Ok, I had some free time today and went by HD and Lowes to look at Kraftmaid installed kitchens and the other MasterBrand lines. Since they're everywhere, I'll compare to them. I would guess they have some of the same issues since some joints looked similar to my cabinets after I had cleaned them up. I would say that my cabinets showed it more and had more instances of it. But, once cleaned up, I don't really notice it until I look for it. The shelves cleaned up decently well. I don't think I'll notice them now that they're cleaned up, but the Kraftmaid and co. lines had much cleaner shelf ends. As for the cuts in the base bottom that I showed, I've only tried half of the rep's trick, so I can't say how that worked out. I have maybe 4 instances of it across all the cabinets. I really don't care for it, but hopefully it will clean up such that it's barely noticeable. Again, it's all a tradeoff: price, wood family, door style, finish quality, durability, interior quality. I feel that in the end I traded off a bit on interior quality as compared to Kraftmaid such that I could to better on many of the others. I do wish it had been a little better, but I would not have wanted to spend any more than I did (budget) or traded off on finish and durability. See the pantry pics at the end of this. My cabinets are Wellborn Forest. The doors are the Madison door style made of cherry. Finish is ginger with smoke highlights. LWO, you had earlier suggested a simple raised door using a warmer finish than my floors. I hope I got it right. In any event, I LOVE the look! Thank you all for looking this over. I know all of you had very different opinions of this than I. I suppose that's my engineer's mentality coming through. I don't believe in perfection and everything is a series of tradeoffs. I aimed here for the tradeoff that best suited my goals. Before: From Shared After (the angle is a bit different as is visible in the grain pattern, but this is the same joint as above): From Shared Before: From Shared After (it doesn't jump out anymore, whereas before it did): From Shared Pantry: From Shared From Shared From Shared Justin

The display I saw was very "special"-even beyond custom-think "artisan" with every detail painstakingly created for the final product. The finishes were superb with numerous glazing/distressing techniques. These are French Canadian woodcrafters I believe-or the inspiration comes from that heritage of skillset.It is possible if you streamline your selection,therefore not requiring the level of miniscule detail,you might get a slightly better cabinet than the price point here of semi custom or stock with lots of upgrades. I do think the "upgrades" that are now practically standard on stock or semi cabs here make for some really very decent cabinets and affordable so that the counters,appliances, can get some dedicated dollar amt of your budget. If the builder has a set-up with a designer and this particular brand only...it may go like this--you go in with the plan/or work on the plan/dollar amount pre-determined/she presents the several cabinet selections avail[they have plucked a few from the general offerings]....choices are are a subset of what the company offers.It will probably be high quality unless they have a contract and are showing you basically entry level stuff-but I don't know why they would pick that company for builder grade. perhaps the Laurier group is having difficulty and are putting out high volume to designers working with new build.Can't know all the specefics obviously-but go and take a look.

Or you could try to connect with remodelers. In areas where they remodel perfectly fine kitchens to embrace the owner's version of a dream room, or simply the switching out of hardware due to finish changes, the old stuff is still in great condition. I know we bought some temporary value-pack pulls to replace the hideous knobs in the kitchen when we purchased the house. Now I am staining the cabinets and changing the pulls to ones with a different finish. So there will be a box of pulls that are only a few years old sitting in a box in the garage, or waiting for a garage sale. I cannot be the only one.

I am trying to figure out if I should be comparing costs of mid-grade or higher end cabinetry with Brookhaven. I am not far enough along to choose all the details but do know I like limited details on the cabinetry and will probably go with a stain-that-looks-like-paint (technical jargon :) or painted finish. I am not into lots of corbels, etc. Since I have limited time before I need to make a decision, I am trying to compare where Brookhaven will fall price-wise. I need to get quotes from a few kitchen designers but don't want to chose KDs who only carry lines that will not fit into my established budget. I know I will get what I pay for and am confident that Brookhaven is a quality line, but there are quality lines that are reasonable and those that are way out of my budget. Since whether or not something is considered expensive or reasonable is subjective, I am just trying to figure out what other brands will provide the same quality and look at around the same price so I can find KDs who carry those lines and not waste the time of others.