Read what Rick had to say here. The cabinets he sells are probably more expensive than what you are looking at, but I think they might be able to withstand a bombing run.

Here is a link that might be useful: RTA interview with Rick Haylon

The only advice I can give for RTA is be very careful, and be prepared for more work and frustration than the savings are worth.

My friend used Chilnese RTA cabinets in their shore house kitchen and were very pleased. Not sure where you are, but they used Closeout Cabinets, who have warehouses in PA and NJ. They paid the extra money (10% I think) for them to be assembled and installed by Closeout Cabs. A good sized kitchen was about $8k, I think. It looks great. Was only a year ago so I don't know about durable. The website is www.closeoutcabinets.com, but i know I've seen the same cabs on a lot of different sites.

We opted to spend more on custom since this is our forver home, but my friend's kitchen looks great!

I used the Conestoga mentioned above but bought mine from cabinetmakerschoice.com. We love them! I wouldn't say they are the cheapest out there but they are very nice quality. In our kitchen we had to customize all three corner cabinets plus I wanted certain doors that are not available with other lines in my price point. Conestoga's door and finish options are endless. They are not hard to put together but the drawer fronts are a bit of a pain until you get the hang of it.

I used Rick/Conestoga as well and am very happy. Plan to order more from him for built-ins, etc.

I am another fan of Rick and conestoga. Rick works for a different co. now; was formerly with Niel Ratner/ Cabinetmaker's Choice.
Casey

Thanks to all sugestions. Unfortunately Conestoga does not have the style we are looking for. We would like to go with more modern, clean look. The cabinets we like so far from Domain Cabinets Direct are made of 3/4" plywood sides(NO particle-board) with a solid wood doors made from certified (do not know what they meen with this) cherry wood, matching inside finish, and slow close hardware. I do not have experiance with kitchen cabinets but I can do some carpentry, have tools and I am not worry about assembling all the parts. Assembly is by using long screws, but I am planning on adding nails also since it is 3/4" plywood sides. Back is 1/4" plywood - standart in all other brands. There is installation video also. If anyone has more experience could you please check the link and let me know what do you think.
It is again :
www.domaincabinetsdirect.com/american-cherry-chocolate-shaker-rta-cabinets.aspx
Thanks!

Yes we did check Scherrs but did not like anything there.
We are looking for modern (not traditional) look with finish close to VENGE. Our second choise will be Ikea but we are still on the begining of our planning.

Misty Creek kitchen and bath in Alexandria Va has a website that is the only one out there that gives the names of all the cabinet companies they work with that are RTA and other similar priced products. It gives the links to the all the websites of the companies they sell so you are more informed then the typical company selling things like what you might be looking for. They ship any where in the country.

Here is a link that might be useful: website of misty creek

daveinorlando, thanks for the great link. We are still exploring all the brands listed there and we have added the bamboo kitchen from Adornus to our list so far. I am sure we will find more that we like in this site.
I have read most of your posts in this forum regarding RTA.
It looks like you have very good knowledge. Could you please take a look on the site I have posted in my original post and give us your expert opinion on the American Cherry Chocolate Shaker collection. Because it looks good in the gallery and they have the kabinet sizes we need, we are trying to compare it with the new ones in our list. Are they even comparable? Please give us your opinion.

Based on the pictures I do not see a pattern of cabinets from the companies I am familar with. Some of the RTA companies use the ball bearing full extension slides that are side mounted. The pictures show the cabinet you are looking at as being made that way. Some side mounted rails have soft close. I put together 1 kitchen in the past that was made that way. More often the rails are not soft close auto closing and instead just fully extend. I did not see where the written description was to tell me how they are made. It is not a good or a bad thing in and of itself.

I personally like soft close full extension drawers. J&K Grand has several cabinets that are made with those drawers. Their cabinets look nice when assembled. They are by far the hardest to assemble properly where things are not pre marked and drilled to line up drawer glides and drawer boxes. I am not convinced they are selling J&K Grand as the prictures do not match up to me. I do not care for V groves in the a shaker door style either. Again a personal preference not a quality issue. The doors of the shaker cabinets have a grove cut in the wood where the vertical and horizontal parts of the doors meet. I like that part of the door to be smooth on a shaker door. Most people are like me as they either love it or do not care for it.

If you order cabinets from a company and you have no previous expierence with the product and company selling or making them you are wise to spend a little more money and order one that you need and assemble it to make sure you are going to be satisfied. I have assembled 1,000 plus cabinets myself over the last few years from 15 different companies some are very easy and some are very frustrating. I will not sell the frustrating cabinets online or in my store because it is too hard to get the quality of assembly consistent.

They look very nice. It is also nice that the interior is stained to match. Not all imports offer that.

daveinorlando, thank you very much for the replay. I greatly appreciate that you took the time to check their site and share your opinion. I do like the grove on the doors and the matching interior color. I am still looking into other options but may order a door from this company to check the color and quality. If I like it, I will go ahead and order a cabinet to check the assembly.

Hello. Did you end up getting the cabinets from Domain Cabinets Direct? I also liked what I saw on their website but wondering about quality and ease of assembly. Thanks

I went to Domain in Temecula CA yesterday to look at their bamboo products. The wood looked high quality and nicely finished. The contractor there showed me how to assemble drawer boxes and spent lots of time going over details. The self-close full-extension drawer slides were from a Chinese company (of course) called DTC. Everything was pre-drilled, and shelf undersides were even routed to hold the metal pins precisely. Hinges were soft-close six-way adjustable and looked great. Shelves were beautifully constructed with a bamboo veneer over birch ply core. The edge treatments looked perfect (no obvious edge tape lines.) There is a one-year warranty but could not find separate drawer slides on the web that matched for a possible upgrade. I do not know how long it would take to get their own spare parts if needed, but they have a large modern warehouse with the full kits stocked. The dovetailing on the drawers looked very precise and fit together easily by hand with a snug fit. The main assembly is simple, but more time would obviously be needed to make small adjustments and installing molding to fit uneven walls, etc. The finish carpentry will determine how good it looks in the end I believe. My main concern remains longevity of the drawer slides as other mfrs do not use the same drilling pattern if an upgrade were needed.

spaceman210, did you end up installing these cabinets? I'd like to order them online, I live in PA and I was wondering what your opinion is about these cabinets (if you ended up buying them).

Thanks a lot!

Hi Dana, no I did not. However I have noticed they also now offer U.S. -made cabinets/hardware in one of their lines if desired, and more selections overall. Good luck!

Thank you! I am in a big dilemma, we have bamboo floors and we love them, and I have checked out at a lot of cabinets and also liked J&K cabinetry, better prices and quality than big box stores, but too few choices). However, the majority of prices I got from different places were outrageous and people that sell them only give an overall price but not per cabinet price. I have a 12X12 kitchen and I need only 10 cabinets (1 corner base, 1 corner wall, 1 sink base, 3 small base cabinets (12 inch wide), one 36 inch base wide, 2 wall 18 inch wide and 1 wall 36 inch wide) so the total is 10 cabinets. The height is 36. I got outrageous prices ranging from 6500 to 13000 only for the cabinets, no installation... I was expecting to pay around 2500-3500 for all cabinets and for 10 cabinets of the sizes I need that should be around 250-350 per cabinet on average. I did get one estimate of about $4600 but that was still expensive. I saw the bamboo cabinets online and I just loved them. I was wondering if anyone has install them and what was their experience. We have a contractor that can help us putting them together. I spoke with Claude from Domain Cabinets and he was extremely nice and helpful over the phone. If anyone has any advice or experience with them, I'd greatly appreciate your opinion.

Thanks!

Yes, I was going to add that Claude was the helpful person I met there, and he knows all the details of what they offer. Your expectation for 2300-3500 sounds quite low, but as you realize the big box stores are excessively priced and have a lot of overhead built in. I would just add to check with any nearby custom cabinet shops who can often beat the big-box prices and include installation. Beware of bait-and-switch ads quoting the $3k kitchen jobs.

Thanks ! I was looking for those and found some that I am going to check out.

Oh, one more RTA place that seems to have excellent U.S.-made quality is Barker Cabinet. www.barkercabinets.com. Also within the Home Depot melange, their folks and others say the best deals are consistently with American Woodmark. However the advantage in my case to go with a local custom shop was sizing to fit odd dimensions such as an angled-wall pantry. They had to take it back to make an adjustment, but that was done in a day or two; whereas ones that are ordered and then returned to a factory have more like a 6-8 week turnaround. I also increased the depth of the wall cabs and specified the hardware and thickness of shelves / doors. They also scribed the ceiling molding since the ceiling was not level. As I said, finish carpentry is important to have things look right. On the other hand a large factory may do a better job on a fancy variety of finishes since they have all the automated spray equipment to do so. ( In CA the finishes are pretty much water-based.)

if you are looking for J&K, check out BuilderElements.com. They price all of the pieces individually, so you know what you are paying for. I have bought a few extra units from them for built-ins around the house. With them, the J&K k-8 expresso maple would be 1900 plus shipping. Is that more in your ballpark

I'm also interested in Domain Cabinets for a new contemporary house. Custom cabinet places that I got quotes from are extremely expensive, more than 30K. Does anyone have experience with Domain Cabinets lately?

in 2010 I ordered a Shaker Russian birch natural color kitchen from Domain Cabinets, I was very easy to assemble the units, everything fitted perfectly and looks superb, even after 7 years of heavy use (and abuse). Now I'am building my second home and will get the kitchen cabinets, again, from Domain cabinets.