Relatively inexpensive high-quality kitchen cabinets?
I have IKEA cabinets in my home. They do not have plywood construction (the cabinets are made of particle board with a veneer overlay). With regards to your other criteria, they mostly fit. One possible suggestion would be to search around on Craigslist. A few years ago I had some custom furniture made by a cabinet maker on Craigslist who was new to the area. I visited his shop before I had the work done and saw examples of his work. It was very high quality work, but I got a great price. Another possible solution would be to find someone to make the cabinet frames for you out of plywood like you want, but to use IKEA doors and hardware. They have solid wood doors and they have very high quality hardware.
There’s no way to tell if this is overly expensive or not without knowing how many cabinet/cabinet units there are. With that you can guesstimate material costs and then what’s left over is labor. If they’re all using similar profiles, you can probably count on being able to make between 5 and 6 cabinet doors per day (I’m guessing, of course, but assuming that I had blanks or glue ups for each cabinet face done, it’s pretty much one router set up for the frame using rail and stile bits and one shaper set up for raised panels), then it goes pretty quickly. If your husband wants to insist on meticulously cut rail and stile joinery, that will cost. Given that a typical cabinet face uses about 6 board feet of wood, and cherry can be between $6 and $10US per board foot, that’s between $36 and $60 per cabinet. Building carcasses will take longer, but I could see being able to do 2-4 pe
Ikea has a kitchen planner that you can download. Then you can see what it would cost for various styles of cabinetry. I spent @ 5,000 for cabinets, stove, dishwasher, microwave, sink, faucet and delivery. This was with the 20% discount (now ended, sorry) that persuaded me to get appliances from Ikea. They have a range of quality. An architect friend recommended them. Because of their volume, their quality is better than anything similarly priced that I saw. They use sustainable wood harvesting/replanting. If you get the most popular style, you’ll have a wide variety of choice. It was just delivered, not yet assembled, so my recommendation is not unqualified. Your husband likely charges a fair price for his work, as he should. Better quality, solid wood, true craftsmanship, all cost money. For the most part, to get more, you have t
