Stay away from the low cost Chinese garbage. Kraftmaid on your list is the only American made product.

Bremtown Cabinets made in Indiana.

http://www.bremtown.com/what-we-do

We have Kraftmaid (2018). I would not recommend them in a painted finish. Poor quality finish, pinkish primer? visable along edges, chipped corners on doors,etc. Poor customer service response.

Where do you live? We have Elkay in my town and they have occasional outlet sales with massive discounts. About every other month , sometimes monthly.

rghulati, I think you meant to say you were looking for "champagne on a beer budget" (either that or you like to overpay for beer) :- )

You might be pleasantly surprised at the cost some custom cabinet makers charge. I mean fully custom. When DH and I started looking, semi-custom was crazy-high and quality was iffy, options were narrow. A few well-known fully custom shops charged you a million $ just to look at their cabinets, and if you breathed on them, that was another million $... i.e.: overpriced. We found a smaller custom shop, saw several of their kitchens, saw cabinets in their shop, and their quote was refreshingly reasonable. More than I thought. They've bent over backward to build our kitchen cabinets as we envisioned. Same happened with my parents; after shopping for cabinets, they felt everyone was too high, until they ran across one custom maker who was smaller, and very conscientious about the quality of work. They ended up with a gorgeous kitchen for a reasonable price. Good luck, and keep looking, don't give up!

Yeah, if you want quality and are willing to pay for it, custom from a local carpenter would be the way to go.

We have the benefit of being surrounded by Amish country, and pretty much all Amish carpenters do is build furniture and cabinets, and generally really well. I'm more than happy to spend a bit extra for 200-year cabinets.

A buddy of mine bought a house in which lower-end IKEA cabinets had been installed to put the house on the market (it was kind of a half-baked flip), and said cabinets are falling apart after five years. My parents did solid wood custom cabinets, and in the 25 years since they were built, the only work my dad has done on them was tighten the hinges.

Beware, not all "custom" cabinet makers mean quality. Some truly are craftsman that can build anything and finish it well. Some simply slap together melamine boxes, add a purchased door front and finish it on site (with all of the construction dust floating in the air). Whichever route you go, the best way to determine quality and value is to look a the drawer glides and door hinges, box construction (I-beam braces vs plastic corner braces), drawer box construction, and the quality of the finish. The appeal of the factory is that it is all built in a controlled environment.

The best cabinets I have seen are from an Amish custom builder named Ayr in Indiana. Their cabinets are more like furniture, but that defiantly isn't in a beer budget. I have also seen some local builders that make "custom" cabinets that will be falling apart in a couple years. Most of the American-made big name cabinet lines are very similar. They have the same standard construction and can be very nice. Schrock/Kemper/Thomasville, Woodland, Kraftmaid, Starmark - there are many. But I have also worked with some great smaller companies. In Michigan we have Pioneer cabinetry that is of the same quality and value.

Do your homework and see examples of them in person. Good luck with your project.

OMG WHAT A TYPO, I’m hoping to buy champagne on a beer budget!

All the advice I’ve received so far is fabulous. I’ve started reaching out to local carpenters/cabinet makers. I live outside of NYC and things generally tend to be overpriced around here ... hoping to find “the one” soon.

Thank you all!

National brand mentioned above: Overpriced after discounts.

Here's a photo from last week showing a typical box after install. The box width varies front to back, not square by approx. 1/4", typical of most boxes delivered.

Those "high quality" plywood boxes are made with thin plywood to minimize shipping costs.

^More like someone racked the cabinets because they didn’t use the proper shims to keep them square. Carpenters aren’t cabinet installers. Cabinet installers are a specialty subset.