Be sure you are comparing like with like here. APC on the KM? And are the RTA cabinets actually finished, or do you have to finish them too? There are other brands out there besides KM. You shouldn't limit yourself to just them as a comparison.

Or, you can probably pay a contractor to assemble them for you. But at $50-$100 a box, there goes any savings that you might see, so you might as well be looking at additional pre assembled lines.

You need to narrow down the actual look that you want. If you want something common like shaker, then you can find that in every brand at every price point. What exactly are you looking for, and what's your budget? There's a whole world of cabinets out there, already assembled, if you don't want to do the assembly.

Frameless was why I wanted Barker. I thought long and hard about Ikea but the ability to get custom sizes pushed us over to Barker. Also have you compared the quality of things like hinges and drawer glides to be sure your pricing is apples to apples?

The measuring by ourselves and getting the order right scared me as well. I won't know till they come if I got it right but what helped me was the following:.

1. Download and install the 30 day trial of Cabinet Vision that he talks about on his web site. You can then add his catalog of cabinets to the software to do your design. It wasn't too hard to learn and way less brain-dead than the Ikea planner and any of the other free ones I tried. This is real software, hence only the 30 day trial.

2. Draw it out in the software, then make a spreadsheet of all the cabinets, types, sizes, how many you need, etc.

3. Then get your spouse or another neutral party to go over the drawing and make sure it makes sense, that you have the right cabs in the right places.

4. Think and double check all the things you have learned here and from the Barker web site. Do you have at least 2" fillers on each wall? Do you have finished ends where you need them? Did you remember toe kick trim, molding etc. where you need them.

5. Check the spreadsheet against the drawing with another person, one looks at the software, one cross references the spreadsheet.

6. Take a break for a few days or a week.

7. Repeat steps 2-5 until you are comfortable.

8. Create an account on the barker website and put your items in the cart. It will save them, so don't order yet.

9. Print the contents of the cart.

10. Double triple check the cart printout against your spreadsheet.

11. Take a deep breath, put in your credit card number and submit the order.

12. Tell yourself, well if one of them is wrong, we'll use it in the garage and order another one. Go have a drink and don't go over the order again :-)

Last word, don't rush it, take your time.

Hope that helps!

Adding to lucas' list: measure and re-measure with someone else at the other end of the measuring tape. Every little bit counts and you don't want to find that you read the tape wrong.

Comparing frames construction with frameless is specious. The strength of framed cabinetry is in the faceframes, not the boxes. You don't need thick boxes on framed at all to be strong and sturdy. The strength of frameless cabinets is all in the boxes, so of course, the boxes will be much thicker. Apples and oranges.

Kraftmaid makes a fine cabinet that doesn't suffer in comparison to Barkers, because you aren't comparing the same things. Their strong suit is marketing though, and they have a lot of name recognition tbat you are paying for rolled into their pricing. There are scads of mid range cabnets out there at equal or lesser priced.

I suppose you can order any type of slides you want with Kraftmaid. I'll admit I don't know. My Kraftmaid are 10 years old at this point. While I was at it, I was comparing the Kraftmaid drawer slides with the Blum slides I ordered from Scherr's. Big difference in quality.