Buying Kitchen Cabinets - Beginner's Guide

hey youtube it's robert back with another video and today's video is a crash course on cabinetry designed to give you guys the basic foundational elements to go out and start shopping for cabinetry and have an idea of some of the things to look for as well as some of the questions to ask as you start making your selections for those of you that are new to my channel my name is robert and i'm here to be your guide for all things remodeling and one of the things that i find happens a lot when clients come in and they're looking for cabinets is they'll have a really good idea of what colors they want they'll usually have somewhat of an idea of the door style and some of the things that kind of give the looks that they've maybe seen on houzz or pinterest or in a magazine but then when it comes to some of the actual construction elements of the cabinets and a little bit of the details that affect how cabinets will function and perform it's not something that they're real familiar with and it's often not something that anybody else has really gone into great detail with them on now there are a lot of things that we could cover when it comes to cabinets so in this video specifically i'm going to be largely focusing on some of the differences between your wood and your mdf cabinets the differences between the paint stain and thermofoil cabinets as well as some of the construction elements to the cabinets that give you more or less functionality i'm not going to spend any time talking about specific brands because there's just so many so what we're going to focus on today are a little bit more of the universal elements of cabinetry and i'm also not going to really dive too much into the design elements of the different door styles and things like that those are all secondary and you can have that conversation with your contractor but the things that i'm going to talk about today will hopefully make sure that you're protected from not getting a certain feature in your cabinet that's important to you or that you really need so when it comes to wood versus mdf both can make for a great cabinet but depending on what we're looking for we might be more prone to go towards one or the other for example if we want cabinets that showcase the beauty of the natural wood then we need to go with natural wood if we're going to stain the wood and showcase off all the knots the grain any of the natural features that we get from a wood well then we're not going to get that from an mdf it's a high density compressed fiber now by contrast because with the mdf we basically don't have any pre-existing grain to worry about we can actually get a much smoother painted finish on it where with wood we have to prime it and make sure that it's prepped so that when we do paint it we don't fight and see a whole bunch of that grain come through that's something that you'll see a lot with refinished cabinets where they were oak and clients go in and they have somebody come and paint it a lot of times you will see a little bit of that oak grain coming through that painted cabinet now when we get to the construction elements which i'll show you some examples of cabinets here in a little while you also have the option in many cases of going with a plywood constructed cabinet box versus a mdf cabinet box and both again can perform really well but there are differences in the quality of different plywood constructions as well as different mdf constructions so for you it's going to be really difficult on a technical level to determine just how good one product is over another and that's where you're really gonna have to have confidence in your contractor as well as seeing what the cabinet maker offers in terms of their warranties and guarantees that often case will be the best way for you to really know what you're getting when it comes to the mdf grades but some of the things that you can see we'll get into in a few minutes and that'll help you with sorting out some of your entry level options versus some of your higher end options in terms of the exteriors of the cabinets the part that we're generally looking at and most focused on from the aesthetic standpoint we have up here three examples one of a stained wood cabinet door it's a five piece and it has a solid center panel this raised panel here is also solid wood now contrast that over here with our shaker style we still have a five piece construction although the center panel is our hdf board so it's not a solid piece in there we can find two shaker styles even within the same company and if one uses that center panel as an hdf piece and the other it's solid all the way through the solid piece will be the more expensive but it's also typically synonymous with a little bit higher grade higher performance impact resistance there now the centerpiece is a thermal foil which is basically a vinyl wrap over an hdf or mdf board couple quick notes on thermal foil cabinets they are going to be less expensive than going with the stain or paint grade they do open up a lot of options in terms of some of the styles we can get and the colors they are typically much easier to clean than even a paint or stained grade wood but they're not going to tend to last near as long where a solid wood cabinet or hdf or mdf cabinets can last for several decades generally after 15-20 years at the most we're going to expect to start seeing some chipping or some peeling out of the thermal foiled cabinets and if they've been exposed to any high levels of heat or moisture we can get a lot of problems with these when compared to the other two all products need to make sure that you're not exposing them to too high of heat or moisture but this in particular is going to be a little more susceptible to damage from those another thing to note about both hdf and wood is they do expand and contract but the hdf product is less likely to show any of the effects of that through warping than what wood is and especially when it comes to painted cabinetry we'll notice that with wood and that expanding and contracting we over time will actually start to see a lot of those seams where the wood pieces were joined together so for example white cabinets although on the first day that they're put in i think they're about as beautiful of a cabinet as you can get they just look clean bright crisp i love love brand new white cabinets they're beautiful but over time as they've experienced some of that expansion and contraction as they've had a little bit of wear in the house we'll start to see those seams where the different boards were joined more on our painted cabinets and on our wood painted cabinets and what we would see on our hdf or our stained woods all right now jumping over here we've got two examples of more or less a production line cabinet box so these are products that don't really have too much of a degree of customization to them they're typically going to come standard widths standard heights and then some of the features that you might be able to customize would be the types of glides that they have whether or not you give them a cushion close feature so just to highlight a few of those options that might be available on this type of cabinet box we're going to go ahead and compare these two now in this dark espresso we've got a stained maple door with a solid slab front so when we say slab it just means it's all one piece now on the other side here we have a cabinet that just like the bottom door the actual drawer face also consists of five pieces as opposed to just that one solid all right so looking at the differences between our two cabinets here our first one we have side mount glides now that's going to prohibit us from getting a full extension on our cabinet drawer where we get the drawer all the way out and don't have to stick our hand down underneath to access the back of it this cabinet next to it we have our full extension under mount glides so instead of the glides on the side they're actually underneath and now we have the ability to get that drawer all the way flush with the front of our cabinet box and be able to use more of our actual drawer space another little key difference between these two our white cabinet over here features our cushion clothes so where on our espresso i can slam that drawer right into the cabinet on our cushion clothes drawers they catch as it gets right to the end and helps provide a softer close so if you have any rowdy kids that tend to throw those uh drawers back in this kind of helps to keep it from you know making noise and wearing down on those we can also apply that to our door bottoms where we can still again catch that so instead of slamming it we get that nice cushioned close on the bases as well and another difference between our two cabinet boxes you'll see in the actual joinery methods for these drawers your less expensive cabinets they'll typically tend to have stapled joinery so they take the two sides and they actually then staple them into this front piece couple that with the fact that this whole piece is all hdf and if we compare that over here with our all wood drawer we also have dovetailing that then is connected to the front piece with this other plastic piece when we look at our custom cabinets in a second we won't even see this piece on there one last thing to mention when it comes to these particular cabinets is we're looking at standard overlay drawers and doors what i mean by that is that the cabinet box actually has a lot of its face exposed these drawers do not meet right up against each other nor do the doors at the bottom we have that exposed space where you see the actual cabinet face now we'll jump over to some custom cabinetry here in a second that's going to feature full overlay drawers indoors where we don't see so much of the face of the box and in my opinion that's a much more attractive and streamlined look of cabinets so another little detail when you go out and you're shopping for cabinets be sure to ask are you looking at a cabinet that offers these standard overlay drawers or are you looking at something with a full overlay now here we're jumping over to one of our custom cabinets and in addition to some of the cool options that we were looking at on our other displays like the cushion clothes and the full extension glides when we move into custom cabinetry the sky is the limit so if typical production line cabinets only offer a 30 inch wide box and then a 36 inch wide and then a 42 with our custom cabinetry if we need a 38 inch box we can make it so you have a lot more luxury in terms of the design on how you actually structure the sizes of your boxes then we're also going to be typically looking at a lot of additional hand detailing so on a cabinet like this where we've got a glaze and you actually have sanded corners to give it more of a kind of rustic worn look that's all done by hand it's all custom and is a completely unique from one piece to the next looking down at the drawer we can see this particular cabinet the entire cabinet is constructed with this nine layer plywood so with some of the production line cabinets that tout all wood construction you'll see that they may only be comprised of three plies in that wood box so you end up with very thin uh construction that that really is not any better than the majority of your hdf boxes out on the market now in this entire cabinet there's not going to be a staple to be found it's all going to be constructed of this nine layer plywood and it's all going to be joined either by traditional joinery or the use of pocket screws but everything on here is basically either wood or metal and that's down to the smallest of details so construction when we start moving into custom cabinets it's going to be more expensive but you're going to have a lot more freedom and it's going to be some of the best quality that you can get assuming that you're getting it made by a quality cabinet maker now if you remember on the other display that i showed you where i talked about standard overlay drawers this is our example of a full overlay where you don't see the cabinet box in between our individual drawers as well as our bottom doors the whole thing basically has those pieces all butting up next to each other so we get this just nice clean look as we go from one piece to the next so to kind of recap here's a little bit of a checklist for us when we go out and we're looking for cabins some of the things we want to make sure we ask what type of construction is it for the actual cabinet box is it full plywood construction or is it an hdf construction what about our doors are they full wood including our center panel or are we looking at something that's wood with a veneer center panel are we talking about a product that's a standard overlay drawer and door or is it full overlay where we're not going to see so much of that cabinet box and what about our drawers are they going to have the full extension glides with the cushion clothes or is it going to be side mount glides where we don't have it fully accessible and no cushion close also what about the joinery are we talking about boxes that are constructed with just staples or are we looking at something that features dovetailing or finger joint or some other type of traditional joinery method these are some of the things that you should make sure that you're asking and your contractors should be able to explain to you what you're looking at and if they can't it might be an indication you want to keep searching for a different company or contractor as well guys if you found this video helpful today please do me a quick favor hit that thumbs up button for me comment down below with any of your thoughts questions or what you might like to see me go into further detail on in the future and then be sure to subscribe if you'd like to see more content from me in the future i do read and respond to as many of those comments as i can and i appreciate all the feedback until next time happy remodeling and have a great day

Channel: Remodel With Robert

Views: 204,504

Keywords: Kitchen Cabinets, Wood vs MDF Cabinets, SOLLiD Cabinetry, Timberlake Cabinets, Kitchen and Bath Cabinets, Cabinetry, What to look for in Cabinets, custom cabinets, custom cabinetry, thomasville, american woodmark, kraftmaid, durafrom, thermofoil

Id: KIcpQHV_apg

Length: 14min 19sec (859 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 13 2021