Update, I used online cabinets direct after a couple of months of talking to the owner Shane Doyle about my design and my concerns about ordering online. Everything went great! They did mess up on one cabinet, sent me wrong door style but once I sent them a picture they send me new doors right away. I would say to anyone ordering from them, be through with what you order and with checking your order once you receive it and follow their rules/directions on how to rectify any issue...if you do that then you are in good hands. The owner Shane was very fair and honest. The cabinets are beautiful and being installed now. Great quality and price! The shipping company will not deliver inside without charging you a ton so be prepared to either pay for inside delivery or move the cabinet boxes inside yourself.

Highly recommend Rick at Cabinet Authority. Patient and professional and stands behind any mistakes and issues (not many). Conestoga is top quality and our kitchen (95%) complete is looking great due to the conestoga cabinet quality. Would have done just a few things differently but actually surprised how good it turned out. Would I do it again? Uhhh no..it was a lot of work and detail but then again I did everything from the demo, to the cabinet assembly, installation, plumbing, electrical, venting, lighting, gas line, etc. Was much more work and time than expected. Lots of measuring, removing, measuring again, lots of hand tweaking to get right and level in the install. Everything has to go in a particular order. Just note, if you are having an installer put in cabinets correctly and you have a lot of panels, special configs that you want just right, you will need to find a patient installer who has a great attention to detail. Having an installer say they will come in and "knock it out in 1 day" is asking for trouble and a bad job. There is no way to install, shim, scribe, level, tweak, install, attach doors, tweak hinges, attach dishwasher, etc ,etc, etc, in a day or two unless you have a super simple setup and 10 installers at once (then you are asking for a hack job). Can be done but know what you are getting into. Takes many special tools and patience to measure and double check everything as you go. Assembly was fairly easy although you have to know a couple tips to save frustration (i.e. - install inset hinges before assembling cabs). Installation was much more work to get everything level and exact (frames tight and perfect). I had a pretty complicated island that I designed with many panels that had to go together just right. Also, had to design and fabricate a range hood because we didn't like the stock ones. While I highly recommend Conestoga for their quality and price, it is a lot of work if you are doing it yourself. Recommend an installer and subs for plumbing, electrical, etc. Our kitchen looks really good and we saved a TON of money. There is no way to get a kitchen of this quality for this price so while we have high end semi custom cabinets now - it took a lot of sweat to get them - not sure if the tradeoff is worth it but we had a fixed budget and wanted quality.

denizen-Part of what you are running into is that you are shopping for something other than what people like me consider our service. It sounds like you are shopping for cabinet boxes. I consider our service to be a bit more than that, we supply kitchens (no matter who installs them) Yeah we do make our profit by selling cabinets, That has become the most popular model with consumers, very few are willing to pay what would be a real design fee. If you are shopping for a design and not cabinets then you really have to shop for a designer. No one is going to produce a design, or series of them, just to see if you may decide you will pay them. Since you say you are on a budget, and it sounds like you want some design service then it may be that finding the right variations to #4 would suit you. In that case take LWO advice and shop for a designer. There many variations to your #4. I work using a one. We go a bit beyond average to begin with BUT many will give you an estimate based on your plan as it stands now. That at least allows you to determine if they can fit your budget before paying anything. Most won't come out and measure, most won't do much design work but many will discuss things with you. We do give estimates first before accepting a retainer, and most often measure. It's a retainer, not a design fee and is credited toward a purchase. Once a retainer is paid we do hand out drawings but our retainer runs to 12% of the cabinet cost with a minimum of $1000. And yes plenty of folks out there understand this model and have no problem with it. Over the years I have had only 2 people walk away from a retainer- one completely dropped the project because they moved out of state and the other ended up using entirely found furniture. When I first started on my own we seriously thought we would be doing design only work as well. It quickly became apparent that has more problems than it is worth for us. I now only do "design only" work for a few interior designers and an architect. roccocogirl-I went to Parson's 20 years before I came to kitchens. Great school, useful background- but doesn't a KD make. I'd been a designer before I went to school (not kitchens) . After I did more more design work, built a lot of things, a little work in construction, built cabinets, taught myself CAD, designed a few workshops and sections of factories, and had a business (and yeah I've been cooking for over 50 yrs). When I was hired by a real kitchen outfit I'd had one year at a box store. (At the interview they noted that wasn't much kitchen experience, despite my background. I agreed that it wasn't. It is a business after all. They weren't worried about me going off and starting a business, (I only did because I was downsized.) At that first job It took me a solid 6 months to learn the first spec book. It still take that long with a new brand. It was two years before I made a half decent salary. It was a good 5 years before I was comfortably good making a living wage, 10 to get really good. In the meantime I had to learn how to deal with the public. The first designer I hired could barely use a computer and had no degree but was one of the best I've met, She'd been in the business for 30 yrs and could draw. I was training her on the software, It was going to take at least another year for us to make a profit on her work (a primary purpose of having employees) but she added much while with us. I miss her terribly.

Agree with LWO, you don’t buy assembled cabinets online. You can, however, buy semi-custom, quality RTA cabinets online from Barker (made in the USA) or Conestoga via the Cabinet Joint (don’t know if they are US made), or very versatile modular cabinets from IKEA (as sushipup recommended) that you can combine with custom or semi-custom doors and fronts. Out of curiosity, did you try using the search box before posting? If you are new here, check out the New to Kitchens thread. Welcome.