A friend of mine looked at Downsview. Firstly they wouldn't do framed inset like she wanted. So she got them to give her a quote on the same cabinets but not inset. She got a quote from a custom cabinet maker for the same kitchen but with inset which I understand is usually a much higher price.

Downsview = $71,000

Custom = $26,000

Yes she did fall down dead after receiving the faxed quote from Downsview!

In all fairness my experience with Downsview was years ago (in the late '90s). But they are the Canadian version of Wm. Ohs -- the ne plus ultra with the screamingly high price tag. (and keep in mind, you'll have to factor in the $US - $CAD exchange plus customs plus freight) I was introduced to them by a ridiculous friend of my mother, and we all know the type: everything must have a "name" and if you don't know the name then you're one of the unwashed hoi polloi. And she takes terrific pride in condescendingly explaining to you what that name is / means $-wise. (but even though this friend is ridiculous I kinda get a kick out of her, plus I've learned about things I might not have otherwise)

I saw the cabinets in her home and asked about them (mistake numero uno); my partner and I went to visit the Downsview showroom in the SF Design Center (mistake numero dos), and then we realized we could have those cabinets or we could have the whole house. We never pursued it (obviously).

I think their quality is without question but getting that level of quality is possible at much, much lower prices. (and I believe my kitchen and many, many others here prove that)

Can you tell us what door style / wood / finish interests you?

We're looking for something fairly simple/traditional - probably along the lines of Shaker, but with a smidge more detail to keep it looking more traditional than modern, if that makes sense. Mostly white/cream painted, but with a stained island.

I've already gotten a bid from HD for a Thomasville cabinet we like: $8,000-ish.

Downsview quote $38,000. This, after talking to the KD about our modest, 60's ranch style home, contracting the whole thing ourselves to keep the budget under control, etc. They are gorgeous cabinets, but I was expecting maybe 2-3X HD prices, not almost 5X!

We have talked to a couple of custom cabinet makers in the area. So far have not been impressed at the quality of the work I've seen. Prices have been about 2X Thomasville for exposed, side-mount drawer slides and fairly rough-looking drawer boxes.

Now that we've recovered from the Downsview quote, we are even considering an IKEA kitchen with custom doors and end panels. Might as well check out both ends of the spectrum. :-) My wife and I are both of the don't spend the money unless you're getting something from it...

Thanks for the info, rmkitchen

I live in CO where we don't have an IKEA (don't I wish!) -- our closest one is in UT.

Knowing what I know now blah blah blah and if I had to do it (our kitchen remodel) again blah blah blah I would've spent a lot of time at IKEA fans and done our kitchen using IKEA and custom doors. Yep, even though that would mean schlepping over the mountains and through the woods with a baby and a toddler to get the IKEA cabinetry I would've done it.

At the time (with said newborn and toddler and a broken foot) I was overwhelmed and just wanted it donedonedone! I honestly couldn't fathom somehow finding the time to do all the research to get the design features I wanted (in all fairness, it probably would've added at least another year onto the research portion of our remodel, and in all fairness to me, I was already exhausted / overwhelmed with nursing babies and getting settled in a new state, etc.). But now that I stand back and look at the process, look at our finished kitchen (which is wonderful, don't get me wrong), I think IKEA would've been a better choice (for our circumstances: budget, neighborhood, young family ...).

Hindsight is 20-20, so there you have it.

My aunt built an IKEA kitchen as a temporary kitchen (while construction expanded her old kitchen and rendered it unusable). She was so impressed and delighted with the IKEA that after the construction was done she moved the "old" IKEA cabs and added (with more IKEA cabs) to them.

Unfortunately I cannot remember a single GW user id at present who used custom doors on IKEA cabs -- I bet heaps of folks over on IKEA Fans have pictures and resources, but I know the ones I've seen have been terrific.

Keep us informed of your journey, please. I know that what I would do is not necessarily right for every- or anyone else, but I guess I just wish I'd known (as you already do) to really investigate IKEA. So much is possible with them, and with their excellent prices and excellent reputation, it's hard to go wrong.

Good luck!

rmkitchen-you have one of my all time favorite kitchens on the FKB. I have gone cross-eyed from spending so much time there! I just spent 2 hours with yet another cabinet maker but still want to investigate Ikea.
craigintx- Isn't this cabinet thing a huge learning curve? The bids are so all over the board.

I know you said you wanted traditional, but here is an example of a modern Ikea kitchen with custom walnut doors.

Here is a link that might be useful: Ikea with Custom Doors

We had Downsview, Omega and Brookhaven do quotes for us. As others have said, I had to pick myself up off the floor when I saw the Downsview quote and it was just a sort of quick, bare bones ballpark figure without anything special such as slide out trays added. The Brookhaven and Omega were fairly comparable but we choose Brookhaven. We have previously had Woodmode (the high end line of Brookhaven) and knew the finishes would be excellent. The Brookhaven KD was also so obviously more knowledgeable than the other 2 that we probably would have chosen Brookhaven on that basis alone if we didn't have other reasons for doing so. HTH

Wow, rmkitchen. Wow.

Thanks for the feed back. Your kitchen is beautiful - and very well thought out. How long did you plan before you had the kitchen built?

owls4me and craigintx, Thank You both for the kind comments about our kitchen. That is really nice.

While I still think it is a v. pretty space, the thing which pleases me most is its function! This kitchen is considerably smaller than the kitchen from which we moved (in CA), but somehow we have scads more workspace and my partner and I can work in it together, which children and pets weaving around as well. That's saying something.

You know, I'm not sure how long it really took us to plan -- it was in fits and starts, dribs and drabs. We first spent a long and considered time picking out the appliances, figuring everything else (cabinetry) would have to fall in place around those. We already knew we were a drawer-loving family, so that was also easy.

Everyone has outside considerations: work, family, etc., but I don't know if I'm more easily frazzled than others (I know I am definitely not less so!). But, from the time we moved into this house (and the appliances were already selected at that point) until we did our sign-off on the final plans was eight months. Of that eight months, however, I'd say only three-four of them were on the layout -- the rest was interviewing cabinet companies / makers, coming up with the door, drawer, moulding styles, figuring out the finishes (faucets, pulls / knobs, other hardware), plus a one+ month break for me from Shingles. A big, important and time-consuming piece of our pie was moving and narrowing the entrance to the dining room. It sounds simple, but for some reason every single person who measured things came up with unique measurements (in all it varied by six inches). Because of that we weren't sure the width of certain cabs, so when we signed with a specific cabinetmaker who was responsible for the measurements (since he'd be building the cabs) we were able to fully commit to cabs Y" wide. (and as it was, things on that wall were still a little funny [meaning the cabinetmaker's measurements ended up being nearly two inches off as well!] our wonderful carpenter was able to hide the extra two inches with some clever casing)

The reason I think it would've taken considerably longer for me using IKEA is because of how to retrofit the IKEA cabs to get the things we just told the cabinetmaker "we want X." With IKEA, we'd have had to figure out how to jerry-rig V to get that X. Seeing the IKEA kitchens here I absolutely know everything would have been possible, but it would have been possible with more thought on my part. Also because I had a v. specific vision of what I wanted the door / drawer styles to look like (let alone the fridge, freezer and dishwasher panels), that would've been an additional project for me to find and then work with someone for those doors / drawers. Would it have been possible? You bet, but I'm being honest when I write that at the time I was overwhelmed, and I really didn't know if I could put anything else on my plate. Now, in hindsight, I wish I had done just that. This is v. embarrassing to admit, but because we made a bit of money selling our CA house I felt flush, so I chose to kinda throw money at it instead of being more creative and finding / making time to figure other options out. I think the most creative kitchens are from those who don't "take the easy way." (I am NOT saying our budget was limitless, I'm just saying at that time I had more money than sense!)

Two things I really, really wish I'd done differently:
1) When we moved into this house I wish we'd unpacked everything, all our kitchen stuff, so we could've seen what we had and the dimensions. We got lucky that everything fits, but I know I could've done better planning having everything out.
2) I wish we'd seriously investigated IKEA. Who knows? Maybe it would've turned out to not work for us, but because of it being out of state we didn't give it a second thought. I honestly regret that.

Hope this rambling message makes sense!

I don't have any experience with Downsview. They are a local firm and have been around since the earth cooled. At one time there was a certain amount of cachet associated with the name but I think that they have been supplanted (locally at least) by Smallbone and Poggenpohl. There is a mid-range line called Svea that is quite popular as well.

FWIW we researched extensively and ended up settling on Ikea. We rejigged our thinking in order to do it. Our layout is a basic galley with a centre island so we're able to conform to what's available.

There are not too many options available as far as cabinet sizes go but they are extremely easy to modify. The thing that really sold us was the range of interior fittings that they offer. Also - they have standard 12" deep drawers, and stainless drawer fronts.

We had been quoted just over 60K for nice custom cabinetry. The same layout at Ikea was a little over 10K. Because it is so inexpensive we felt comfortable buying everything that we wanted. There was lots of money left for nice lights and new windows.

In the end, it's your hardware, floors and counters that people really notice. The cabinets tend to become secondary blocks of colour. So we're putting the money into the detailing.

By the time we are done accessorising and finishing I don't think that our room is going to look anything like the little urban boxes that usually spring to mind when we hear the Ikea name.

Good Luck !

Downsview is a custom line. Astro Design Centre represents them here in Ottawa. I happened to be in the area of their showroom and dropped in to look at sinks and the cabinet displays were gorgeous, nothing shoddy about the finishes or workmanship. Didn't make any inquiries as it isn't the sort of thing that I can afford or would consider even if I could. Does your layout require custom? Candidly I think people want to be able to say they have custom cabinets more than their layouts require them. Cuisines Laurier, Cabico and Luxor are all good mid range companies that have slightly more controlled finishing processes than say Omega, Kraftmaid or Diamond (Thomasville). Perhaps a local showroom carries one of them.

Some here have used Scherr's for custom doors on IKEA cabinet boxes. Scherr's even has the template needed to drill holes for IKEA hardware.

Thanks all for the continued feedback. Yes, Downsview is custom and quite beautiful. Their finishes were great - but not enough so to justify the cost (at least to us). Our layout definitely doesn't call for custom. The variety offered with semi-custom is more than enough. We still have some fiddling to do to make our plan work with the more limited sizes available in Ikea, but it should be doable.

Based on our wants, our home, and our budget, we have narrowed our choices to either a Kraftmaid/Diamond level product or Ikea+Scherr's doors. As I mentioned, we've gotten 1 bid for about $8000 from Thomasville (Diamond), and a similar layout from Ikea would run about $2000 + doors. We're waiting on a quote from Scherr's now.

Interesting observations re: Ikea & Downsview. While I don't know the specifics, I can say that the Downsview drawer boxes LOOK at awful lot like the Tandemboxes that Ikea uses. And both Ikea & Downsview cabinet boxes are some form of particleboard covered in melamine. There may be differences, and certainly the DV doors/drawer fronts are higher quality and have more variety - but the similarities in hardware/skeletons are pretty interesting, given the HUGE difference in cost.

"similarities in hardware/skeletons are pretty interesting, given the HUGE difference in cost. "

LOOKS are deceiving, they are not the same hardware even though they come from the same manufacturer. The Ikea stuff is of much less quality than what Downsview uses. That's not to say the Ikea stuff is junk , it's pretty nice considering the price point. Just don't be fooled into thinking that everyone else is marking up their Blum stuff so they can make their Gulfstream and Hatteras payments. They founder of Ikea is one of the wealthiest men in the world, eclipses most of the oil sheiks even.

As the second owner of a 1930’s house with cabinets and stove from that period, my husband and I decided to remodeled the kitchen in 1990 because there was no way we could fit a dishwasher in. We chose Downsview cabinets in a traditional style with a creamy lacquer finish. This is a very small kitchen and we did not change the footprint of the kitchen at all. And We went with a Corian counter top as it is a very forgiving surface. I remember when my son who was 3 years old took a red ball point pen and drew all over the white shiny cabinet! I just sprayed Windex on the offending red ink stains and removed it….no issues! The cabinets are still show stoppers some 30 years later. We did have excellent installers but there are some things I wish I would have known about then that I know now. The kick plates are made from a partical board and if you have any water leakage this can be a problem to fix. If you need to replace a door, it can take months to be made in their factory. Living in Minneapolis, I live minutes away from IKEA and have been able to buy similar looking cabinets to use in remodeled areas of the house. And we have been very happy with their products as well. However as my boys are much older now, I don’t have to put these cabinets to the red Bic pen test!