upcharges for finished ends,glass fronts add more to the costs. We choose the raised panel doors because of the quality of the look - solid wood.

DH is contractor, we order semi-custom directly from home supply store (Menard's). They have frequent sales, usually every 4-6 weeks.

I don't have experience with the KraftMaid.

LOve my Medallion cabs. We went with inset. Quality is supberb. You can see them in the finished kitchen blog

We had our Medallion/Schuler cabinets installed a year ago. Ordered them through our local home improvement store, Lowes. We're happy with the look and the quality. Raised panel, maple, chestnut stain, no glaze. Don't have experience with Kraftmaid.

I'm about to order my Schuler/Medallion cabinets from Lowe's. Just from the sample doors, the finishes looked far superior to KM. They will customize any cabinet for you, but you pay for it. According to my KD, they also have many different size/shape cabinets than other brands. Good luck!

My MIL has had both Schuler/Medallion nd KM.

The KM cabinets were installed about 5 yrs ago and there is noticable wear on some of the drawers. A less used towel drawer's bottom is seperating from the sides of the drawer.

She has numerous times she should have used Schuler/Medallion instead of KM.

I just got a brand new kitchen installed. I searched high and low for a painted finish and chose Schuler. I am having a couple of issues to work through:

--one door was actually cracked
--one door had glue on it from the factory
--one drawer had two large streaks of sapwood
--microwave shelf had flawed edge banding on it (they glue veneer on the plywood shelf and the edge was ragged)

The cabinet installer has a touch-up paint kit from Schuler. He was able to lightly sand the edge and apply some paint to it, so it's impossible to see now. I accepted that fix, otherwise I would have to wait two weeks and stop my kitchen remodel, which wasn't worth it to me.

I am going to have Lowes put in a claim with Schuler and get those items fixed. Otherwise, they are really beautiful, well-built cabinets in a mid-line price point. Schuler also warrants their cabinets for lifetime with the original purchaser.

BTW, the cabinets were beautifully packed including every piece of crown molding and baseboard. Speaking of crown molding, they offer about the best crown pieces that I've seen. I think I ordered 16 cabinets in total, but I had 42 boxes to open!

HTH,

Karen

We went with Kraft Maid and are having problems with craftmanship. We ordered a rustic Dillon birch and anticipated knots, etc. We did not anticipate cracks, scratches, glue, a notch knocked out of a door side, etched glass, see through knot holes, chips, missing bumpers, etc. It's been really time consuming to get it all worked out and we expect a tech beginning of August to make repairs. I would have loved replacements because a re-do isn't solid.

We checked into Medallion at another kitchen design place. The owner assured me that if Kraft Maid doesn't work out and we choose to send the kitchen back, that Medallion has all of the choices. They apparently have a large selection of pieces to hook together to make a unique kitchen.

I'm also looking at both. The problem for me is price - in order to get away from the furniture board, you need to go with the designer gold line in Medallion.

I love the finish though and have heard such good things.
Have you priced both, and if so, how much of a difference?I'm waiting for a price on the KM but I'm curious about how much of a difference there'll be.

I priced my kitchen design in both Schuler/Medallion and Kraftmaid. There was about a $1000 difference (Schuler was more) than the Kraftmaid. Lowe's is starting a new promotion on cabinets on 8/1. Depending on how many you purchase, you get an instant rebate of up to $5000 off your cabinets.

marcy, is the promotion on the Schuler, the Kraftmaid, or both?

Wow, Marcy I'm now wondering if I paid too much for my Schuler cabinets :-(. I got 10% off, a free sink base, automatic upgrade to full extension glides and soft close mechanism on the doors and drawers. However, my KD told me the prices were going up after I bought. Then, they took the sales tax off when I chose to use their cabinet installer.

I was told by Lowes that the rep would not replace the drawer. I guess I'm going to have to live with it. It's not a huge deal because it is covered up with tupperware containers that I am storing there.

I have Schuler/Medallion Quartersawn Oak... and love them. I have had them for over three years now with absolutely no complaints. When they were installed, there were some missing "parts" (crown moulding, light rail, shelf, one cabinet did not have full extension drawers)... when I went and spoke to the KD at Lowes, she immediately called the manager over and he remedied my problems on the spot. Reordered everything that was in error and the installer was out to fix everything after the parts came in....

Love them.

The Lowe's promotion is for both Schuler and Kraftmaid, and could be for the other Lowe's brands, but I'm not sure. It's based on how much you spend. Home Depot is also running the same promotion on their cabinets. I was surprised that the Krafmaid wasn't much less than the Schuler. I had them both priced out with plywood, full extension, painted finish. But that was before I added all the extras like the crown molding, etc... so the Schuler could be pricing out much more in the end. I also asked for a free sink base since Home Depot is offering that with their promotion.

Schuler's crown molding knocks the socks off of KrafMaid and Diamond/Thomasville. Schuler has a ton of crown molding options. Schuler doesn't have all the storage options that Diamond has, so their focus is very different.

Schuler's drawers and boxes were more sturdy than Diamond/Thomasville. Diamond was dinged pretty badly by Consumer Reports for 3/8 inch boxes last year, which I think they have now remedied.

Schuler also has more range hood options than Diamond. Again, their focus is more on the wood work and the sturdiness and less on the adds-ons, although I found everything I needed and wanted with Schuler.