We are remodelling our 70's kitchen on a tight budget. It's a small kitchen, our taste is modern, and we wanted high-gloss white cabinets. Ikea was our default choice, but it turns out that with Ikea's greater wall cabinet depth, their corner wall cabinet was wider than the space we have between the corner and a window. To go with Ikea, the only way we could have cabinets turn the corner was to end up with a blind corner cabinet. That describes one of the things we hate the most in our current cabinetry, so it was a deal breaker.
I looked at available frameless alternatives - a couple were Fabuwood's Primo Bianco, and a line of cabinets made in Quebec by Fabritec and sold through Canadian Home Depot stores called Eurostyle. The Fabuwood cabinets were close to twice the price of the Ikea, made in China, came with unbranded hardware (as far as we could see), had fibreboard construction, and did not have adjustable legs. No, they didn't fit the budget and had no redeeming features we could see.
I bought a sample Eurostyle cabinet from Home Deport here to see how it was made. These are not expensive, about the same as Ikea. Also fibreboard carcasses. I would say this about their assembly: innovative, quick and, to my eye, dodgy. Instead of dowels and pins into captured cams such as Ikea uses, the cabinets were joined with dowels and these rubber-coated pins that slide into a mating hole and when they are turned, jam tightly into that hole. That's it, in terms of bonding - I have never seen anything like it before. It's really quick to assemble, since there are no round cams to insert and line up - just mate the pieces as supplied and give two screw-heads per panel joint a quarter-turn each. So: quick, but there is less physical strength in the joint than I would be comfortable with. Having said that, I assembled my sample cabinet using wood glue on all seams - the rubber-coated pins held the joints tight while the glue dried, and the resulting cabinet seemed square, rigid and strong. So the Eurostyle cabinets became a potential solution. I asked the Home Depot store staff about the Eurostyle-supplied hardware - they suggested it was unbranded and that soft-close would be extra cost. (Since then, I note that the Eurostyle soft-close door hinge on the HD web site has a visible "Blum" logo on it, so the store staff may not be the experts - you think??)
Looking at the Primo Bianco and other made-in-China cabinets you see online (hello, CliqStudios) and at retail, I got to wondering about the pros and cons of ordering kitchen cabinets direct from China. What would be the effect of cutting out the middlemen and ordering direct?
I put some real effort into researching ordering cabinets direct from China online, but found very little to go on. Some dialog in Australia about ordering from Oppein, but Oppein appears to maybe have some retail presence in Oz. A lot of slagging of Chinese case-goods online by local carpenters/cabinet-makers . . . "cheap 5-ply plywood that is soaked in formaldehyde and de-laminates in no time flat", that sort of thing. But almost nothing from consumers who went this route, happy or unhappy. A lot of the criticism seemed to be based on prejudice not data, and/or came from folks who had a clear commercial interest in dissuading you from buying Chinese.
I'm a not-infrequent AliExpress customer, and between AliExpress and eBay, have bought many things over the years direct from China. I researched kitchen cabinets on AliExpress, and identified four manufacturers of cabinets in the style we wanted (frameless construction, high-gloss doors). I shared draft designs with each of them and invited quotes. I got usable designs and quotes back from three firms (interestingly, Oppein was the company that disappointed me - they were slow to respond, and their first-draft design missed the boat in a number of ways, so I terminated the conversation at that stage).
One of the firms impressed me with their responsiveness, clarity of communication, and alignment with what we are seeking. They sent me a number of pictures of completed installations, including one kitchen in Montreal done in a design very similar to what we are seeking.
Here's how I see them comparing to the Home Depot/Fabritec Eurostyle:
Case construction: (Eurostyle) Fibreboard versus 16mm 9-ply E1-rated waterproof plywood.
Customisation: (Eurostyle) a fairly short list of stock sizes versus an ability to customise cabinet widths to the space available (which is a big deal).
Joinery: (Eurostyle) those odd rubber-coated pins versus the pin-and-captured-cam style that Ikea uses (although I will use liberal amounts of glue in all cases).
Doors: both use 3/4" MDF.
Hardware: (Eurostyle) questionable, maybe unbranded versus (spec'ed) 100% Blum hinges and undermount drawer glides, all soft close.
Wall cabinet mounting: (Eurostyle) fibreboard back panel sections that are meant to be screwed to studs versus a choice of either full plywood weight-bearing backs or top-corner adjustable mounts onto a wall rail (similar to Ikea, except the back panel would be 5mm plywood versus laminated chipboard).
Delivery: both are special order, although the Chinese cabinets would also require 4-5 weeks for transit on the proverbial slow boat from China.
Risk: much lower for Eurostyle, with HD backing them up, and a much easier time obtaining any pieces that are missing or damaged in shipment.
Home-market employment: better for Eurostyle obviously, although I perceive both manufacturers use CNC machinery extensively, so the human labour content is not super high (and dimensional consistency is much better).
Price: essentially the same, after shipping and 9.5% duty are factored in.
On balance: the Chinese vendor is obviously the riskier choice, given the distance and relative lack of brand name, and the inability to work locally to resolve issues. But otherwise, the Chinese firm looks to have the much superior product, and better value at a price that is fully competitive with Eurostyle (and Ikea) and fits our budget. Through our back-and-forth dialog via email with the Chinese firm, my confidence about them and about the product grew to a point where the risk seemed acceptable. If it all goes to rat, we won't be bankrupt, just over budget!
So on this past weekend, we signed the order, and sent a wire transfer for 50% of the order value. Time to shipping is expected to be about 30 days, then time to ship it another 4 or 5 weeks. I'm expecting receipt in early July, and will post subsequent notes about how all that goes, whether the shipment was 100% accurate, what I find putting them together, and how the end kitchen turns out.
Hopefully, my research and experience will be useful for others. I am not revealing the company we are buying from in this post -- I want to wait until I can give them a grade before promoting them. But so far, I have a good feeling and we're excited about what we are buying.
Again, I hope this is useful to others -- I found so little online about this approach that I wanted to share as we go along.
9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
9 years ago
9 years ago
9 years ago
9 years agolast modified: 9 years ago
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