Friday, April 10, 2009

Adventures in Cabinetry

While the boys have been somewhat busy sheetrocking the downstairs, I've been on a new quest to get every last inch of the upstairs mapped out. I don't want any delays once we move the demo up there. Yesterday, I spent a good amount of time with a nice fellow at Home Depot planning out our kitchen for the upstairs. It's much easier to plan for a larger space than for that little studio, so it was a pretty straightforward process. The Depot is having a 20% deal off custom cabinets until the beginning of May which I'm pretty excited about. I don't love buying things at the The Depot, but they are a necessary evil in our lives right now. And we do need to find the cheapest cutest options we can. Ikea would fit the bill, but I want a nice white cabinet for upstairs and the Ikea ones look cheap in white. I think they're really cute in darker hues.

Today I ventured over to Young's Custom Cabinets which is where our pals, J & G, recently bought new cabinets from for their snazzy new kitchen. J warned me that it was a weird place and it was indeed. First of all, it is so far South in San Francisco that I really think it's San Carlos. Next, there is absolutely no indication from the outside that they have any sort of showroom or are the slightest bit interested in random people like me stopping by. J also warned me about this. I hollered out to one of the guys operating a large piece of machinery inside who let me in. He directed me up the winding staircase where there was one little room with a wall of cabinet doors. Again, J also warned me about this but I didn't believe it until I saw it.

I was greeted by the one man that seemed to occupy the space. He seemed to surprised to see me. I explained that I already had a plan and I could tell him exactly what we needed. He didn't want me to stay or to discuss options. He wasn't able to tell me if the cabinets were all wood or not. His first language was, in fact, English so that wasn't the problem. He made a copy of my plan and told me he would contact me in 2-3 days with the price. 2-3 days?? They didn't exactly seem booming with business, so I didn't feel badly urging him to do it sooner rather than later. After approximately 2.5 minutes in their showroom, I was shown the door and told that they'd be in touch.

Several hours later I received an email from them with a price that is 50% less than The Depot cabinets-- even with their discount. Now that is exciting! I have not confirmed yet whether or not they can do pull-out rolling shelves or other built-ins that would be nice. My fear is that he only costed out one of the sheets than I gave him instead of both, thereby accidentally giving me a quote for half our kitchen. The only real piece of information that I was able to get from him while I was there was that they import the doors from China and then build the boxes here. That would explain the cheapness, but the quality really seems as nice as Kraftmaid. I am a little fearful of the imported from China items at the moment after learning about all the drama with the Chinese sheetrock. Who knows what kind of toxins are in the finish. Sorry if I sound like a grade A jerk, but I think it's true.

1 comment:

  1. well how many cute- glowing-pregnant- girls- wh-are -super -organized-know-what-she-wants and- ready -to roll do they get in there? Answer: none!
    Ya threw them for a loop : )

    ReplyDelete