How high quality do you want? What is your budget? Kitchen cabinets are a bit like cars - are you looking for a Rolls Royce or a Kia?

Are you concerned about construction quality or paint quality? If paint, what are your concerns?

25K is a decent budget for mid grade cabinets like Medallion, Shiloh, Kemper, or Kraftmaid. As long as your kitchen is not large, and you don’t go crazy with extras, you should be fine. You can easily go over in cabinets though when you use Houzz pics for inspiration. Most of those renovations are in the 250K range, which is double the average upscale kitchen redo. And he average upscale redo is double that of the average 65K mid grade redo.

If you are worried about cracking and chipping, I would go with an engineered cabinet door. The paint sticks better and most likely holds up better than it does to a solid wood door.

Hi Amy W

Good for you, doing research to find the right cabinet. I too was concerned about paint chipping. I am also going with paint over maple cabinets. I did not go with a Lowes or HD. My project is not a DIY so I needed to find someone to put this all together.

I started my kitchen reno by choosing a GC and a KD. Then I searched for a cabinet maker but ended up going with a cabinet company the KD likes to work with. I could not afford the custom cabinet maker. Instead I found a KD that works with a cabinet brand that is semi custom and hopefully this will work for our project. I like the cabinets but totally understand wanting to find the best fit.

I also found a great link that might help with opinions about different cabinet brands. It helped me. Of course they don't mention Mouser cabinets...Wonder why?

https://www.mainlinekitchendesign.com/general/kitchen-cabinet-ratings-2017-reviews-top-selling-cabinet-lines/

My suggestion to find a good kitchen cabinet brand is to visit a few kitchen show rooms and talk to a few KDs. Ask friends who they used for a reno, Ask your realtor who they recommend? Ask neighbors who they recommend and search until you find a good KD and have them help you through this process.

Good Luck on your kitchen journey.