Thanks everyone. Well, I found out that J & K cabinets (a large RTA cabinet distributor) had a local dealer not too far from me, (Global Home Products in Beltsville, MD) so I called them and they actually had the size and color vanity I wanted in stock. The price was $199, and assembly was only $10, for an all wood, painted white shaker style vanity. Even the center panel on the doors was solid wood --a true reverse raised panel (almost every RTA cabinet seems to use MDF for the center panel!) The cheapest, similar, special order cabinet from Home Depot or Lowes would have been between $300-400 (American Woodmark or Kraftmaid, etc.) I checked with Barker cabinets (an American made semi-custom RTA cabinet) and they were quite expensive in comparison. When I got to the dealer, I was surprised to see what a large showroom they had and how busy they were, even on a weekday afternoon. I believe that all their cabinet lines were RTA, and they had very good prices. The display kitchens and vanities looked very nice. The place seemed to be run mainly by Chinese people, ( a little hard to understand their accents, but very nice and helpful) so I imagine they don't have any problems communicating directly with those factories that make their cabinets over in China if they need to! Anyway--I'm glad that I had them put the cabinet together, as when they opened the box there was some minor damage to the face frame part. So they used the face frame off the identical vanity that was on their showroom floor and were able to assemble my vanity. It does look gorgeous--esp. the doors. Even the back is solid plywood with wood bracing. I suppose that makes it more sturdy, but it will be more work for my husband to drill holes for the plumbing. Hope this helps someone else who might be wondering about RTA cabinets.

Custom, made to fit, but I don't like them. They are (most often) frame-less, particle board boxes, and to me personally just don't look or feel as nice as some of the semi custom cabinets (like Medallion, Brookhaven, etc.) Our last house we bought Medallion, and purchased with Lowes. The cabinets were beautiful, but the ordeal we went through with Lowes is another story! This time around, we are again choosing Medallian, but working with a local kitchen cabinet maker who is also a Medallian distributor. Price-wise - he said either way they would cost us about the same.

OntarioMom: Thanks once again for the reply. My wife and I first went to Stone Innovations and talked to the nice lady at the counter, she was very helpful and eventually showed us the dozen slabs they had in the back but recommended other slab locations. She answered all our questions and invited us to have them give us an estimate when we found the granite/quartz we choose. We then drove to Granite Worx where we spoke to Rob and toured the dozens of slabs they had and again we were asked to allow them to be there fabricator by giving us an estimate. We were told that type of granite we looked at which had blotches were a grade four to five and would cost approximately $70-$80.00 per sq. ft installed. We didn't find anything we liked there so we went to our last slab place. One the way home we stopped off at MSI International and had to sign in and were led to the slab area. They don't fabricate but did mention it would take approximately 1/2 hr to tour the 4 rows of 3 cm granite rows. In a matter of 10 minutes were were ready to leave as there was nothing that caught our eye. There is no pricing on any slab, only grading which I'll assume the fabricator then prices out our requirements. Next week we'll try, HillTop,and Interstone.

"Customers have the option to not pay until they are satisfied...what risk is there when you the customer is holding the money." The risk of a lien against their property for failure to pay? The risk of damage to their property? The risk of shoddy workmanship which then has to be trusted to the same person who first did the shoddy work to repair satisfactorily? Then there is the fine line between what a contractor feels is satisfactory and what the customer feels is satisfactory, which is something we see a lot of on this forum with opinions varying widely. There are risks on both sides of the fence. It can be just as stressful and risky for customers to deal with contractors as it is for contractors to deal with customers. If a contractor has written it into his contract that he is not responsible for incidental damages to a customer's property, the customer is then taking on that risk. Honestly, when I hire a contractor, I am hoping that he is experienced and knowledgeable enough to have minimized his risk both to himself and to me. I am assuming he knows enough about his employees to know that they are not going to be costing him more than they are making him. I am assuming that the money I am paying him will not be used to finance screw-ups and mistakes, but will rather generate a profit for him and his business. And I am assuming that if mistakes are made, they will be on the small side and not eat those profits in one fell swoop. If I thought otherwise, IâÂÂd likely be thinking about hiring someone else. This post was edited by jellytoast on Tue, Aug 26, 14 at 12:07