Our first Sherr's cabinet assembled
DH and I have assembled most of the Ikea cabinets for our soon-to-be kitchen, but needed three custom ones in depths that Ikea didn't support. We ordered them from Sherr's and the box arrived last week. We spent today putting them together and are happy with how they look so far.
The cabinet boxes we ordered are MDF with walnut edge bands, drawers are solid maple with dovetail joints, slides are Blum Tandembox with Blumotion soft close (slightly nicer than the Ikea Blum slides), and the drawer fronts are grain-matched walnut veneer. The smaller 4-drawer cabinet is going in the hall niche outside the kitchen and its drawer fronts have a vertical grain. The other two cabinets are going to be our island and have a horizontal grain to match the rest of the custom walnut drawer fronts in the kitchen.
Here are a couple of pictures of the process.
They came well-wrapped in cardboard on a pallet. We'd started taking the cardboard off at this point:
Laying out the first cabinet:
Screwing in the drawer slides first, a trick we learned when assembling the Ikea drawers:
The first cabinet mostly finished, some minor adjustments needed. We're using finger pulls from Mockett (to be added).
The other two will make up the island. We didn't install the drawers yet as there's dust and chaos everywhere and we don't want to risk them getting dirty or damaged.
A wider view of our living room, with range on the right and Ikea cabinet doors for the upper cabinets (Abstrakt high gloss white) still in boxes.
The kitchen was just insulated yesterday, sheetrock to go in next week. The niche where the first cabinet will be is visible in the hallway on the right of the picture.
We're not living in the house, thank goodness!
Comments (14)
CEFreeman
11 years agoMuleHouse
11 years agoRelated Discussions
First photos I took of our living room
Comments (18)This week-end we went to an estate sale down the street (about a block away from us on our street with no cross streets), and we bought a 1950s solid teak dining set, which consists of a 42" diameter dining table with two 11" leaves and six dining chairs. The woman who owned the furniture lived on the other side of the street from us, and she was an artist, like Kevin. I had told Kevin before that we should shop for dining chairs this weekend but not buy them for a couple of months while we saved money, even though we are both budgeting our money very carefully. Last week, Kevin got a major promotion at Sony, along with a 10% raise, and so he's feeling more comfortable with spending money; therefore he told me that he wanted us to buy the dining room furniture. We haven't assembled the dining table yet, but when we get it all together, I'll post photos of it. While at the estate sale (which we walked to - it was only a block and a half!), I sent Kevin back to our house to get my car to move the furniture while I continued to shop. There was a solid teak 1950s stereo console that the estate sellers were trying to get me to buy, but they had already loaded it into the SUV to take to Palm Springs (where they had a consignment shop), and I eventually agreed to buy it at a reduced price and use it as a liquor cabinet, as they recommended. At first I wasn't sure I would have room for it, but then I was able to mentally rearrange the dining room furniture in my head and figure it out. As it turns out, it works exactly as I had imagined it. For some reason, Kevin is not able to rearrange furniture in his head the way I do, but then furniture is my business. I also bought two solid walnut Parson's leg lamp tables (one to use as a coffee table in the living room, and one just because it was so only $10!), and Kevin bought a beautiful bookcase for $25 that we have in the hall across from the dining room. We now have my two old dining chairs in storage in the garage, and we will have to put one of our dining tables into storage as well. We got an extremely good deal on the furniture, and now I don't have to shop for dining chairs!! I would have rather gotten some of the new dining chairs that I designed at work, but one of those chairs would cost more at mfg cost than the entire set we got at the estate sale. I still look forward to the day when I will own some of my own furniture designs. I like the beadboard wainscoting also, but only because it is limited to one room. Kevin's bedroom and the sewing room have chair railing but no wainscoting, and so that could easily be removed, but they are working out okay with our furniture for now. Lars...See Moreikea vs. sherrs rta vs. kraftmaid (or equivalent)
Comments (28)We love our Scherrs cabinets. They are the first group in the photo gallery on Scherr's site. Here's a picture: They were worth every penny, IMHO. Scherr's did some really complex stuff for us and it all came together well. They made clipped, fluted corners and 5/4 drawer fronts I wanted that they had never tried before. They made integrated raised end panels which was a first for them as well. As for service, I had a problem with a long drawer front that warped (it was solid wood) and they sent out a replacement very quickly (at no cost of course). The cabinets fit together tightly and are very sturdy. You need a good set of bar clamps to properly put them together. The raised panel door fronts are very solidly made and don't rattle at all because they use rubber spaceballs to hold the panels tightly in place. Leon and his brother are very quality conscious and really want to please the customer, in my experience. They started out as custom cabinetmakers. Like many small shops, they built the cases and bought the doors from large national companies like Conestoga. The reason they got into the door business in the first place was because they couldn't find good enough quality doors from the national companies for the custom cabinets they were building for customers. They then became a major source for high quality doors for other custom cabinetmakers and finally branched out into manufacturing the cases again. Kinda full circle. I asked Leon about plywood sides and he told me that it wasn't worth the extra money, even though he stood to benefit if we opted for it. The melamine boxes have been very durable. The melamine sink cabinet didn't suffer any damage whatsoever even though I had water under there for weeks from couple of slow leaks from a faulty filter that would have damaged your typical wood cabinet. I ran a bead of silicone caulk around the corners of the base to seal it when I assembled it and as a result the cabinet looks brand new despite the floods. Their cabinets are of better quality than almost anything I have seen elsewhere. I also have some IKEA cabinets in other rooms of our house. We installed IKEA at my son's house since it is his starter home and the IKEAs were the cheapest plus they fit the space well. I like IKEA and their quality is very good, but not as good as Scherr's. The box on the Scherr's cabinet is more sturdy and fits together more tightly. IKEA also has a limited number of styles and doesn't have all the sizes some cabinet companies have. For instance, I needed 36" tall cabinets and they didn't have them. I also needed other widths they didn't carry. With Scherr's I saved a few thousand bucks over the up-scale semi-custom I was considering at first. And of the 22 cabinets in our kitchen, only 6 are stock sizes. Everything was made to exactly fit and waste not a square inch. However, if you can limit yourself the the IKEA sizes, they are a wonderful cabinet also and I have no complaints with mine. Matching Scherr's doors to their boxes might be a good way to save some money and still get the look you want. Plus you could have Scherr's make any special cabinets you need....See MoreFirst time home buyers and remodelers
Comments (48)Both major box stores have policies in place that prohibit giving customers copies of designs or detailed quotes until the kitchen is purchased. That policy gets violated frequently, but they are starting to crack down on it. Too many people take the work elsewhere and they lose the sale. KM is a mid grade cabinet. American Woodmark/Shenendoah is not. It's higher builder grade. The finish quality isn't as smooth and consistent and it lacks sizes and features found in a mid grade line. The Savannah doorstyle in the paint and glaze is the most expensive door in the line, and there are several doors in KM or Diamond/Thomasville that would be cheaper if you could give up some of the detailing. You could have better construction and a better finish simpky by moving to partial overlay door and giving up the glaze. It's dated, even here where trends take forever to reach. A door that is less fussy would stand the test of time better as well. Not shaker though, as that's being overdone. I'd expect cabinets for your room to be in the 10-12K range in a plain paint partial overlay door in a mid grade line. 7-10K in a high builder line. The better hardware and finish is worth paying the difference for. The useless 20% charge to ''upgrade'' to plywood is certainly NOT worth paying for. That money is better spent on moving up to the better line, or a useful upgrade like more drawers. The layout needs tweaking though. It isn't that functional....See Morescherr's rta cabinets or other custom rta cabinets
Comments (9)We're in the middle of assembling a Scherr's kitchen now. We had planned on an IKEA/Scherr's combo for a long time, but in the end felt that our tiny kitchen would be best served by going the all-Scherr's route, so we could customize things as needed (and because the closest IKEA is almost 5 hours away). We ordered sample doors (unpainted and two wood types) and went back and forth with Leon, the owner, over the details. When we were finally ready to place an order in late October, the lead time was 10-12 weeks. However, there was a last minute cancellation/delay of an east coast Scherr's project due to Hurricane Sandy, so Leon pushed us up and we got our cabinets in 4 weeks. Cost for our 10x10ish kitchen was a couple thousand more than IKEA and a couple thousand less than a local cabinetmaker (also frameless cabs). As I said, we're still sorting through all of the boxes and assembling cabinets, but communication and customer service have been great so far....See Moredeedles
11 years agodee850
11 years agoannkathryn
11 years agoHi deedles, you were asking about the grain. Yes, we specified the grain matching and indicated vertical for the first cabinet. There was an upcharge for this. We loved the look of the matching grain with these slab cabinets.
For the rest of the Ikea cabinets, we ordered doors from Semihandmade. The grain matching is horizontal. Anything can be done with what's basically a 4'x8' slab of walnut veneer.
Here are Semihandmade cabinet doors for one of our Ikea cabinets. We haven't screwed these into the cabinets yet - did I mention that there's a lot of dust?
Sheet of walnut:
Here is a link that might be useful: SemiHandMade Doors
suzanne_sl
11 years agodeedles
11 years agoannkathryn
11 years agoIt sounds complicated because we couldn't do 100% Ikea cabinets. Here's what we've got:
- all perimeter cabinets are Ikea. Base cabinets on the sink/stove walls will have doors from SemiHandMade in horizontal walnut. Upper cabinets on the sink/stove walls will have Ikea doors (Abstrakt high gloss white or glass) with side panels in walnut, also from SemiHandMade. All cabinets on the fridge wall are Atbtrakt high gloss white. We're thinking of a walnut butcher block counter under the microwave.
- the island cabinets are only 18" deep. We could have cut down 24" deep Ikea cabinets and used them, but then we couldn't have drawers. So we decided to order those two 30"x18" base cabinets from Sherr's, including the drawer fronts. It seemed safer to do that rather than coordinate SemiHandMade drawer fronts with Sherr's drawer sizes. These two island cabinets also have a horizontal grain. The variation in walnut sheets isn't that great, so we were willing to live with slight differences, if any. We haven't unpacked those drawer fronts yet (dust, chaos, etc) - they're for the 2nd & 3rd cabinets in my original post.
- the vertical grain cabinet in the picture in my first post is for a niche that's just outside the kitchen in the hallway from the garage. It's through the doorway in the plan below.
Here's the plan:
deedles
11 years agodrybean
11 years agoannkathryn
11 years agoHi drybean,
We could have gone 100% Sherr's for all doors (great company!) but we visited SemiHandMade last spring and really liked the quality of the doors we saw there. The main reason we went with SHM for the rest of the doors was that they were slightly less expensive and their lead time was about a month less than Sherr's. As it turned out we had everything assembled and ready to go long before our contractor could install anything, so the lead time wouldn't have mattered.We also weren't concerned about any variation in the walnut because the cabinets weren't going to be right next to each other. As it turned out, the wood tone was very close and no one can tell that the doors came from different suppliers.
Here's a picture of the niche cabinet (Sherr's) with the SemiHandMade doors in the kitchen.
From Kitchen
Hope that helps.
drybean
11 years agodrybean
11 years ago
annkathrynOriginal Author