What is your budget like. We went with the Kraftmaid Venezia line and were very, very satisfied. We bought them through Lowe's and the customer service was amazing. I do not think they do custom work (so you might end up with fillers), but the quality was very good and they have a lot of nice, European/modern-looking options.

If your budget is bigger, Crown Point has a frameless line (www.crown-point.com). They do period kitchens, but they offer Shaker-style doors. Their product is top-of-the-line and they are having promotions that make their cabinets comparable to Bertch, Holiday, and other mid-tier brands.

We went with a small kitchen design and cabinet shop initially. It appears they are really strapped for cash b/c when my sample door came in defective, they said they could not refund my deposit b/c they had already spent it. This was the primary reason we had gone with a big-box store in our previous home-- we knew they could afford to make our situation right and that a mistake on our order would not bankrupt them. Ironically we are finding ourselves in the exact same situation with this small store we are dealing with. So, for the time-being we are out 7K and need to get a lawyer. Times are tough, so make sure that whoever you go with is not on the verge of some financial crisis. I have a feelign our situation will be happening more and more often as businesses can't afford to right mistakes.

Good luck-- we love modern-looking kitchens.. unfortunately, it would be out of place in our "new" 135-year farmhouse. I look forward to hearing more about your design process and project.

danielle00 - Which door/color did you go with when you used Kraftmaid's Venezia line? Did you get particleboard or plywood construction? I am also looking at them and I am leaning toward the Autumn Cherry or Kaffe Cherry in the Natura collection.

I hope you get your current situation resolved soon.

Thanks.

We did Kraft Maid Venecia in the Graphite for my summer kitchen. My house is very traditional, but I wanted my basement to look very sleek and modern. The Venecia is really cool.

However, my "real" kitchen - upstairs - is very traditional looking, but also has frameless cabinets and full overlay doors. It's really beautiful.

I actually had enough cabinet space to just put in corner with no storage. My KD knew we were trying to cut costs and said that this would be a good place to save a thousand bucks.

Finishes can run you a lot, so do your research on them. Find a door style you like in the basic door styles, and a basic finish. Have the kitchen priced out in that. Then, you'll know how much room you have for upgrades.

I did a kitchen with Lowes and a kitchen with a KD firm. The work from the KD firm was superior, as was the product, but the price was two thirds more than the Lowes kitchen.
Good luck and enjoy!

IKEA and Ultracraft are two frameless lines with Shaker style contemporary doors/drawer fronts that I am considering myself.

Short answer - IKEA + frameless + shaker

Long answer - well, countless threads on the virtues of ikea + frameless.

I've investigated frameless for a while now. Frameless does give several extra inches of space in each drawer which is the primary benefit for me.

Brands to consider:
Kraftmaid Venzia - no customization but lots of std cabs to choose from. No solid center panel options for recessed panel doors (shaker included).
Cabico - doesn't charge for customization in sizes.
Ultracraft - has three lines - from std cabs to customized.
Canyon Creek - has customization
Hanssem - primarily in the NY region but came in at a very good price for me (several 1000 less than the others).

Another thing I've learned is to get quotes from at least a couple places. Big box and cabinet stores for me were about comparable in price. Lumber yards selling cabinets were a little better. A hardware store that carries Canyon Creek and Hanssem had much better pricing. Canyon Creek was at least 3K less than a cabinet store quote.

Good luck.

Other good Canadian frameless lines available in parts of the US would be Luxor, Fabritec and Cuisines Laurier. These will all likely come in around Cabico (all are from Quebec) and with the Canadian dollar being down around 20% should come in under the better US lines (like say Wood-Mode). In terms of a mid price semi-custom frameless line comparable to Kraftmaid I would look at Kitchen Craft (one of the US owned MasterBrand companies now).

I have DeWils frameless cabinets with shaker door fronts. I love them and they are well made. check them out if there is a dealer in your area.

I chose frameless because I love the look and because my kitchen is not huge and the extra inch or whatever per cabinet makes a difference.

Anita

Thank you all for your brand suggestions. I will begin some internet searching for dealers in my area.

So it sounds like frameless is the way to go to get more space? Is there any downside to frameless? It frameless something that you notice from the front of the cabinet?

All frameless cabinets have a full overlay door - that is you do not see cabinet frames - only doors. It gives the cabinetry a streamlined look. YOu can get the same look these days with framed cabinets with full overlay doors. Yes, there is more space in the drawers. You have what they call full access in the base and upper cabs - no face frame lip to block access. To me, that's not terribly important. The face frame has never really bothered me in that sense.

In the venecia line, we went with a slab door.. high gloss thermafoil-- white on our uppers, SS color on our lowers. They were pretty good, except the heat had a bad effect on the thermafoil (near our range we had some damage to a door, but Kraftmaid and Lowes were both really, really receptive in fixing the problem).

The only issue with a frameless cabinet is that they mount together in a perfectly straight plane. Very few walls out there in the wild are perfectly straight. Where as a face frame cabinet will have about a 3/16 inch lip on the face frame and side of the box that allows for some small variations in the walls not being perfectly straight.

A couple of notes on frameless, which I have and really like for a small space.

I have very crooked walls, ceiling and floor both slant in this 1919 house. Cabinets were installed and look perfectly straight, you would never know the house wasn't completely plumb.

Also, about the doors--mine were ordered with a slight "reveal" (I believe that's the term) so the Shaker-style doors are just a touch smaller than the boxes behind them. So you do see a small space around the door, as in partial overlay (though the reveal is very small). This helped to break up what could have been a very sleek, modern look that I wasn't aiming for.

Since I could not picture the difference between framed and frameless, I googled it and found this explanation, which I am sharing in case anyone else here doesn't know the difference!

Carla in Sac

Here is a link that might be useful: Framed vs Frameless

In my mind the choice is simple. If you love the look of inset cabinet doors, get cabinets with face-frames (because that is the only choice), otherwise get frameless cabinets.

My only experience with Venezia cabinets is seeing the display in my local Lowes, but that was enough to convince me to look elsewhere. Maybe the display was installed poorly or maybe they were subjected to excessive hard use by customers, but some doors had their hinges pulled out of the door, several drawers dragged when opening them, and the thermofoil was chipped off the doors in a few places. Also the particular wood-grain print thermofoil they used in their display looked pretty good from forty feet away, but from up close it looked like plastic with a wood-grain pattern printed on it.

I got custom-built, frameless cabinets, with shaker style doors and drawers made of quarter-sawn red oak from Scherr's custom cabinets, who many people here speak of very highly (including me).

I think the statement that face-framed cabinets are easier to install if your walls aren't perfectly straight is irrelevant. My walls are not perfectly straight and I was able to easily install frameless cabinets. So if I can do it without problem on my first ever try, surely a cabinet installation professional should be able to install them (and if it takes them slightly more work to do so, so what.)

Frameless cabs have better accessibility, and in general more space, especially in drawers. I say "in general" because available space differs among cabinet lines. Take your tape measure with you when you look and measure the space in the drawers of different brands you are considering.

Keep in mind, there are good quality and bad quality of both framed and frameless. Don't let anyone tell you that fameless are inherently bad (especially someone who doesn't sell frameless). My old kitchen (which I tore out) had frameless cabs, not the highest end either, and they lasted about 25+ years (based on the style & color which is what was in style in the late 70s/early 80s). Probably could have lasted longer, except they were awful style and I hated the layout.

Whichever one you go with, make sure your installer is experienced. If the installer grumbles about frameless being hard to install, get someone else. No one has perfectly straight walls, yet frameless cabs are installed properly every day.

Styles of frameless cabinets are not exclusively (or even mostly) contemporary. Contemporary cabs are usually frameless, but the opposite is not true. I have traditional style doors in frameless, and it doesn't look a bit contemporary.

In either framed or frameless, beware the center stile. I've seen it in both kinds, and it severely limits access. There is a width limit over which a center stile is needed, something like 33 or 36 inches, but smaller than that, it is not needed and IMHO unacceptable.

Do get lots of quotes for comparison purposes. I shopped around with a particular version of my layout so that I could compare prices. My layout changed over time but using the same layout at different places gave me a good feel for their pricing.

Don't rule out local custom builders. I thought they would be out of my price range but they came in at all price ranges, just as the stock companies did.

I compiled a list of framed & frameless manufacturers back when I was looking, so that I could see which ones were available in my area. This list is now over four years old so it probably could use some updating but you can check the websites for information on manufacturers.

Good luck in your search!

Here is a link that might be useful: framed & frameless mfgs