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 The choices available when choosing kitchen cabinets can sometimes be overwhelming and it is difficult to know where to start.
On top of this, there are a number of terms and descriptions used to classify cabinets styles and manufacturing techniques.
Listed below are some of the more common terms used when buying cabinets, and it is hoped that this list will be added to in the near future.
Overlay:
The term overlay refers to how the door covers the frame of the cabinet. There are basically two different types of overlays.
Standard-overlay means you see the frame around the door and full-overlay means that the door covers the frame. In essence the door is larger on a full overlay cabinet.
Thermal-Foil:
Thermal-foil is a vinyl that is applied over a MDF (medium density fiberboard) door using a heat process. It is used for white or off-white doors. It is very easy to clean and is durable.
MDF Door:
MDF doors are made of medium density fiberboard, which can be routed into a raised panel design. They can be thermal-foiled, stained or painted in a solid color.
The advantage of choosing a MDF door as opposed to a constructed wood door when [...]
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 If you choose wood, you have the choice of solid wood or wood veneer. The latter is cheaper and is less influenced by weather conditions.
The humidity and temperature outside have an effect on your solid wooden kitchen doors, but the biggest influence comes from the changes in temperature and humidity in the kitchen.
Veneer can also give a more uniform look to the fronts (if this is what you want) as the pieces of wood used are cut from a larger piece in thin strips to cover all the doors.
Wood itself is available in all kinds of colors, but it can also be glossed, painted, colour washed or waxed to give it the finish you prefer. Look at the pictures on this site and on the Internet for more ideas and examples.
Cabinet Woods
Pine:
Has a casual, rustic look, some graining, color variation and knotholes. It is the softest of cabinet woods, so hinges may need to be tightened periodically as they tend to pull out of the wood after use.
Oak:
Has a casual look, a lot of graining and an even color tone when stained. It is a very hard wood and looks great [...]
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 There are a number of options when choosing a cabinet material, some of the most popular are, wood, laminate, and metal.
Each has its advantages and disadvantages and it is worth spending some time researching the numerous options.
Wood doors are covered in the next section due the the large number of combinations of styles and colors available.
Laminate
Laminate cabinet doors can have endless possibilities in color, texture and shine.
You can go for a soft look with creamy colours and a matt finish, or, if you want to make a real statement, choose Italian-style with glossy fronts and bold colors.
A great advantage of laminate cabinets is that they are virtually maintenance-free. Wood is a natural product and prone to changes in temperature and humidity and needs a lot of care, but laminate only needs to be wiped clean occasionally.
Laminate doors suffer from a lot less wear and tear than laminate countertops and should stay looking good for a long time.
Glass
Large expanses of wood or laminate in a kitchen can look good sometimes but if you want to break up the monotony, glass doors can be used every now and again. Transparent glass is used [...]
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 Because cabinet doors are the face of the kitchen, it will be very important that you choose a finish you want to look at for quite a number of years.
Keep in mind that, whichever material you choose to use for your cabinets, durability and low maintenance have to be the key to your choice.
As most of the cabinet carcasses nowadays are made of particleboard or chipboard, the only thing you have to worry about is the finish of the cabinet doors.
First of all it is important to choose which material you want to use. In this section, the different finishes and their possibilities will be explained.
Door Styles
There are a number of door styles, such as the following:
Square Raised Panel
Cathedral Arch
Roman Arch
Solid Panel
Traditional Mullion Glass Door
Country Mullion Glass Door
Beaded Panel
Shaker or Mission Style Door
Shaker Door with Center Stile
Raised panel doors are available in a square, roman arch or cathedral arch style. The drawer fronts are offered flat or also with a raised panel. Styles range from simple to beveled, or grooved with added details. The arch or square style works well with traditional decor. The square door works well with contemporary decor.
Recessed [...]
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 The first decision when selecting cabinets is whether to go for stock cabinets, semi-custom, custom units or frameless cabinets.
All have their own advantages and disadvantages.
There are the three basic classifications of cabinet manufacturing: Stock, Semi-Custom & Custom, and this can be further subdivided into Framed and Frameless.
Pricing will vary depending on your layout, the manufacturer, wood, finish, door style and the interior accessories you select.
Stock
Lowest price range
Limited selection of door styles, woods and stain colors. Solid woods and veneers are both used. Wood selection is usually oak, hickory, maple, cherry and MDF doors in white or off-white thermal-foils (see ‘Kitchen Cabinet Terminology’ below).
Usually offers three different grades of construction. Standard consists of particleboard sides and a 4-sided drawer box that is dadoed, stapled and glued. Mid-range upgrades the drawer box to wood with dovetailed joints and usually thicker shelves in the wall cabinets. Best offers all this plus plywood sides instead of particleboard. Hinges used are concealed, drawer glides are an epoxy side-mount. The finish is machine sprayed and sanded (finish quality will vary between various stock lines)
Cabinets are pre-made in standard sizes that increase in 3″ increments from 9″-48″ and [...]
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Tip of the Day: When ordering appliances, carefully check the specs
 Carpenters live by the adage, Measure twice. Cut once. The same advice can apply to ordering appliances and equipment for a kitchen remodel, says one New Jersey homeowner who recently undertook a top-to-bottom makeover of the 300-square-foot kitchen at her 1960s Cape Cod house.
Because Helaine W.’s new kitchen includes a bank of windows on the exterior wall, the plans called for an island vent hood—a wall-mounted hood with through-the-wall venting wouldn’t fit the design. What’s more, the hood had to be 24 inches deep or less so it wouldn’t overhang the counter.
To find the right-size hood, Helaine, her kitchen designer, and a salesperson from a local appliance store searched the Web sites of several major manufacturers and found the Franke FDF 367 1XS 36-inch-wide island hood. The Franke site indicated a depth of a little more than 19 inches, ideal for the application. An order was placed for the unit.
When the hood arrived four weeks later, the contractor notified Helaine that the Franke FDF 367 1XS was deeper [...]
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On AMC’s Mad Men, attention to detail includes appliances in the Drapers’ kitchen
 Much has been written about the painstaking detail that goes into every costume, set decoration, and cocktail on Mad Men, the hit drama on AMC about the advertising industry in the early 1960s.
We’ll leave it to the fashion scribes to decide whether the lapels on Don Draper’s suit and the furniture at the Sterling Cooper ad agency were appropriate in the season-three premiere on Sunday, August 16.
What we’re interested in are the appliances you see on the show. From that admittedly narrow perspective, a standout image from the premiere had to be the electric cooktop that Draper, played by Jon Hamm, is seen standing over in the opening sequence as he warms some milk for his pregnant wife, Betty (January Jones). The photo, courtesy of AMC, shows the Drapers’ kitchen.
The way the camera lingers over the glowing-red coils, the appliance definitely conjures a specific place in time. (As do those knotty-pine cabinets and the plaid wallpaper in the kitchen.) We didn’t test cooktops [...]
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Someone sent me an email and asked if I thought there was a design flaw in a section of her cabinet design. I had to write back that, yes, I agreed with her that part of the design was flawed. Unfortunately, it was a finished picture of the kitchen that they had sent me, which made it even more uncomfortable for me to give my opinion. The kitchen was installed, and it looked like it cost a pretty penny. Here are words of wisdom:
“Lesson Learned
I learned a big lesson the hard way and wish I had gone with my instinct to hire a kitchen designer during my kitchen design process.
My contractor convinced me that it would make more sense for him to design the kitchen layout because he was also working on the electrical, plumbing etc. so there would be a cost savings to me if he designed it and worked with his preferred cabinet company.
We decided to go ahead and in the end I thought the kitchen looked great until I noticed some design elements that look flawed to me.
I believe that a good kitchen designer would have done a much [...]
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 The best place on the Internet for Kitchen Cabinet quotes.
There are so many choices where cabinets are concerned, such as the door materials, style, color, frames, etc., and so much variation in price that the whole area can be confusing at times.
Hopefully, this guide should give you a good place to start.
You may also want to consider the option of having your cabinets refaced. You will be surprised at the results you can achieve by doing this, and also how inexpensive it is, especially if you can find a good deal with a reputable company.
To go straight to the kitchen cabinet refacing quote page, click here. Fill out our 3-5 minute form to receive a free kitchen cabinets price quote from one of our prescreened and licensed contractors.
Definitely check it out first, get some quotes and see if makes sense for you. Then click on the links on the left to read more about kitchen cabinets.
     [...]
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You can cook without a hood or a vent, but moisture, grease, odors, and heat from cooking on a cooktop can damage the rest of your kitchen.
Also, steam from cooking condenses on windows and walls, and in some cases carbon monoxide from the burning of gas can build up.
A range or cooktop hood or vent will remove most if not all of the above problems.
Hood Styles
Hood choices range from basic ductless wall-mount units, to systems with lights, timers, and easy-clean surfaces.
You can buy hidden slim-line hood designs which are concealed under cabinets which slide out when in use. Another kind can be used as a shelf for microwaves with the venting fans underneath. Yet another kind can incorporate a wall-mounted microwave above the range.
Hoods come in many styles, stainless steel, tile, or paneling that matches the cabinetry, for example.
The hood or vent should be at least as wide as the range top.
Hood components
Most hoods have a fan which moves stale air from inside the hood to the outside through ducts. There are two types of fans; axial, which have blades similar to ordinary fans, and centrifugal, which look like a wheel and can move more air [...]
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A fridge is one of the most important appliances in your home, influencing your eating habits and ensuring food hygiene and taste.
Refrigerators are available with different door configurations, with either the doors side-by-side, or with one door on top of the other, or as drawers.
In a top/bottom unit the freezer can be on either the top or the bottom. In a side-by-side configuration the freezer is on one side.
Some are available as built-ins, which can be disguised to look like just another cabinet. Others are the same depth as the countertop to mimic the built-in look.
Prices start at around $300 and can go up to $7000 or more for commercial or built-ins.
Top/Bottom Layout
Capacity (about 25 cubic feet) is not as much as a side-by-side
With the freezer on top you may find yourself bending down a lot to get to items on the lower refrigerator shelves.
A bottom freezer style is becoming more popular as the most accessed area (the fridge at the top) is also the most accessible.
Side-by-Side Layout
Capacity is more than a top/bottom, about 30 cubic feet.
These have narrower double doors, which is important if opening [...]
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Now you’ve chosen the design of your kitchen cabinets and worktops, the next thing is to choose the materials and the colors of your walls.
The most common materials for the kitchen walls are paint, wallpaper and tiles.
Paint
Paint is the cheapest and fastest way to transform the feeling of your kitchen, however, you need to have good surfaces to paint on (i.e. no holes or cracks which will show through the paint).
If your walls aren’t smooth enough, then you can line the walls with lining paper first (a special kind of wallpaper), and paint on top of that. There are also many decorative and faux paint finishes that look good in the kitchen (and which you can do yourself). Talk to your designer about this.
Wallpaper
Regular wallpaper is a more expensive option than paint but it can give just a little more character as it comes in a large variety of patterns as well as colors. When you use wallpapers and paints for your kitchen walls make sure these are specially made for the kitchen as these will be more resistant to humidity and will be easy to clean.
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Tiles
Adding colorful tiles to the backsplash of a [...]
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The cabinets may be the face of the kitchen but the countertops are where all the action happens. A countertop will have to cope with hot pots and pans, knives, dirt and therefore needs to be durable.
So it is usually best to make your choice based on the performance of the material and ease of maintenance, as well as the sink mounting option.
Notes on edge styles and backsplash options are given at the end of this page (click here).
The countertop choices are listed below very roughly by price (least to most expensive). If you are replacing countertops measure the tops at the wall edge (not the front edge) and make a rough drawing when you go to the kitchen store to get a quote. Also measure the depth and indicate how the ends need to be finished, meaning whether there is a wall, an appliance or a walkway. Draw your plan from above, as if you were on the ceiling looking down.
Laminate
Tile
Wood and Butcher Block
Stainless Steel
Corian, Avonite and Other Solid Surfaces
Swanstone
Granite
Quartz Surfaces: Cambria, Zodiaq and Silestone
Concrete
Soapstone
Laminate
Laminate is a very popular choice for kitchen countertops [...]
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There are so many choices where cabinets are concerned, such as the door materials, style, color, frames, etc., and so much variation in price that the whole area can be confusing at times.
Hopefully, this section should give you a good place to start.
You may also want to consider the option of having your cabinets refaced. You will be surprised at the results you can achieve by doing this, and also how inexpensive it is, especially if you can find a good deal with a reputable company.
Definitely check it out first, get some quotes and see if makes sense for you. There are plenty of good cabinet refacing advice sites out there, for example, this one.
Cabinet Manufacturing Classifications
The first decision when selecting cabinets is whether to go for stock cabinets, semi-custom, custom units or frameless cabinets. All have their own advantages and disadvantages.
There are the three basic classifications of cabinet manufacturing: Stock, Semi-Custom & Custom, and this can be further subdivided into Framed and Frameless. Pricing will vary depending on your layout, the manufacturer, wood, finish, door style and the interior accessories you select.
Stock
Lowest price range.
Limited selection of door styles, woods and stain colors. [...]
(click here to continue reading ››)
Your budget will normally dictate your choice of products but there are other considerations you need to take into account when working out how much your new kitchen is going to cost.
Prices vary quite a lot, so the figures given below are just a guideline and, as always, shopping around is the best bet.
But work out roughly how much money you want to spend and use this figure when talking to designers and contractors.
Below are some guidelines for establishing a realistic budget.
Budget Guidelines
First of all, if you limit your spending to 15% of your home’s value you should recoup 90% of the costs when you sell. Try to keep your investment relative to your homes worth, but at the same time make it worth your while by spending on the items that you really want.
Second, figure your product costs to be 1/2 to 2/3 of the total remodel. Choose your appliances, cabinets, countertops, flooring and all other fixtures first. The remaining money will go towards installation and design.
Third, if you become overwhelmed with selection choices hire a design consultant to help you. A designer can save you money in the long run by helping to prevent [...]
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The frame is the front of the cabinet box where the door attaches.
