We bought a house that has a kitchen that was already renovated, but it is very much not our taste. The cabinets the previous owner selected are very nice quality Starmark solid wood cabinets, but in my opinion do not go with the mid century style of the house as they’re much more traditional. Also I dislike the color so I’d want to have them repainted. Our contractor did suggest reusing as many as possible and then just adding more the same kind.

We are going to open it up by knocking down a wall and reconfiguring, so no matter what we do we will need to add new cabinets.

We got a quote to add more Starmark cabinets and keep about half of them and have our contractor paint them all. The cost was $16K to add cabinets and $5300 for paint, totaling $21,300.

Our contractor has an account with Reico and we had them price out replacing all the cabinets with Merillat Masterpiece (full plywood construction option). We want to go with a simple Shaker style and chose the English Green finish. Total cost was $26K, so really not that much more than just adding cabinets and painting them.

The problem is I’ve been reading lots of negative reviews on Merillat and now I’m nervous to go forward with it. Does anyone here have experience with either Starmark or Merillat Masterpiece and can share the good and bad? Are there any other cabinets I should look at in that price range? I don’t want to go above $26K for sure.

I attached the current kitchen and the proposed design done by the Starmark dealer.