The Great Cabinet Caper

Arch, Square, Slab  - what is your kitchen cabinet door preference?  I knew I didn't want Arch (everybody has Arch), Slab was too plain, so that left me with square. Then you get into:  Mission, Shaker, Flat Panel, Raised Panel, Flat Panel, Recessed Panel, Molding - how much, how little, bead boarding.  It's enough to make your head spin 350 degrees and spit out green goo.

At one time I was a Shaker girl, I loved the simplicity of it and that classic "it's been in my family 100 plus years."  Then I graduated into Shaker with bead board in the recessed panel.  I have bead board in my hallways and breakfast nook and thought what a great match.  When I went and looked at these, it was "do I really want to live with this all over my kitchen, or use it more as an accent piece?"  The accent piece won.
 
The best advice I can give you if you are a three dimensional visual kind of girl like me - GO LOOK - at your local hardware stores, cabinet makers, etc.  Unless you can look, touch, feel and smell, you may make a mistake that you'll be looking at a long time and cabinets aren't cheap - as I found out. 

So V our kd made arrangements to meet us at a local cabinetmaker to look at cabinets and had given us the name of a brand that we would be looking at.   Do you think Paul and I could wait for her?  Of course not, we did a reconnaissance mission the week before. Our rationale was that we would save her time once we met with her.  So we slunk in - and I am surprised Paul didn't make us wear a trench coat and mustaches.

So we looked and looked and compared so we would be intelligent when we met with her (or at least that's what we told ourselves).  We saw a couple of styles that we liked and then we saw the styles we lusted after (or at least I did).  

When we met with V, I tried to keep an open mind about cabinet styles  I was willing to compromise if there was something I liked but didn't love, in terms of cost.  But, the one thing I didn't want was stained cabinets, I wanted painted cabinets that were distressed that looked like they were in your grandmother's house.  So, we looked at the less expensive line of cabinets and we looked at the more expensive line of cabinets.  There is a difference folks in terms of construction, materials, general look and feel.  However, trying to be the conservative one, I was willing to go with the cheaper cabinets, but they were in this god awful cream color bordering on yellow.  And they didn't come unpainted.  So, if we went with them, we'd had to strip them and repaint them.

SO, I decided what the heck do a bid on the more expensive cabinets and see if they would come unfinished. (This company is quite proud of its finishes).  I decided to throw caution to the wind and get a bid on the drawer pulls I have been looking at on the website.  I kept my fingers crossed and thought if it is meant to be it is meant to be.

AND, it was.  The difference between the painted and the unfinished cabinets and pulls ended up being the cost of the fancy schmancy microwave drawer.  See what you get when you don't get the pretty shiny toys, but put your money where it should be?

Here are my cabinet doors and pulls.  I can't wait to see them.