Ikea cabinet boxes are very good quality. That's why you often see people getting those and having doors custom made elsewhere. But, they are only available in certain sizes and lack a good deal in flexibility for design issues. Their doors, are medium to poor quality if you like one of the designs. They have such a limited selection that you may not be able to find a style that you can live with.

Masterbrand/aka/Thomasville cabinets are good quality for the boxes, and they are already assembled. Plywood "upgrades" are available if you desire to spend your money on it. THey come in a LOT of different sizes and are great for working in a challenging kitchen. YOu'll always find the size or combo you need in the spec book. Their organizers are numerous and of good quality. WHere they really shine is their doors. THey have a good selection of door styles and their finishes for those doors are very very nice. Almost furniture quality. The doors are the most expensive portion of any cabinet line, and you can tell that with Masterbrand. They are way above Ikea in quality.

For a line with even more woods and door styles, check out Kraftmaid. They are also good quality.

>But, they are only available in certain sizes and lack a good deal in flexibility for design issues.

They are very mod-able, though. Check out ikeafans.com. There are few design issues that can't be overcome with a little effort.

We're in the process of a kitchen design with Diamond cabinets which is Lowe's version of Thomasville. Both made by Masterbrand. We've done a smaller project with Diamond and were pleased with the quality, design flexibility, and especially with the customer service. Quick turnaround and not an ounce of pushback when a couple of pieces needed to be replaced because they weren't up to our expectations/standards. I do like the color choices, finishes, and door styles with Thomasville/Diamond. We've also done a large kitchen with Kraftmaid - they're significantly more pricey than Diamond/Thomasville (at least for what we were trying to do). The only comment I can make on Ikea is that my sister in law has her kitchen done in them and she loves her cabinets. Also, a big plus for them is that their cabinets are frameless.

We used Ikea, and we do love our cabinets, but I think a lot of the savings really comes in with the customer service and planning issues.

If you go the ikea route, you (or someone you hire) will have to spend a lot of time planning and tweaking because there are limited sizes, as folks have already said. For me, it took a while to understand elements of kitchen design - while there are limited sizes, there really are unlimited choices in terms of drawers vs. shelves, how many, what mix of widths to use, etc. If you have a challenging or tight space, you may be very limited and have to use a workaround.

And the ordering process is very Ikea. They do have folks that will look at your order, but I think it's hit or miss as to whether those folks are helpful - I worked with one person during planning that was awesome, but the lady on order day was NOT and we had to go back to the store multiple times because of items being missed on the order.

Once you get your order entered and pulled, they just scoot it out for you to load. That's very much the Ikea way - self service. And there are a LOT of parts - for one cabinet, there might be 8 different boxes, if you get drawers, etc. So getting everything home, sorted and checked off the list can be an issue if you don't want to deal with that level of details.

And then the assembly and installation are what they are. Assembly is not difficult - we assembled our boxes, and hired a contractor to do installation. Ikea cabinets are meant to be installed on a hanging wall system that is very easy for DIYers, but unfamiliar to professional installers used to traditional cabinets - so you might run into problems there, unless your installer knows how to work with Ikea. Many don't, and aren't fans of the Ikea installation.

That being said, we do LOVE our cabinets. The soft close hardware is so awesome, and the options for built in organization are great. I think there is a door style for everyone, but if I had looked extensively at other lines, and then HAD to switch to Ikea, I can see how I would feel limited by door choices.

Basically, I think it comes down to how much planning and organizing you are willing to do yourself, in addition to the assembling, that makes the price difference in Ikea.

I guess I would characterize the IKEA cabinets as being more modern in feel than the Diamond/Thomasville cabinets. The thing that I really like about the IKEA line is that they are a frameless cabinet so you can get more storage room in a 12-inch upper than you can for a similarly sized 12-inch Diamond cabinet.

So, for example, if your dishes are 11.5-inch ones, they might not fit in the Diamond 12-inch cabinet because you almost lose two inches with the face frame. However, I do like a more traditional looking cabinet with the dove-tailed drawers and the finished interiors and there is no comparison to the doors and finishes that you can get with Diamond/Thomasville. Also, Diamond is one of the few vendors that offers a 3-inch spice pull-out rack. I so wanted a pull-out rack, but I don't have much space in my 9 x 10 kitchen where storage is at a premium. I seriously considered the Diamond cabinets, but opted for Schuler/Medallion.

You might want to look at the finished kitchen blog and do a search on all the IKEA kitchens and do the same for the Diamond/Thomasville ones.

In the end, only you can make the cost/benefit determination. You might want to check out what similarly priced homes have in their kitchens in your area.

In agreement with the response above, the $ difference is in all the DIY -- from design to ordering, to hauling, to assembly.

When we remodeled the kitchen in our last home, we went with upgraded Thomasville cabinets - eliminating all of the fiberboard/MDF in favor of furniture grade plywood, with natural maple cabinet doors. The cabinets themselves have held up well, but the clearcoat on the cabinet doors was less impressive - on the more heavily used cabinets it was visibly wearing off around the knobs (and it's not something you can easily touch up). In the house we just bought we have ten-year-old Merillat cabinets that, although construction grade in all but the cabinet and drawer faces, have immaculate finish on the doors and drawers. It may be that the "Thomasville" finishes have been improved since we bought our cabinets, but it's something I would definitely investigate before again buying that brand.

The variety of cabinet sizes and styles is quite useful in creating a highly functional kitchen. I installed cabinets around a traffic path, and they had a neat configuration that allowed us to put an angled corner in a space where a square cabinet would have impeded traffic. At the same time, due to a gap in the exposed outer corner - rather than making a neat, finished joint they left an exposed, raw space right at the base of the cabinet that (due to the size and angle) was very difficult to trim, and they had no standard trim piece to fit that gap (or trim pieces that could easily be modified to fit it). So if your cabinets will have something other than right angles at floor level, consider trim issues in advance.

My last word of caution would be to triple-check your order to make sure that all of the customization or "extras" you've requested have been properly entered. Some people will be better than others; the woman who entered our order was careless and once you approve the order you risk having them decline to make any corrections based on that approval. That will hold true wherever you buy cabinets.

Socalusa, very, very pretty! Is that a Henderson 5 pc door style? What color/glaze is that? We just ordered Henderson 5pc Maple in Whisky Black...with an Heirloom Black island. What is the name of your granite?

Regarding the soft close feature found on Ikea...Diamond has that too. It is standard on drawers. I added it to all my upper cabinet doors. It was a minor upcharge.

We remodeled our kitchen in April 09. We have Thomasville cabinetry and I have been very happy with them and I thought after searching many other cabinetry places that the price was right. At Home Depot they are offering great incentives..like free sink base, $4,000 off order. 50% off the glazing which we did have done, 5 Free pull out drawers. I was able to get many more upgrades because of the money they had taken off. All the drawers have been automatically ugraded..1/2inch sides. Also all drawers have the slow close mechanism which is another upgrade that is now considered their standard drawer. The boxes all arrived safely and if there were any problems they just shipped out the new piece no questions asked. I used my own installer ( my brother in law) so I felt I got a great deal esp if you want to order...and install yourself. I can send pictures if interested. I did spend many hours with the Home Depot cabinet expert to decide what I wanted...there are many decision to make as you know. There was a couple design mistakes that they fixed and reordered a different size drawer etc. The cherry wood with black whiskey glaze is beautiful and I love the full overlay which usually makes the cost so much higher. I did have a problem with the decorative hood I ordered..Thomasville has a smaller hood and I wish they had more sizes to choose from...also the vents that home depot sells to fit the hoods do not have enough CFM and I thought I might have to do without it but my installer made it work by adding to it and making it come out longer over my burners.
I also bought the fan from Vent a hood because I have a wolf dual fuel oven. That is one of the down falls of designing your own kitchen and not having the convenience of custom made pieces. It all worked out in the end and we couldn't be happier. Look at their deals online or go to Home Depot. I also used a o% interest card for most of it for a year.

Something else that I feel is very favorable about IKEA: they adhere to Germany's very strict VOC standards. So, the MDF most other cabinet-makers use uses Urea Formaldehyde which off-gasses for years. IKEAS is non-urea-formaldehyde and I think that their finishes are also low or no-VOC. They've done this for years and years, even though they don't hype it (which I don't understand given the growing concern about VOCs...)

I feel much more comfortable about IKEAs products vis a vis air quality in our home. I'm a cancer survivor and I don't want my daughter breathing carcinogens.

We had IKEA cabinets in our last house and were VERY pleased with them. The looked great, worked great, and held up very well over the years.

When we finished our basement, we went with IKEA cabinets. Made numerous modifications for them to work as we wanted. The only negative I can offer is that their door sizes do not go to 24" and I often need to open both 12" doors to access spaces that in other brands would have only 1 door.

Very pleased with the styles we selected and the way the cabinets have held up. The space is not daily use but sees hard use when we have large gatherings. It is now 5 or 6 years since installation. Good luck with your decision.

Here is a link that might be useful: Basement Kitchen

>The only negative I can offer is that their door sizes do not go to 24"

Yes, they do, at least they do now. That's the size door you use for a panel for the new built-in dishwasher door, among other uses.

meant to say "panel-ready" DW, but you know what I mean. Maybe they didn't use to offer 24", but they definitely do now.

Don't want to hijack a thread, but since we're talking cabinets here I thought I respond to a question from sleevepresto.

Thank you! The door style is Thomasville Cherry Plaza (full overlay) with the whisky black glaze and we worked with a wonderful KD at Home Depot who had unending patience with me in the design. I love the rich tones that the glaze gives the cherry. The granite is 3cm Minsk and it took me 3 months to find it, being TKO like I seem to have become.....

As soon as I can figure out a floor tile, I'm going to post finished pix.

(Side note: One of the reasons we ordered Thomasville (out of state for us in SoCal) is because of the stringent state regulations on finishes. We were going to get custom cabinets and after talking with different cabinetmakers we decided that we needed to go elsewhere to get hopefully a more durable finish. Here's hoping that's true - so far, so good...)

ikea is more stylish and their installers are good. If you need to replace something it is available and easy.

Just a note about finishes from socalusa - custom cabinet manufacturer's can use the finishes from the east coast, but they need to be set up with a spray booth and compliant with osha. They are out there!

My family owns a custom cabinet shop and I about fall over when I see folks in the local HD thinking they're getting a good deal. I know they've beaten HD & Lowe's prices with a great product, and they're installed. HD and their makers put on a very heavy markup on the cabinets. It's all in the marketing they do but I would recommend doing your homework and getting other bids.