Buying Kitchen Cabinets? Read This First!

If you do not want your kitchen looking a bit too disorganized, then a kitchen cabinet is one component not to be taken lightly.

The quality of life of a family is not only reflected in the living room or bedroom, but the quality of the kitchen environment also defines the entire home.

From shelving utensils to providing an aesthetic face-lift, to augmenting the room’s size, the kitchen cabinet is a vital part of your kitchen that should be considered carefully.

You don’t want just a beautiful cabinet, but one that’ll stand the test of time and suit your kitchen decor perfectly.

To make things easier for you, we have compiled a comprehensive guide that’ll help you select the perfect kitchen cabinet that’ll meet your needs.

What Can You Suggest For a Kitchen Cabinet?

Cabinets take up a lot of the space in the kitchen. Since they set the tone at first glance, you might as well take care of their appearance to polish the atmosphere!

Cabinets are often the focal point of the kitchen Apart from the choice of kitchen cabinet materials and their cost, the style of cabinet desired is just as important.

Shaker cabinets, flat cabinets, cabinets with glass doors… the possibilities are endless. Here are our top suggestions for choosing the best kitchen cabinets.

Choose one completing your house

Is yours a more classic house, with a lot of moldings and cornices? Or is it a heritage house with exposed wood beams and paneling? Choosing a style that matches the rest of your home is essential to ensure a coherent whole. I’ve broken down the styles in interior design so you can choose cabinets that match your style. 

Go for cabinets that are resistant, versatile, and warm

because take it or leave it, the majority of your frustrations will be meted out on these pieces of art. You don’t want a cabinet that shivers at the slightest touch.

Choose one that can withstand humidity.

As you will find out, water is the worst enemy of your wooden cabinet, except, of course, you plate it with gold, which I strongly doubt.

Still, if these suggestions haven’t offered much help in driving you to a decision then breathe easy, as I have assisted by streamlining your choice to the four best materials to look out for when selecting your kitchen cabinet.

4 Best Meterials For Kitchen Cabinets

1.Melamine

Pros

  • Many choices of colors and finishes
  • Follows trends
  • Fairly good scratch resistance (except glossy melamine)
  • Easy to maintain
  • Affordable

Cons

  • Perceived as low-end material                        
  • Fragility to bumps and scratches                       
  • Sensitivity to heat and humidity                     
  • Fingerprints more noticeable on matte and dark finishes                            
  • Difficult to repair

2.Thermoplastic

Pros

  • Large selection of styles, doors, finishes, and colors
  • Material fairly resistant to impact and scratches                                   
  • Uniform color that does not fade over time
  • Stronger than most melamine and laminate
  • Good value for money
  • Ease of maintenance

Cons

  • Low heat resistance: avoid contact with self-cleaning oven, toaster, or kettle
  • Difficult to repair
  • Plastic finishing

3.Polyester

Pros

  • Many choice colors and finish
  • Excellent price-performance ratio
  • Great  resistance  to heat, humidity, fading, shocks, and scratches
  • Beautiful imitation of species of wood
  • Easy to maintain

Cons

  • Difficult to repair

4.Wood

Pros

  • Timeless
  • Durability
  • Refined  and  elegant                                   
  • Resistant  to  shock  (depending on  the wood  quality)
  • Reparable
  • Several  choices  of species, styles, colors, and finishes  (glossy,  semi-gloss,  oiled,  matte)
  • Minimum  maintenance

Cons

  • High cost

Why Should One Choose Custom Kitchen Cabinets?

Kitchen cabinets come in three variants: semi-stock, stock, and custom. The latter of the three has become very popular in recent times and for very advantageous reasons.

Adding custom kitchen cabinets can boost the value of your home, so here are 5 reasons why you should consider a custom kitchen cabinet:

Tailored to your taste: Custom designs can be started before the kitchen floor is decorated, all kinds of pipelines and sockets are tailored to your convenience, and the space layout is reasonable.

If you choose the custom cabinet route, you will be getting a professionally manufactured product by the factory assembly line just for you.

In addition, it is environmentally friendly, and the material is also based on your actual affordability, which is cheap.

Saves Space: In comparison, ordinary cabinets generally only have basic storage functions and lack consideration in many aspects, such as space management.

Customized cabinets, on the other hand, produced by professional manufacturers have been carefully considered in terms of functional design, leaving you with acres of space and easy access to kitchen utensils.

Long life: A set of high-quality customized cabinets has a long service life, and can be combined, adjusted, and moved arbitrarily according to your ever-changing needs.

Regular cabinets usually pursue outer appearance over quality leading to doors that creak after two or swipes from your cat. With customized, experienced designers will carefully consider the ergonomics and mechanics to choose matching hardware. This results in a sturdy cabinet.

Affordable: Did I mention it is cheap? Well permit my emphasis: it is really cheap!

In fact, according to the current market situation of the cabinet market, the price of buying furniture made of materials by yourself is higher than that of making furniture directly from big brand integrated cabinet manufacturers.

But you might ask, “Why is it cheaper to make a custom order than to ask a furniture expert (that’s what they call carpenters these days) to do it?”

Because the big brands purchase in bulk, coupled with factory batch assembly line production, the cost is greatly reduced, rather than a single high profit.

What Is The Major Problem With The Kitchen Cabinet?

The worst enemy to your kitchen cabinet is time, yes time. Over extensive usage, the doors and drawers will begin to malfunction, symptoms of wear and tear.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise when the doors begin to disobey, snubbing your instructions to close or open.

It’s more likely than not that the fiberboard countertops will begin to rot, especially in the sink and faucet areas.

If you turn your cabinet base into a mini-storage room then hidden leaks and base damage are faults to look out for.

What Is The Best Time Of Year to Buy Kitchen Cabinets?

Late November and December have been proven to be the most favorable period of the year to make your kitchen cabinet purchase.

Spring is the most popular time of the year for cabinet purchases, which will pitch you into a competition bowl with hundreds of other US residents.

This is what you should avoid: a rush-hour purchase, as demand is directly proportional to pricing.

Armed with this fact, the end of the year is the best window to make that cabinet purchase, from a monetary perspective.

During this period, the demand for contractors is relatively low, yet these contractors have their eyes peeled for dollars to celebrate the year-end. No matter your bargain, you should be good to go.

Labor is important because over 50% of the cost to set up a kitchen cabinet falls on the laps of the workman.

Do Kitchen Cabinets Go On Sale?

Absolutely, yes. The chances of not finding used cabinets for sale on eBay are very low.

As long as you haven’t yanked the door or dismembered the handle then you will always find a yearning, eager and ready market for your old cabinet.

Are Costco Kitchen Cabinets a Good Deal?

To find out if the Costco brand is right for you, you just need to know not only the points to consider to make an informed choice, but also to realize their advantages.

With its headquarters erected in the US State of Power itself along with almost 300,000 employees, Costco is not your regular manufacturer. They are the world’s fifth-largest retailer, a certification that comes with a badge of credibility.

Here are top reasons why you should consider Costco kitchen cabinets on your next purchase:

  1. Wide Range of Options and Strong Online Presence: This is the first bag of chips you will notice when shopping on the Costco website. They have an extensive range of options available for selections.

Plus, ordering online, as they don’t stock cabinets in store, will fetch you a direct delivery to your home, with all costs, including shipping and handling, settled in the upfront fees.

  • Guaranteed Quality: In keeping up with their globe-trotting reputation, Costco offers you cabinets of the best quality. In order to stand out from the crowd, Costco makes a large chunk of their cabinets from ¾ inch plywood panels, not the cheaper and more conventional ½-inch plywood.

Also slapped on the cabinet face are either real hardwood veneers or high-quality laminate.

  • Affordability: The price of the average Costco cabinet is probably the bone of contention for you, I believe. Well, it will interest you to know that, unlike its name, Costco is relatively cost-effective.

When I put into cognizance every factor that encompasses affordability, it was immediately clear that this is not one-bit exorbitant. With the sturdy rugged cabinet you will be getting, the price is on the right side of the scale.

  • Costco kitchen cabinets are available in all three variants, another big plus.

by Lisa Wilson

Without the internet, Lisa would never have discovered upcycling. She used wisdom from other people’s blogs to begin her upcycling journey, then she started writing her own!