@ Michey312, one more question - is that a bench sitting area in one of the pics? We were thinking of doing something similar and I like the look you have.

@tejadajm, yes it’s a nook. Here’s a before/after picture, you can see the nook a bit better.

@Michey312 are you in Chicago? If so, was wondering who you used for assembly / install. Thanks in advance if you are.

Hi @matthewlesko, I’m in NY, sorry.

watch the videos and you can put them together yourself, I did , we did hire someone to install. He was very impressed I assembled them myself. depending on the amount of cabinets and space and clamps to hold them while the glue dries, it could take up to 5 days to put together. easily $100 or more per hour which could get quite costly

My husband and I put them together ourselves as well. After the first few it was very easy, and we are not avid DIYers - we usually outsource anything that looks too difficult. Then we also had a pro install them once they were assembled, and cost us about $100 per cabinet for the install.

I did all of them except the base corner, wall corner my husband helped me. The fridge cabinet 39" wide was harder because of the size and weight, so the contractor installing them and his son and I put the fridge cabinet together. I glued and hit it with a rubber mallet and the 2 of them moved the panels into place. watch the videos over and over so it becomes more familiar

even ordered the cabinets unfinished and did that myself too, but I have been staining furniture for just about 40 years.
I stained the cherry base cabinets and spray painted with a Grayco sprayer the uppers and the one wall that is all antique white. as you can see, I still have a few more doors to spray, but waiting for the weather to be nicer as I do that in the back yard. Counters should be installed on Monday unless the 2 snowstorms through there schedule off.

The folks at thecabinetjoint.com are pretty good to work with. Unfortunately, the product they sell isn't great....

I bought white painted cabinets from Conestoga last summer (July 2017). I do a lot of woodworking (I have a dedicated shop), I've done a lot of furniture and cabinet assembly, and I'm familiar with wood finishes. The cabinets weren't difficult to assemble, but the quality--the finish, in particular--is terrible. Over half of my cabinet doors arrived chipped or damaged in some way (which, from a timing perspective, is a problem in and of itself). I reported these issues to Conestoga (through thecabinetjoint.com), but their warranty is as bad as their product: terrible. They replaced some of the damaged doors, but only the ones that were obviously damaged in transit (not their fault). None of the defects in manufacturing were covered. The finish chips easily. We've had the cabinets for less than 9 months, and honestly they look like they are 9 years old. We bought inset doors and the center stiles have started to warp, which makes it impossible to have a uniform gap around the doors. We've had lots of warping... Also, hairline cracks have appeared at a lot of the joints. That usually happens if the glue wasn't allowed to cure long enough between glue up and finishing. There is a 5" x 5" patch on the face of a door that arrived with extensive crackling (How did the door even leave their factory like that? Quality control issues...)--which Conestoga claims is "natural"--I have a house full of painted wood, and this is the only place that I've experienced this "natural" defect. These cabinets seemed like a good deal, especially for someone like myself that is skilled at working with wood. And on paper, they are. Unfortunately, the actual project leaves a lot to be desired, and a pretty sever case of buyer's remorse...

Hi Tim C.,I'm sorry to hear about your experience. Will you be willing to post some pictures of your cabinets and provide more details as to what you ordered? I.E., door style and finish choices?

I have a kitchen and pantry full of cabinets and doors from Conestoga, ordered through the cabinet joint, and had an entirely different experience than you did. I've subsequently placed two additional orders, for other projects, and have been extremely pleased with the quality and finish of the product. The only cabinet door which looks bad is the kitchen trash one which I tend to push shut with my foot. Regarding damage, I am quite shocked to hear that there was any in transit. Our cabinets and doors have come protected as well as Fort Knox; on pallets. I'm getting ready to place another order with them as well.

You may wish to start a new post and solicit input from other Conestoga owners, to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. I've been on this forum for a while and not heard of this sort of problem with the Conestoga products; quite the alternative.

--oldbat2be

I'm beginning to wonder if Tim C is a competitor? Only because they only made 2 comments on their account since March 2018 and never came back again.

I had issues with things coming in flawed- drawers had staples coming through on the inside, paint looked smudged in another area. They (manufacturer) couldn't get the pie corner upper cabinet right- should've been even 24 x24 but one side was too long, took three tries. CJ replaced each part I asked for- they were great to work with. In the end I would do it again despite the hiccups- I love the cost savings and being fully custom.

I designed and built a home several years ago. Well subcontractors I hired "built" the home, but I actually built the kitchen with the help of CJ. It was one aspect of the build that I wanted to put my hands on for the personal satisfaction (and also labor savings). It turned out fantastic and saved at least $10k, so I'm working with CJ again on my current new home build. I had no quality issues, but I also did not have finishes applied by Conestoga's factory (i.e. finish blemishes appear to be one complaint from a few members here).

@michey312 what color are your grey Conestoga cabinets? Was that custom or a standard offering?

It’s Hearthstone Grey @tamara alvarez. It’s one of their standard colors.

Ben - curious what the door style is you chose? Thanks!

We have had a nightmare w it’s our cabinets. Our doors were a complete different shade then the boxes. They were removed and the installer redid the boxes with the veneer, which I am sick about having in this kitchen, and reinstalled. The island was a custom color. It came with doors knicked. One looked like a forklift went over it. They did not give us any touch up paints and have two doors with knicks from conestoga. Our master bathroom cabinets are two colors. The vertical frames on doors are a darker color than the horizontal. We are getting a rep to come to the house with our installer. I’m very very unhappy with the length of time this has been going on. Never have we been offered a discount or anything for that matter. I will post on here when we hear more. Buyer beware!! For what we paid for these I sure would have expected much better.

@jharris338 who did you end up ordering from and how did it turn out?

@michey312 CJ offers both plywood and natural wood drawer interiors, which did you go with? Did the help you got with your design cost more?

I would never buy MDF cabinets or doors. I've had so many problems with MDF in the current house and previous houses that I stay away from it. I just love real wood :) I have Conestoga cabinets in my kitchen and laundry room. The painted ones I bought hard paint grade maple and I spray painted the doors myself. The base cabinets in the kitchen I bought unfinished cherry. The Cherry cabinets I've had since early 2014, all the other maple cabinets were bought end of 2017. Both are holding up quite well. I didn't order inset doors, just the standard overlay. Thinking to replace our 24yo builder grade 60" bathroom vanity and will definitely buy Conestoga cabinets again.

I'd like to chime in regarding Conestoga Wood for what it is worth. I ordered Conestoga cabinets in 2016 from Pete when his company was Northern Granite Company. Pete was very very helpful and I had a ton of questions. I did have quite a few damaged doors from the factory and working with Pete, every single door I was unhappy with was replaced quickly. Stuff happens, but what is important but overall customer service, of which I was very pleased with both Peter and Conestoga . At the end I was quite happy with the final result. In fact, I've moved since that project and will be remodeling my new kitchen and ordering from Pete again in the near future.

@DIYHER - You can order unfinished? I was wondering about that since I'm not seeing a light grey stain...

Yes I believe you can. If you don’t see the color you like in their standard paints, you can select anything from Sherwin Williams entire paint line too. It’s just a little most expensive.

didn't see your post Shannon until now. Yes, you can order all unfinished. My cherry lowers were unfinished that I stained and top coated. The uppers are paint grade hard maple that I painted with my Grayco sprayer in my back yard on a nice non-breezy day.

I wonder if something is changed. I might contact Conestoga about this. I am assembling my cabinets this week and it is very difficult getting the pieces to slide together. I even used the file, as recommended, to remove possible burrs in the grooves. I've assembled Scherr's and IKEA cabinets, and have never had the difficulty I'm currently having. I would have went with Scherr's, but they told me they had a 6 month wait time and I can't wait that long. Well, I guess I will just keep on pounding on them until they come together. Maybe it's time to pull out the two pounder.

Seattleharpist, did they turn out okay? I am ordering soon.

Any suggestions on where to see Conestoga cabinet door samples in the Chicago area

I don't know where you can see door samples in your area but we were able order samples reasonably priced from cabinet joint and it really helped us decide.

Thank you

Mojavemaria
Were you happy with your finished product?

I've love ours! We typically bought boxes and all, but this time, just doors and drawers. I did all the priming and painting.

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Love ours! They had videos for putting together the different kinds of cabinets thatvwere really helpful.

mojavemaria Your kitchen looks really great! May I ask what stain and wood this is? The picture is a little dark but it looks like a pretty stain. I'm getting ready to order and some stain I've seen looks a little blotchy.

following

@monicageistwhite sorry I didn't see your post! For some reason the pic looks a little darker than in my photos but cabinets are a medium wood tone - great for hiding dust and dirty handprints:)

They are quartersawn white oak with a stain called Portabella like the mushroom. It must be a proprietary stain for conestoga because I’ve never seen it anywhere else. Cabinets are holding up great they still look brand new!

@mojavemaria oh no problem--I just ordered conestoga cabinets in maple with the portabella stain. We only had a small sample but I really like the color. My only worry is that they may be a little blotchy being maple. I now wish I had gone with quartersawn white oak like yours. So pretty and not blotchy! Crossing my fingers that they will look as pretty as yours!

Im sure you will love them! We are so happy with our cabinets and the stain color is great. Maple is a good hard wood that they will be able to make look great. Its so nice to have someone else putting in cabinets that aren't painted white:) Be prepared for how much room they take up when they come!

Wow!! We'd better get our garage ready! It's a traditional home and stained cabinets look nice but I wanted a "neutral" color and this seems to fit the bill!

@mojavemaria thank you for posting your picture we just ordered ours in white oak/portabella and I have scoured the internet for pictures of portabella on white oak and yours is the 1st i’ve seen… would you mind posting another picture or two of them that shows the true color in better light? I’d greatly appreciate it.

We received our maple cabinets with Portabella stain in December. It's a long story but there was a manufacturing defect in the dovetail joints on 90% of our cabinets. It's something you don't even know to look for and we thought we were doing something wrong when assembling them. Our cabinet installer said it wasn't us and he had to modify them. At this point we have a house full of opened cabinet boxes. He couldn't do a perfect job and now we have cabinets that are not square with gaps and will have to live with it. I notified the distributor who said the policy was to replace first. First of all you don't even know you have a problem until you assemble them and our installer (that took weeks to schedule) was on site. We didn't have the luxury to wait another 2 1/2 months for new cabinets. Conestoga was notified by our distributor and took NO accountability for it (even though it was verified through a secondary distributor they had mfg issues). It sure would have been nice to have been notified by Conestoga to alert us of this issue. Our distributor did reimburse the cost to modify them but you are not allowed to contact Conestoga directly. Not impressed!!

@Project Mode

no problem! I think you will love them as we really like ours. Don't know if you went through cabinet joint but they have great videos for putting cabinets together.

@monicageistwhite

so sorry to hear that you had such trouble with yours. who did you order yours through? one reason we went with conestoga is because after researching them, they stand by their work. I read too many stories of major cabinet makers who won’t. unfortunately, its time consuming but i do believe they would remedy the issue.

@mojavemaria

thank you so much!! your cabinets are beautiful! the color is gorgeous and exactly what i was hoping for.

many, many thanks!

We ordered them through Cabinet Authority. They are Conestoga cabinets. It is not the distributors fault. We had completely gutted our kitchen the day before the cabinets were to be installed. We didn't have a clue about the defect until we opened every box and tried to put them together. We thought we just didn't know what the heck we were doing. Who would have thought a company at reputable as Conestoga would send out defective products and not let us know once they found out. Where was their quality control??? Our installer was not impressed and I had really bragged about them. I was without income until my kitchen remodel was finished (an in-home day care and was not allowed to operate without a kitchen) so we had to work with what we had which meant modifying almost every cabinet. Also one of the cabinets came with two left sides and no right. (That's the kind of thing I can understand but still not happy about because we couldn't even finish and required the installer to come back again.) I imagine after much back and forth that they would have replaced them but we couldn't wait another 2 1/2 months to get them replaced. I was mostly upset that we were not allowed to contact Conestoga directly. I had contacted the distributor with photos and all of our problems which he forwarded to Conestoga but NOT A SINGLE WORD FROM THEM. An apology and a discount might have been nice?

@monicageistwhite

i can only imagine how stressful that must be. hopefully quality control has improved.

One more comment and I'll stop my rant. :) I had made a comment on Cabinet Joint's IG page about our issues just kind of in passing. I received a private message from a Cabinet Joint employee saying there were some problems and said what the defect was--a detail I hadn't mentioned. So Conestoga knew it and should have immediately contacted us and said they would replace them. I wouldn't have happy with the delay but we would have left the kitchen in place, rescheduled the installer and not been blind-sided. I truly expected more from them.

A side note--we ordered countertops from Lowe's in Denver and I won't mention all the issues (wrong measurements, etc) but the sub-contractor sent someone out to address them. When the guy came out he told us that it wasn't finished properly. And confided to us they don't do it correctly anymore and half the people don't complain. If you do they send someone out. He then spent most of the afternoon fixing it--it actually wasn't his job but he knew how to do it and felt bad. This is LOWE'S!!! I've done a number of remodels and never had the problems that we had with this one! It's a sign of the times..... Good luck with your project and I hope you love your new cabinets! I do like the color--it's very neutral. On maple the stain is a little splotchy but we expected that.

@monicageistwhite How did the installer modify your cabinets? Was it the drawer boxes that had the problem?