This is Menard's "choice and best" or something like that grade in solid red oak, $1.71 / square foot on sale in 2009, unfinished pieces. We threw out almost a quarter of the stuff because it had knots or wild grain or some kid of burn from the plane or an irregular lip. A very kind friend donated 3 days labor and expertise and I supervised by sorting boards and handing the guys the next hand-chosen piece and took their guff for every one of them. We rented a nailer for 3 days. We put no stain on it but used 5 coats of Ace Hardware waterbase urethane, each coat followed by a session with a rented sander/buffer and a mound of disposables for it. Not sure how much the DIY cost ended up to be. Mat in photo is Gel Pro "Wicker" in Oyster Grey. Cabs are unstained red oak with lacquer finish. Roughly 9 months later, we are pleased with the floor. No problems so far. It does show dirt but we're hoping that once our landscaping is finished the dirt clumps will not be so common. Chocolate lab hair shows but not as bad as black lab hair.

Yes, I want to get to Lowes. It's a two-hour commute for me, which is why I haven't gotten there yet, but then I can even compare the Schuler/Medallion and Kraftmaid finishes. I've seen the Kraftmaid before in Home Depot and it seemed nice. I'm just so worried about making the wrong choice and then having to live with it for 20 years. My own silliness, though I suspect a lot of people have that anxiety here. I envy the people that don't. :-) charlikin

That sounds a bit expensive but not wildly unreasonable; I have just finished a galley kitchen that is 7.5ft wide and 14 ft long (was 12ft before we opened up a wall.) I priced frameless cabinets from Cabico Espresso, all drawers in the lowers, and the not-quite-everything total was around $9k; I comparison shopped Innermost (frameless also) at Home Depot and it was slightly more expensive. I also used the Ikea planner to mock up layouts so I could gauge the price there, and it was in line with what the previous posters suggested. In the end, we used Diamond cabinets (a very mid-range brand) because of the contractor we chose; they're not frameless but we're very happy with them. I don't know the specific price because the cabinets got wrapped into the price for all the work, which included a lot of other expenses like moving plumbing on a slab and opening up a load-bearing wall. Bottom line is that cabinets are probably the biggest expense in doing a kitchen, other than labor if you mess about with the layout like we did. By comparison the granite/quartz estimates seemed like a bargain! I don't think I anticipated this when I started contemplating what to do to our kitchen, and like you the numbers sort of shocked me. I spent more time as a result, figuring out a layout that made the costs feel more worthwhile. If you want to see some beautiful galley kitchens, google kitchen reveals by @yesdear and @brooklyngalley and @erhm, among many others including the ones posted above. Oh, and also @marthavila and @histokitch, two of my all-time favorite kitchens irrespective of size. I've linked below a google search for galley kitchen reveals on Gardenweb which should turn up some of the above. Here is a link that might be useful: Search for galley kitchen reveals on GW

I think you should try painting the walls a color first because I think that makes a huge impact. We are building a house in a subdivision so color choices are limited. I told our sales lady that I wanted white cabinets. She, and the other salesman, warned me that they had a blue cast to them. They kept trying to talk me into the cream but I want white. They had me go look at a house that had them with the builder’s Dover White walls. The cabinets looked blue! But I had no other options for white so decided to get them anyway hoping wall paint would help. When we went to the design center to officially pick them they didn’t look blue at all. They were the perfect white! I’ve been worried that the sample wasn’t actually the same color and they’d still be blue. Last week my sales lady got me a scrap of trim to take to pick out my granite. No blue! So, my point is, it’s the stupid wall paint that makes them look blue. So I will have to paint my walls so my cabinets look good. Here’s a kitchen we looked at (not our floor plan). The cabinets look like the color from a spray paint can. Their counters don’t help either.