Cabinets, Part II
The cabinet saga continues. It’s turning out to be a surprisingly fraught question. Perhaps that makes sense given it is the biggest single expense in the whole project. On the other hand, lots of other very expensive choices were easy, be that the layout or my prospective fancy German appliances.
Last time, I had gotten some preliminary estimates on cabinet prices, and all but ruled out “the Germans:” Bulthaup, Poggenpohl, Leicht, SieMatic. I was still waiting on firmer pricing from them, as well as pricing from a few more options. I’ll get into where I’m thinking in a moment. First, I want to do a bit of public service.
Back when I was doing this project on my own, I found it somewhat maddening that none of the really high-end cabinet companies gave even a hint of what their prices were online or even when I went to visit a showroom in a couple of cases. So I’m going to quickly list out some of the prices that my architects pulled for this project. I’m hoping that Google indexes this page, and then the next time someone types “SieMatic pricing” into Google, they might get this page and find something that’s actually informative.
| Manufacturer | Details | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Poggenpohl | Segmento series | At least $50,000 |
| Bulthaup | Standard wood veneer, counters, backsplash, sink, faucet included | $55,000 |
| SieMatic | Pure collection “Similaque” with laminated door edges, lighting included | $37,200 |
| Leicht | Topos wood veneer, lighting, tax, shipping, delivery included | $37,200 |
| Leicht | Fenix NTM doors, lighting, tax, shipping, delivery included | $28,000 |
| Leicht | Laminate doors, lighting, tax, shipping, delivery included | $25,000 |
| Space Theory | Laminate or natural wood veneer doors | $22,000 |
| Custom Cabinets | Painted wood doors | $15,000 |
| Reform | Up with Ikea boxes | $10,000 |
| Reform | Frame with Ikea boxes | $10,000 |
| Reform | Degree with Ikea boxes | $7,000 |
| Reform | Basis with Ikea boxes | $5,000 |
I’ve left out the option I’m probably going to choose — Reform cabinet boxes with Reform fronts — because I’m still not sure the pricing on that option is exactly right.
Speaking of, as these prices suggest, I’m not going to be getting my cabinets from one of the German brands. To keep to my overall $40,000 budget, the cabinets need to sit somewhere around $10,0000, and even the cheapest option from Leicht is more than twice that.
The good news is that I’ve seen some samples of the Reform options (at this point only in photos, but hopefully in the flesh soon!), and they’re quite nice. In my mind, the biggest disadvantage of their system relative to the more expensive ones is flexibility: they can’t make boxes in totally custom sizes to use up every last inch of space.
On the plus side, the Reform first-party cabinet boxes use Blum’s top-of-the-line Legrabox drawer system, the same set of drawer runners that all the really high-end companies use. The only real sacrifice there is a few millimeters here and there: Poggenpohl uses their own drawer boxes that are 8 mm thick rather than the Blum Legrabox system at a comparatively gigantic 12 mm.
The choice of cabinets will also guide a lot of the timing. Assuming I go with one of the Reform options, that will take about 3-4 months to manufacture and ship over from Denmark. The idea, then, is to iron out the remaining details as part of the design, find a contractor, get approvals, and then begin work so that when the cabinets arrive everything is ready for them to go in.
My architects seem to think that a wood finish would look good. I’m leaning more towards something in a solid color. I don’t know that I have any sort of principled argument, other than I find a solid color more to my taste. I’m also slightly reneging on my appliance choices: after giving it some thought, I think I want a 30” cooktop after all.
But that’s all still up in the air. I’m hoping within the next few weeks I can have all the basic layout and cabinet choices made so this can really get going. Much as I don’t love the idea of living with dust everywhere, the road to a better kitchen will have to begin with a little bit of demolition.