People always talk about “soft close and all plywood” like that is the holy grail of cabinet construction. It isn’t. Even poorly built cabinets have that these days. They just use poor quality hardware and materials. There is no way for an average consumer to judge whether or not the quality is high or low, as I’ve seen dead accurate looking Blum knockoff glides from black market sources that failed within 6 months. And I have seen “plywood” be so full of interior voids, and smell of chemicals so badly that it had to be carried outside and left to sit in the open air for a week before it didn’t make your eyes water.

There is zero wrong with a good quality cabinet using good quality furniture board or MDF in construction. Anyone who says otherwise either wants to charge you more by tapping into your unfounded wood prejudice, or has not really educated themselves out of their own wood prejudice.

So I’m going to talk about things that are difficult to fake as a company, and which the consumer can easily check.

1. The number of finish options and number of paint colors offered. The better the line, the more options that are offered. Some mid grade semi custom lines now have custom paint matching programs using SW or BM. Minimum for mid grade quality would be 4-5 colors of white offered, and these days, 3-4 colors of grays. And a natural cherry. You want a line that offers the standards, plus a few more. Oak, maple and cherry are a given. Alder, birch, walnut, bamboo, or laminate would be desirable. A line that offers 2 woods in 4 colors plus a a thermofoil is very obviously builder grade. A box store line that offers 2 whites, 2 grays, and a 3 colors of tinted varnish to mask their poor quality cherry would be borderline acceptable to someone looking for middle of the road quality. Tinted top coats to mask the wood is a low end cheat. One door style in one color only, and another door style in 2 colors only is an inexpensive import, and likely to be a poor value long term. Except for a flipper who won’t live with it, and is only concerned with price, it should be avoided.

4. Finish quality of doors, drawers, and boxes. This is a BIG DEAL. This is where the money is in higher quality cabinets. Wear a fuzzy sweater or carry a pair of knee high panty hose to slip over your hand. Touch the sample displays. Especially the backs of doors and the edges of doors where the end grain of the wood is exposed. Time spent sanding is money in a production facility. The poorer quality lines will have rougher back sides of doors. The end grains of wood will not be smooth. That is especially telling when the end grains on the front of the doors are rough. All mitered doors so there is no exposed end grain? Builder grade. Lower quality finishing will snag the fuzzy sweater, or stocking. The better quality cabinets may have some rougher patches on the backs, but as you move up in quality, the sanding time increases, and it shows on the doors first. The boxes, if plywood, should be smooth. Even the backs of the shelves, where the cut line is, should be free of splinters and snags. Pull the shelves out and look. Look at the shelf pins. Metal is better. Plastic is acceptable. PVC is not. Look at the exposed ends under the wall cabinets. Are the edges sanded smooth? Are they edgebanded with plastic? What does the interior look and feel like?

3. Thickness of the cabinet spec book. The thinner the spec book, and the fewer the options, the more poorly made a cabinet line will be. Just ask them to look at the spec book. The line needs to offer extended stiles in order to be considered a true mid grade line. They should offer some form of depth adjustment to wall cabinets. Even builder lines will offer 3” increments to adjust the depth of cabinets. You should be able to get a 9”D wall cabinet or a 15”D wall cabinet in even very basic lines. The better the line, the smaller the increment of customization.A 10” or 11” cabinet? Approaching mid grade. A 10.5” or 11.5”? Lower mid grade. A 10.25” or 10.75” cabinet? Quarter inch increments of wall cabinet depth customization is solidly mid grade semi custom. You can get finer degrees of customization adjustment the higher up the quality scale you go. Bonus Tip: you likely do not need that level of customization at all. It’s just a benchmark of a better quality product.

4. Price. This is the elephant in the room. As Sophie borrows from Heinlan, TANSTAAFL. There is no such thing as a free lunch. Higher priced lines are higher priced because they offer more feature and better quality. If you find “the same” somewhere else for less, then you are not actually comparing true apples to true apples. There is something missing from the lower priced option. Maybe they do not offer a true Kitchen Designer on staff and only order a basic design from what you tell them. Maybe you have to assemble the cabinets, or finish the cabinets (50%of the price. For a reason!) Maybe they source their components from import sources. Maybe it is 3/8” boxes with metal brackets holding it all together rather than 1/2” pocket screwed or doweled box construction. Maybe they don’t pay for a showroom where you can see and touch the possible options. Maybe they designed your “quote” with all 48” base cabinets and 24” single door wall cabinets instead of the 18” trash pull out and 30” pot and pan drawer like the other place did. It could be zero project management integration. There are dozens of possibilities. If you are getting a cluster of 18K-21K off the cuff estimates, and someone says they can do it for 12, that someone is not giving you something that the others are giving you.

When something is too good to be true, it isn’t true. You are giving up something to go with a lower price. Just be sure that you know exactly what that something is. It may be something you regret giving up when the project is finally completed.

And a word about “sales”. Really, they do not exist. Do you really think that someone would give you 30% off of a product if it were not overpriced in the beginning? Box stores have conditioned people to expect constant “sales”. That are not real. Just look at what happened to JC Penny when they tried to do away with that marketing tactic and just do fair prices as an everyday thing. Most cabinet shops or designers know what they need to make from a job, and they price it fairly from the beginning. Insulting them by asking for “their best price” is a quick way to start off a job on a very sour note. Once you have developed a relationship and paid a retainer, asking if the manufacturer is offering any promotions is fine.

Designers want to stretch their clients budget to include as much of their hopes and dreams as possible. That’s why they will design a project right up to the budget limit. They need to know that limit on the front end. If your dreams are really 80K worth of upper end cabinets, and you only have 25K to spend, don't waste everyone’s time by not sharing that. The right designer will help you to pull the important parts of your vision from that 80K look, and give you 75-85% of the dream on less than 50% of the budget. You just have to be realistic about the trade offs that will be need to be made. Remember, you cannot get diamonds for rhinestone pricing. But rhinestones might be all that you really need for your situation.

5. The level of knowledge of the KD that you are dealing with. This isn’t “cabinet quality” directly, but a good or bad KD can make or break a project at any level. Ask to see the design documentation for a past job. The elevations should be full of notes. They should have the Legend of the cabinets boxes numbered right there on the elevations. Maybe some hand drawing of details if needed. How do they communicate their vision to you as a customer and to the installer who is expected to install on site and create that vision?

Ask about their initial measuring process, and what the process is for site verifying the design before it is ordered. The poorer quality results will come from someone who never goes to the site and only uses your measurements, or their installers measurements. The better results will have more involvement and more site visits from multiple people, like the designer and electrician who is roughing in your under cabinet lighting. Ask about what happened on a previous job when a customer was not happy with a design? An install? It’s not so much what they say there, but how they say it. This is a job interview for them from you, and you just asked them what their biggest weakness was.

Ask them how they are compensated for their design work? And what happens if an error is made? Some independents will be up front in telling you their design retainers and fees. Some will be commission only. Some will be salary plus commission. The worst method is generally 100% salary, as there isn’t much incentive to learn from mistakes. There is no true wrong or right on this answer. It is more a gauge of transparency and honesty.

Ask them how they design for champagne tastes with beer money. Again, no right or wrong answer. Other than “we don’t do jobs under 200K”, if that doesn’t fit your project. You just want to see how their minds work with a challenge to creativity and budget. Because all projects come down to those two elements. Creativity and budget.

Too long, I know. But hopefully that is helpful in navigating the murky waters of a kitchen redo.