Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - Anyone buy their cabinets or countertops online?

I'm considering www.buycabinets.com for buying my cabinets in the very near future. I'd like to hear from anyone that has had personal experience from buying their cabinets from this or other online sites. Also I wondered if anyone has actually purchased their solid-surface counters online?

Bi_Polar,

There allot of folks who buy cabinets and even countertops on-line. Main issue from my own viewpoint is , if you make a mistake in measuring, you just bought yourself a product that you will have to live with. Returns and refunds are virtually non-existent when done on-line. If returns are allowed, expect to pay for shipping and a re-stocking fee which is usually not cheap. By the way, the returned items better be in excellent shape and packaged well.

I always stress that you should be able to look at what you are buying as well as touch it. I also think that where you buy it, locally, you should let the techs come out and take the measurements, ensuring that you are going to have near perfect fits to the location in mind.

If an error occurs, you are not going to have to pay for their mistake. Only issue is waiting for the new cabinets and/or top to come in.

Trying to save money is one thing ONLY if you are sure you are doing it the right way. Many do not measure correctly and then you have problems.

Good Luck!

measure twice, cut once.... this "so" applies to your situation.

Are you truly saving that much $$ to make this a smart move? The big box stores..... can help you greatly with their CAD programs... ensure proper measurements....... and their prices aren't bad at all..... Usually you're buying "standard size cabinets" of different sizes and can return something that doesn't work.

On my last remodel, I took in a schematic of my new kitchen with proper dimensions...... With their Free help.... we put in a "killer" kitchen setup that I had not thought of before....

For what it's worth? and it was "free advice"....

I just did a kitchen remodel, and all though we went with a local dealer for the cabinets we had to go the online route to get the countertops we wanted. We were looking for wood countertops made of lyptus and believe it or not I could'nt find any local companies that do wood in chicago except for the ultra high end showrooms in the Merchandise Mart. So the onine route was are last hope. We went with Old World Butcherblocks and just got the call that the countertops will be here on Friday. I'll post to let everyone know of the quality. That being said I would have like to go with a local vendor. I triple checked my measurements to make sure that they would be correct, measure 5 times and purchase once is a must.

deacon

This post has been edited.

No advertising/solicitation.

Doug Aleshire
Super Moderator 2

boxermomma: are you a shill for buycabinets? almost every one of your posts mention them.

This post has been edited.

No advertising/solicitation.

Doug Aleshire
Super Moderator 2

I just spoke with a couple of guys at buycabinets.com today. Very friendly and helpful. They told me that because what I needed for my kitchen wasn't very much (eight cabs for a 8 x 8 galley style) I was better off ordering locally. The shipping involved would have negated any savings that they could have provided. The shipping charge they quoted me was EXTREMELY high.

Has anyone tried (or heard of) KitchenCabinetDepot? They sell unfinished all wood cabs (Woodcraft brand) at a very reasonable price, but without being able to lays hands on one I'm concerned about quality.

I too have noticed many posts from boxermomma praising buycabinets.com, but not really any others. Funny enough, that is one reason I asked to see if others actually had a good experience.

Anyway, I ended up going with Home Depot and Thomasville cabinets. I did contact buycabinets.com and got a response from "Doug" within a few hours telling me he would be happy to help and included his personal email and fax number in the response email. He instructed me to fax my order for a quote if I knew exactly what I wanted. I did just that and didnt hear anything for a couple days so I emailed Doug to his personal address, still no response. A third and finally a fourth email went unresponded to and I decided I shouldnt have to beg someone to get back to me that I am about to fork over thousands and thousands of dollars to!

Now to the Home Depot experience:

While I cant say the process of fine tuning the cabinet order was "fun" (we went to HD about 4 times before we finally ordered on the 5th) I am glad I had a local resource to work with. There were a few things that our designer caught that I had not and also some things she thought of that we had not. Also things like crown moldings are much easier to order when you can see them in person rather than in a picture. I am also glad we went with HD because I know (based on my personal experience so far) that I won't have a problem returning something if necessary or having something replaced should it be defective in the shipment.
The deal ended up working out very well. I was able to have them honor a Lowes 10% coupon, got a free sink base, and a $400 HD gift card (exclusive to Thomasville). The cabinets will be delivered in a couple weeks and I'll be installing them with a few friends myself.

Glad it worked out for you and hope we were of some little help..