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joebayarea

Sticker shock on cabinets

joebayarea
15 years ago

Just got my quote today from the kitchen cabinet store,

and the estimate was for 28K. This seems high to us.

It's the Alectra line by Dura Supreme. Apparently,

they took list price with a 10 percent discount.

Does this seem fair? It's a good number of

cabinets, but in my last kitchen remodel in my former

house, the cabinets were of similar quality and only 12K.

Does it pay to shop around?

Comments (4)

  • brutuses
    15 years ago

    I believe it absolutely pays to shop around. I can't give you an specifics on the brand you mention though, sorry.

  • mrsandrews
    15 years ago

    Cabinets are SO expensive these days. I would strongly encourage you to shop around and even get a few bids from custom cabinet makers. We found that the customs were around the same price as stock when we were first looking.

    Our custom cabinet maker went bankrupt and took $15K of our money, so Im now in the process of shopping around again for a cabinet maker. We have approximately 110 linear feet of cabinetry in a kitchen, bath, and laundry room. We were going to pay the first guy $28K. The bids this time around are $27K, $36K, $38K, $39K, $44K, and $54K. I gave each maker a very detailed set of plans with measurements and very specific requests on hardware, finish, materials, etc. and it varies that much, so SHOP SHOP SHOP till you drop. It's worth the effort. Plus, I learn so much each time I meet with a different cabinet maker and it will help the final outcome, Im sure.

    On the negative side, now my head is swimming, and I don't know who to trust or what to do. I know they say not to go with the lowesst, but we're going to have to due to the loss of the $15k, so hopefully it will work out.

    Keep us posted on what you decide and good luck!

  • joebayarea
    Original Author
    15 years ago

    So sorry about your loss from the custom cabinet maker.
    You try and save the local artisan from the big
    manufacturers, and you end up being taken.
    Good luck and thanks for sharing.

  • lowspark
    15 years ago

    It's kind of funny but this question comes up here all the time. What is it about kitchen cabinets that we think the first ones we see, we should get a quote and that's the final number? I admit, I did the same thing at the beginning of my remodel. Hanging around here though made me realize that there is a world of possibilities out there.

    I had three misconceptions about cabinets:
    1. There are very few brands available (WRONG)
    2. There are very few midrange brands, most are high $$$ (WRONG)
    3. Custom cabs are way expensive (WRONG)

    I ended up getting a ton of quotes. Once you have a design it's easy to shop that design around. I found that I could get free estimates as long as they were just pricing out cabinets and not doing anything creative. This worked great for me for comparing prices, even though the design I used didn't end up being my exact final layout.

    $28K is a lot to spend without making sure it's the best deal for the best (for you) cabinets. Heck, even $12K, even $5K is a lot of money (to me!). Shop shop shop around. IME it's waaaay worth it.

    When I was searching, I decided I definitely wanted frameless and I compiled this list of manufacturers in order to separate framed from frameless and in order to have a list of websites that would tell me which of these brands were available in my area.

    Good luck!

    Here is a link that might be useful: my list of cabinet manufacturer's websites

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