Best Kitchen Cabinets
Helping you choose the best cabinets for your kitchen
Laminate Kitchen Cabinets: Painting, Refinishing or Refacing
Many people own kitchens with laminate kitchen cabinets that are looking tired and old, but are still sturdy and don’t warrant replacement.
What to do?
You can paint or re-face your laminate cabinets, or buy new doors and drawer fronts, and get a whole new look without the expense, work and hassle of replacing the cabinets.
Painting
The most important part when painting cabinets of any kind is the preparation, and this goes double with laminate cabinets as inadequate preparation will cause all your hard work painting to be for naught – the paint will simply peel off. Preparation of the laminate involves roughening the surface with sandpaper and then using a special primer to bond to the laminate surface and give a good substrate for the finish coats of paint. Special paint is also available for painting on top of laminate.
If you’re going to paint, you might want to consider changing the style of your doors beforehand. Do you have the oak or metal pull strips along the bottom or top edge of the doors or drawers? These are a dead giveaway of 80′s style laminate cabinets. You could remove them and replace with plain wood, fill the join between the new wood strip and the door surface, then paint over the whole lot and use new knobs or pulls as handles. You could also use thin wood strips like lath, glued to the door like a picture frame, to give the effect of a shaker frame-and-panel door style. Once filled and painted, no-one will know that the “frame” was added later.
Refacing with Laminate
Simply gluing new laminate in a new color and style over the old is a fast and simple way to change your cabinets. New water-based contact cement is much safer and more pleasant to work with than the old solvent based glues and is quite adequate for gluing on the new laminate. Make sure you remove the doors and drawer fronts so you can work on them horizonatlly, to make the task easier, and clean the old surface well before gluing to get rid of grease or dirt that will prevent proper adhesion. You may also want to add matching edge banding: check that there’s enough clearance between the doors and drawer fronts to give space for the new thickness. You may be able to adjust hinges to give you more space.
Refacing with Wood
It’s possible to buy wood veneers of many species which you glue on to your doors and drawers, plus edge banding to match, in the same way as the new laminate. You’ll then need to stain and finish the wood as desired. If your cabinets are face frame construction rather than “euro” style boxes, you can reface the frames too.
New doors and drawer fronts
If your doors and drawers are beat up but the cabinet boxes are in good shape, consider buying new doors and drawer fronts in a new style, material and color to completely transform your kitchen. This is more expensive than refacing or painting, but may be less work and give you a better result in the long run.
Vintage Metal Kitchen Cabinets
There are many metal kitchen cabinets still installed in older houses. For a long time these cabinets were seen as dowdy, old-fashioned, dingy, even nasty – but as so often happens, retro is cool and the wheel has come full circle to bring them back into fashion again.
Original metal kitchen cabinet installations are now cherished by their owners, and other metal cabinet lovers search out used cabinets on the second-hand market to buy, refurbish and install in their own kitchens.
If they have been well maintained, metal cabinets may be still looking good and giving sterling service. However, most original cabinets suffer from one or more of the following potential problems, all of which have solutions or at least methods to minimise them.
Corrosion
Over the years, on older cabinets the finish has often broken down in high-wear locations, and as soon as the paint film has broken down, rust starts to rear its ugly head. This is especially likely under the sink, but it may happen as well in areas where condensation builds up, or where plumbing fixtures have leaked such as a water line to a fridge.
Dents and Dings
Metal doors can be dented by kids and objects banging into them, and in time they can start to look pretty shabby. Dents can sometimes be removed by an auto body shop, but the simplest method is to use auto body putty like Bondo to fill them, sand and repaint.
Noise
Opening and closing doors and drawers can result in a lot of clasnging and especially if your family are “bangers”, the noise can be annoying. Lining metal doors with a damping material such as wood, rubber or foam (similar to the sound-deadening used under stainless steel sinks) may help, as will installing dampers to prevent the metal-on-metal contact which makes so much noise.
Finding Metal Kitchen Cabinets
If you love the look of metal cabinets, you can find them for sale “used” on Craigslist, eBay, and possibly in your local newspaper classified ads. Searching the Web will bring up many discussions of where and how people have found their cabinets: some people will drive a long way to get them!
Of course, you probably won’t find all the cabinets you need for your kitchen design all in one go! Expect to spend time searching out multiple batches of cabenets, possibly in different colors, to get what you need. You can also turn the process around, find the cabinets first, then design your kitchen around what you have.
Refinishing Metal Cabinets
It’s perfectly possible to refinish these cabinets in a number of different ways. A DIY method is to clean and degrease, prime using metal primer, then spray with appliance paint. Two-part expoxy paint can also be used. Both these paints create a high level of nasty fumes, so make sure you can leave windows and doors open for several days after you’ve painted.
If you don’t want to do the refinishing yourself, companies will come and use an “electrostatic painting” process to paint the cabinets right in your kitchen with good results. The electrostatic part refers to a process which uses static electricity to make the cabinets attract the paint, so there’s very little overspray. It can be used with several different types of paint.
If you’ll be removing the cabinets in order to renovate the kitchen, you can send them out to be refinished. The most arduous route involves sand-blasting or soda-blasting the old paint and rust off the cabinets, filling dents, then refinishing by a powder-coating or auto body shop. Ideally, first find your painter, then find out who he or she uses as a sand or soda blaster as the two will be used to working together.
If your cabinets don’t need much dent-filling, consider cleaning off the old finish and then clear-coating the bare metal, for a unique metallic look.
Unfinished Kitchen Cabinets: The Why, What and Where
Unfinished kitchen cabinets are a great choice in several situations:
- you want the best value for money and are prepared to put in your time and labor
- you want a unique finish or super high-end look to the cabinets, without paying an arm and leg to get it.
- you want the lowest possible price while still getting decent quality
What do you get when you buy unfinished kitchen cabinets?
These cabinets in general are face-frame construction, with hardwood face frames and plywood or MDF panels. They are intended for you to finish them yourself with paint or stain and clear coating. Generally, they come fully assembled.
What’s the difference between “unfinished” and “RTA” or “Ready to Assemble” cabinets?
Unfinished cabinets are fully assembled, but the wood used in the construction is raw and ready for you to paint or stain. Often, the interior is already finished with clear finish (not paint or stain) and you just have to do your own custom finishing to the outside. Unfinished cabinets are usually of face-frame construction.
RTA cabinets are normally completely finished, but they come in pieces, flat-packed in a box so they are easy to pack into your vehicle or have shipped. All the pieces are cut to exact size and shape and pre-drilled for fasteners, and normally the special fasteners are included in the package. RTA cabinets are usually of frameless construction.
Where can I buy unfinished cabinets?
- Lowes carries a range of unfinished cabinets which you can order online or through their stores.
- There are several independent companies which carry unfinished cabinets as part of their line, or which produce unfinished cabinets.
- Your local kitchen cabinet maker might also be willing to build cabinets for you to finish yourself.
How to Choose the Best Kitchen Cabinets
The best kitchen cabinets for your kitchen project are those that meet your needs for function, style and budget. They may not be the same as the ones your neighbor or your sister-in-law installed, as those people have different needs; nor are they necessarily the ones promoted in the latest shelter magazines or internet ads. You’ll need to research what’s available to you and the pros and cons compared to your own situation, before you can decide.
There are several factors to consider when you’re trying to decide which are the best kitchen cabinets for your kitchen, whether you’re building a new home or remodeling an existing kitchen. The important thing to remember is that the cabinets should work for you, never mind the latest style!
Here are some different factors to consider:
Who makes them? Cabinets can be built using a variety of different systems.
DIY – build them yourself from scratch
RTA (ready-to-assemble): these are cabinets that you buy in flat pack form, and build yourself using the parts and instructions supplied. They are not usually very hard to build, but if you’re outfitting an entire kitchen with them it can be quite time consuming. Quality varies, as does price. Availability is usually instant: you go to the store, pick them up and take them home.
Stock cabinets are pre-built by the manufacturer and delivered from stock in a warehouse. They are built in a limited number of sizes, so you may not be able to fill every inch of possible space in your kitchen – but they are reasonably priced and can be good quality if you choose wisely. They are normally available very quickly as they don’t have to be built just for you.
Semi-custom cabinets are manufactured to order, and come in a much wider range of sizes than stock cabs, but are not made exactly to fit your individual kitchen space. You can usually get a better fit and finish than with stock cabinets, and you’ll have a wider choice of finishes that may include more trendy ones as well as classics.
Custom cabinetss are exactly that – made to fit your exact space, and finished in the exact way you wish. You can get a unique look, excellent quality, and exact fit. Everything depends on the quality of your cabinetmaker’s work, though, so be careful choosing who you want to do the job! It sometimes happens that getting a small local shop to build custom cabinets for you works out cheaper than buying semi-custom cabs from a manufacturer, so don’t assume that custom is automatically out of your price range.
How are they made, and using what materials?
There are two main construction methods for cabinets: face-frame, where the cabinets have a structural frame of (usually) hardwood filled in with thinner sheet materials, or frameless, where the panels are thicker and stronger and make up the structure without needing a separate frame. European cabinets are almost always frameless, whereas North American cabinets can be either. Face frames give you the option of having inset doors, which you may want for historical accuracy in an older home.
Materials for the cabinet box vary but apart from the frame in face frame construction, consist of sheet materials like particleboard, MDF or plywood, with masonite used for some parts like backs or drawer bottoms. You’ll see some talk that plywood means better quality, but that’s not always the case: good quality MDF can hold its own in the quality stakes. One issue to be aware of when choosing sheet materials is the glue used to create the sheet, whether plywood or MDF. Glues containing formaldehyde can “off-gas” into your home’s air which may be bad for your family’s health. You can choose to buy cabinets which use only materials with no formaldehyde, and even panels made from wheat straw instead of wood.
Door materials include solid wood (stained, clear finished, or painted), and particleboard or MDF which has been covered with thermofoil, laminate, paint, or lacquer.
Function:
Many internal fittings and attachments are available, and you’ll want to know exactly which ones you can use in the cabinets you choose, and which ones you’ll need to make your kitchen function well. There’s a huge range of interior fittings for both base and wall cabinets. Most important are corner base fittings, if you have a corner in your design.
Style
Ah, now we come to the fun part – the door and drawer style and color. Currently, the most common finishes are wood (medium light tone, usually, but sometimes dark) or white painted. That doesn’t mean you can’t get other finishes, everything from glossy bright orange to heavily distressed and antiqued moldings, but white and wood are the two biggies at the moment.
Freestanding or built-in: one fashionable look is of separate pieces of furniture, but often they are actually regular cabinets. This look is often meant to give the impression that the kitchen furniture has been built up gradually over the years, but you can also get freestanding pieces which match each other so they don’t have that look! It all depends on what you want. Obviously, even with freestanding-style cabinets, plumbing and wiring will attach at least some of them to their places.
Cost
For most people, the objective is to get the look and function they need, at a price they can afford. You can come at this from either end: set your budget first, then price out cabinets to see what you can afford: or price out several types of cabinets, then see how much you need to budget. Bear in mind that cabinets are harder to change than almost anything else – flooring, counters, backsplash, appliances can all be changed out while keeping the same cabinets, and the cabinets themselves can be refinished several times during their lifetime. So, don’t fall for false economy: get the best quality cabinets you can afford.
As you can see, there are many factors to consider as you work out which are the best kitchen cabinets for you. But you won’t regret the time spent researching and checking, when you get to spend many years getting full use and enjoyment out of your kitchen.