Our New Kitchen Cabinets…And Fiasco

Let me start off by saying Happy New Year.  I hope it is a good one:)


Yay…it's time for kitchen cabinets.  As most of you know Mike and I usually buy the stock cabinets from either Home Depot or Lowes.  After Nicole's good experience with her cabinets we decided to try RTA, or Ready To Assemble, cabinets.  I went to the site where Nicole bought hers but we could not get a tractor trailer to our house so they can't ship them to us.  Story of our life right, lol?  Then I started making calls to some local businesses to see if they could get the cabinets for me.  No luck…the one that I found that could get cabinets from Nicole's cabinet company came in way too high.

Then I found one more local place that carried "a line" of RTA's and they could order them for us.  OK sounds good.  So on that day I had my list of all of our cabinets with the Lowes, Home Depot, and Nicole's place with all the prices for comparison.  I figured if they could beat the price and we liked their cabinets we would place the order.  On that day, Mike and I found a cabinet that we really liked…so we placed the order for 19 cabinets.  The woman told us they would be in within the week.  OK….the next week goes by and she told us "oh I waited for another customer's order to place them together.  They will be here next week"(that was the Monday before Thanksgiving.  They came in that Monday and Mike and I went with the RV and trailer to pick them up.  The woman ordered the wrong cabinets.  She tole us she was going away for the holiday and she would take care of it when she got back….next week.  Ugh!!  The next Monday Mike and I went back to find out she quit.  Really….now Mike is going on and on about any time we involve other people.  At this point I have to agree with him.  But since they required a deposit we had to see what could be done.  Our cabinets came packed in two separate boxes.  The plywood boxes for the cabinets come in one box and the frames and doors come in another.  Mike and I decided to take all of the boxes and let the owner of the company we used fix the problem with the wrong doors.  At least we got something and maybe we could start putting them together.


We got them home and then we realized that they cannot be put together without the face frame.  So they sat in the garage.  Week after week we kept calling the owner.  It seemed to be one story after another.  He said he had to return the wrong face fronts before the company would send new ones.  OK…so two weeks after that he tells us "the shipment on the way back to the company got lost"…yeah right…and I was born yesterday.  By then I am pretty ticked and Mike is thinking we will need to go to HD or Lowe's and pick up stock cabinets.  I asked the new receptionist for the name of the company.  I called the company who supplies the cabinets and spoke with a very nice woman who knew about our order very well.  I explained to her that I was worried that we were getting the run around and she said that the return shipment really did get lost.  Go figure.  She also said she would make sure our new fronts got out by the next day even before they got the old ones returned.  We got our doors 3 days later and that lady made my day:)

So 6 weeks from the time we ordered our cabinets we got them.  We picked up the fronts and brought all the boxes inside the house.

Later on we found out that we may have been able to order our original cabinets(where Nicole got hers) if we had set up for a pick up at the local truck location.  Too late now, lol.


Our cabinets, well at least all the boxes are inside the house:

After the first cabinet we got the hang of it.  You might as well throw the instructions out, lol:

We started with the uppers.  Yay…one down….18 more to go:

Setting up an assembly line since we have multiple cabinets that are the same size:

I help Mike gluing and sliding the sides in.  Once he starts on all the screws I put the draws together.

The last two base cabinets:)

Next up the big boy.  The pantry:

Uh oh we have one small problem.  Because we are leaving the soffits on the outer wall of the kitchen, our pantry is one inch too big.  Time to cut it down.  I hope we don't mess it up.  Mike puts tape on the bottom so the saw blade doesn't mark the cabinet:

Mike cuts down all 4 sides:

Yay…it's a fit and we are done with putting the cabinets together.

It was quite the experience that I don't wish on anyone.  Live and learn.  Granted the cabinets are much nicer than any stock cabinets but I'm not sure if I could ever talk Mike into dealing with more people than we absolutely need to again, lol.

It took is two full days to put all the cabinets together.  It wasn't a truly hard job as much as a pain in the neck job.  Some of the cabinet boxes were more stubborn than others and Mike did have to use his rubber mallet quite a bit.


All I can say is after more than 6 weeks I'm glad the cabinets are in the house and are ready to install:)

Next Monday I will post the install and our new furniture.


Have a great week and I'll see you next Monday.

Lisa:)