Not trying to be rude but I think the terms high end custom and semi custom are thrown around too much on here to be truly valid. You mentioned your door style selection was limited in your custom bid. A local cabinet company does not make them custom. It makes them local or regional if you prefer. A tru custom company is always going to be higher on the baseline cost because you pay for a more talented labor force with more equipment to do anything you can dream. At a minimum if they do not offer custom color match and door profile match they are not a custom Company. Many people on here say they want a custom color. Specifying a color and match a color are two different things. A truly custom company can recieve a door sample of anything and send you back a week or two later an exact match in the shape of the wood and the color of the stain paint and or glaze. Semi custom is a lose term as well. Armstrong is a semi custom company that is a great one for example and hardly any one on here knows there business model is to sell to the public directly. When ever your custom quotes are lower than your semi custom quotes keep shoping until that trend reverses. You will get a better educaiton on what the reality is than any one can advise you on here. At the prices you are stating those cabinets should be made of gold. I do a 35% product mark up on my custom cabinet lines in my store and it is rare to see a price for cabinets in a kitchen spike over $20k to the customer in the size rooms you are talking about. Painted glazed and full old world distressed is about as high as it gets. Door style with a good custom company does not really affect the price a huge amount at the base line prices they covered their costs before talking about door style. Inset is different it is harder to get right. Any how our prices tend to be to the customer between $400-$500 per foot you have about 47' so it should be between $18,800 $23,500 Semi custom companies we use run our customers $200-$375 making a range of $9,400 - $17,625 the cabinet company used and the features chosen is what determines the price in the range. Their are cases out side those numbers but those are pretty good rules of thumb. At a 35% mark up I make about $4k on an $18k sale I think you need to shop around more. Your custom prices should always be higher than your semi custom Send your plans to Old River Cabinets in Richmond Va. They sell direct and can make anything. They have the best price around for true custom company. Also I see the pictures of so many kitchens on here that say they are custom cabinets but they do not seem to be custom made very often. Meaning the cabinets should have custom made features. It does not really matter if a custom company made your cabinets what matters is they made them better smarter. If you want turned legs on the sides of your cooktop cabinet then the box should be the width of the legs or your should have radius corners with futes or something exciting. I do not offer our custom cabient compnaines to my customers on purpose if I know then have no need of their talent. Why pay for the base line price if you do not go all the way with it?

We used cliqstudios cabinets in 3 projects in our last house. 2 were stained wood, 1 was the painted wood (linen). The painted cabinets withstood 2 children coloring on them with non washable crayons, colored pencil, 3 cats who loved to rub their faces on the corners and a very VERY busy work area. After pricing the cliqstudios cabinets, the same kitchen in IKEA, and KountryWood Products (available through a local dealer), we've decided to go with cliqstudios again. The prices were exactly the same, IKEA doesn't come with plywood sides, they were only available as an upgrade on the KWP's and they come standard on the cliqstudios cabinets. Plus, I don't have to build the cliqstudios cabinets. As for the finished - my parents went with a VERY high end custom cabinetry company (apologies, I don't remember the name) - white painted inset shaker style - the finish on their cabinets started looking like crap within 5 years. Places where the cabinet finish has chipped, or flaked off, discoloration, etc.

Very often, local custom cabinet makers do not do frameless cabinetry, which is a contemporary look. That is because the equipment to make frameless cabinetry is expensive, and if they are already set up for framed, they don't see a reason to make that kind of significant expense. There may be one where you are locally that does do frameless, but it would be difficult for us to tell you - we don't know where you live. You could look at your local Angie's List, ask your realtor, or neighbors. You need to be clear on what you mean by "contemporary". Please provide inspiration photos. People have different ideas of what that means. I think you may be able to find what you want with a large cabinet company without having to find a custom or local cabinet shop that will make custom contemporary cabinets. As mentioned Crown Point cabinets are expensive. But Plain & Fancy is only slightly less - wait till you get a quote and you will see. Shiloh and Durasupreme that Herbflavor mentioned will be less but not low cost. You have not provided a budget, so it is very hard to know what to recommend.

My Kitchen is also L Shaped, around 20ft x 15ft. Quote from Market Place Cabinetry WITHOUT the Island was about 15k. That is with 40% off, so their list is price is ridiculous. We did double cabinet stack so that it can be reached to the ceiling. We did a pantry to surround the fridge. This included all the speciality pullouts, draw inserts, etc. I decided not to go with Market Place or Tuscan Hills (Buena VIsta not being an option for us) as the prices seems comparable to any kitchen dealer/retailer. The warranty may be slightly better from Costco providers but not being able to see the product, see what the colors really look like ended up being the ultimate deal breaker - again because the price was the same. Pier - I'd highly recommend visiting some of your local kitchen retailers for semi custom and custom quotes. Pretty sure brands like St. Martin (semi-custom) can match those prices, if not do better. Quality is the same as you mentioned above.