What tools do you have? If you have the experience building cabinets, I’m not sure why you’d hire a contractor to install. Why not DIY all of that!

It's not a nightmare, it's actually quite easy. Just watch the videos from cabinet joint. Don't bother with the official Conestoga videos, they're nowhere near as good as the cabinet joint ones.

Thank you!
We have the tools necessary for the installation and cabin build. I have to pick and choose what we/I spend our time on since it’s a second home. The cabinet build makes sense because of the savings.

Catbuilder - thank you, Thats encouraging! I went through many of CJ’s video’s which boosted my confidence to take this on. I was planning on watching more based on the type of cabinets we would order. Do you have experience with the cabinet build? I’m wondering how much time to allocate per cabinet (I understand that each cabinet is unique - basically looking for an average) and if there are any lessons learned for the sorting, build, and potential errors?

I had absolutely no experience with any construction or woodworking and I built my entire kitchen with Conestoga, Ikea and custom.

It was easy to do the Conestoga. One of my Ikea cabinet is out of square due to my cluelessness about being square. Since it’s a roll out, I will adjust it eventually.

My custom designed and self built corner cabinet out of plywood came out exactly how I envisioned it.

I used a contractor to install for me since I didn’t have tools and those upper cabinets were huge and heavy.

If I can do it, anyone can.

Ikea with Conestoga doors and custom drawer front I designed and made from plywood scraps and Ikea parts.

Beachem- Thanks for sharing. I’m in awe that you designed, coordinated, and built your kitchen! Those are beautiful details in the pictures. How are they holding up in terms of durability? I really appreciate your feedback!

I put all our RTA cabinets together and it was fine. I was 40 years old and 6 months pregnant too. The boxes took about 15 minutes to throw together. Drawers took longer, but you don't need those in to start putting the kitchen back together.

Nicole - thanks for the feedback and information on the timing to put them together! and WOW! You're amazing! Extreme nesting! How do you like the quality and durability of your cabinets?

We like them. We ordered from rtacabinetstore.com. I know it's cheap Chinese crap that is looked down on here, but we had a very low budget DIY job. We are in a low cost of living area so spending $20k+ on one room of our home will never happen! LOL It's been 7 years and they've held up fine. In that time my parents have redone their kitchen and we used Ikea cabinets for that and I did like those more than what we used, especially for the customization inside the boxes. But I would totally order cabinets from where we did again with no qualms.

Both Conestoga and Ikea are holding up great. They get slammed all the time by my husband. I can hear him slam pantry doors from upstairs. I haven’t had a chance to order soft close for the doors.

In fact, I compared the Conestoga drawers with an expensive custom cabinet from my neighbor and Omega. The Conestoga was far superior and thicker. The bottom of the others was like a flimsy piece of thin plywood.

I can’t find the photo comparison I took right now.

Conestoga and Ikea both uses Blum hardware. I stayed with their door hardware. I used industrial strength drawer slides for my Conestoga since the drawers by themselves are so solid and heavy. I went for 50 and 75 lbs for the smaller drawers and 150 lbs for my stove drawers since they are 48” wide.

We just finished putting Conestoga white inset kitchen (18x20 space, 4 walls of cabinets + island, 9' ceiling ) this summer.

How hard was it ? Well ...are you doing overlay or inset?

Durability? Are you doing painted or stained?

How much of customization are you planning on doing ?

beachem!! Nice to see you! When I read the title I was going to steer the OP in your direction. What I can say is that while the search engine on Houzz isn't perfect or even all that great, it does work. So look up Conestoga in Advice, then be mindful of the results filter. If you want most recent posts you have choose that.

I've got my IKEA cabinets. Now I have to order the last three cabinets from either Conestoga or Barker. Eventually I will need doors, but that's a topic for another thread! Good luck!

I've put a Conestoga kitchen together from scratch. Make absolutely sure the boxes and frames are 100% square and fronts are on flat or your installer (myself in my case) will not be a happy camper. They say you don't need clamps... Buy The Clamps. Screw uppers together on the ground if you have wavy walls and then put it up. Pre-drill your holes.

If you use the 'design' service through the online cabinet company, I found them more of a 'layout' service. In hindsight I feel an actual kitchen designer who has done this before would have done things differently. Things like gaps that are different sizes between cabinet doors that just don't look high end when you see it, doors that hit other cabinets or the wall, pointless extended stile cuts, etc. They made the microwave cabinet a built in (you cut out the face frame hole) when I had it in black and white it was not a built in microwave (pre cut normal face frame). Luckily I caught it on the parts list because I had watched all the videos 2x even before I ordered. Maybe it just depends who you get. (Pro Tip, there are little plastic bits that you can install to your hinges to limit opening, which I found out myself later).

I had lots of shipping damage, which they did take care of with pictures and no issues. The large pieces were hanging off the pallets, so these fragile pieces of wood (granted in heavy duty cardboard) would take the full brunt of anything they ran into being shipped across the country instead of the corner of a wooden pallet. One pallet was stacked so high and wobbly like you would only see in a Dr Seuss book, I couldn't believe it. Maybe it fell apart and the shipper tried to repack it, badly. Only much later putting on doors did I realize a set of SOSS hinges was missing. I know I didn't lose it because everything was kept in the hardware boxes that only I had access to, and I ended up with an equal number of extra Blum hinges with no home, so somehow they got switched at the packing stage, so that was an extra $25 or so. They might have replaced them but it had been awhile since I had ordered at that point so I just got them online.

Go with the nicer options for details, you already spent 9k on a kitchen, spend 1k more to make it look like a 40k kitchen instead of a 20k kitchen. Seriously if this is your main home do this. Get the false door sides, etc.

The special paint is good, but it's not impervious like my parent's (some kind of laminate?) cabinets. If you leave something on the paint, it's going to leave a discoloration, even if you just rub it wrong with a damp soft cloth there will be a shiny spot that doesn't go away.

To give you advice it would help to know the price difference between the RTA and a comparable pre-built kitchen you are looking at, and I'll let you know my opinion if it would be worth it, based on what I know now.

Maryna - what wood and stain is on your island. So nice.