My cabinet maker will be installing side mounted glides vs. bottom mounted. I know I am sacrificing some drawer width for height but that's the trade off I went with. I have heard/read a lot about Blum and it sounds like that is the brand of choice, but he said he was going to use either KV or Accuride. They will be self/soft closing and full extension. I want a smooth motion and don't want to be tugging hard to open the drawer or pushing hard to close. Any feedback/opinions/advice? Thank you!!

ash5181 - We bought several different slides and tested them on drawers. These were the best of what we could find (either online or in big box stores). They were a bit stiff at first, but repeated use has mellowed the resistance from the soft-close mechanism. I'm really glad we installed soft close, but I wish we had researched more before building the drawers. Turns out, undermount slides require a higher mount for the drawer base (to provide room/mounting surface for the Blum slides) - and DH was NOT going to rebuild or start again. A few slides are giving us trouble, but that could be installation error, as they are tricky to shim/balance. We learned a lot, and will be uber-prepared for the next kitchen :)

I've just returned a whole case of the KV soft-close side mount. It was the first time I'd tried them. I was trying to buy American made goods. These things didn't close the drawers properly. The KV glides don't even have enough force to pull themselves closed when you hold one in your hand in a vertical position. That was all the testing I needed; no way were these things ever going to pull an actual drawer closed. So, I'm at the will call counter at the distributor to get my money back, and another cabinetmaker looks at what I have. He asks, "Why do you use those?" Then he tells me about how the Blum soft close are the only ones he would ever use. Blum invented the soft close feature, has the best patent, and is clearly the industry leader. Accuride used to be the best choice for regular side mount full extension ball bearing glides. They've been around as long as I can remember. Unfortunately, Accuride has let quality fall off these days. I started finding defective ones in every case. The defect is a weakness in the plastic retaining clip that releases the glide from the housing. The plastic can break easily, and then the drawer can pull out too far. One of my distributors discontinued accuride. They cross reference all parts to Fulturer or KV. I had been using Fulturer with no problems. Side by side with Accuride, you can tell the Fulturer is a better product. So, in conclusion: Blum is the way to go for soft close glides. Fulturer is a good utilitarian full extension glide, better than Accuride for the same price. KV makes good heavy duty glides for drawers over 100 pounds. If you have narrow cabinets with deep drawers, bottom mount may give you more drawer space. Wider cabinets with several shallower drawers utilize more drawer space with side mount glides.

I've done both in the last year - custom cabinets in my kitchen and Ikea in the kitchenette in the basement. My kitchen cabinets were built by local Amish cabinet makers and I could have any size I wanted. Wall cabinets were 13" deep standard, which is what you want with inset since you lose some depth. It was a 10% upcharge for inset cabinets (which I only did on the wall cabinets), a 10% upcharge for painted cabinets, and a 10% savings for frameless (which I did on the base cabinets). It was $11,000 or $12,000 for my 19 cabinets (some of which are very large because I have 10' ceilings) and all the trim, and here's a picture to give you an idea of what I got: For my Ikea basement I bought 7 cabinets and spent about $2000 (that's what my budget says but I didn't go back and add it up) for all the cabinets and trim. It was new construction so I planned the space so the Ikea cabinets with their limited standard sizes would fit well. Here's a picture of that: So what's the difference? I had the fun of loading and unloading the Ikea boxes in my minivan and putting the Ikea cabinets together. My custom cabinet boxes are 3/4" plywood and look like they'll last forever. My Ikea cabinet boxes are 1/2" particle board that made me nervous when I put granite on them. I figured when I attached two together it made 1" particle board, and that made me feel better. The plastic legs on Ikea cabinets made me nervous too. My wood cabinet doors can be touched up or repainted when my kids clobber them. My Ikea doors can be replaced easily. The hinges and drawer glides are about the same. My wood drawers are beautifully made and heavy-duty. The Ikea drawers aren't nearly as sturdy - I wouldn't load them up like I do my wood drawers (NOTE: Oops, I goofed, and I retracted this statement below - the drawers are sturdy). The greatest advantage to Ikea is that there is no waiting and you can quickly make changes as you go along if you need to. So I would definitely take the time to price it out both ways. The difference probably isn't astronomical, and then you can decide if the inset are worth it.