Will there be black friday sales? Some appliances have been hard to come by (ex: Bosch 800 dishwasher, paneled or not. I ordered in late December, it's not going to be here when I need it in August). Maybe by Black Friday, the stock on all appliances will be back to pre-pandemic levels. As long as what you're ordering doesn't require a chip. Also, costs for appliances have gone up. Are there deep discounts anymore?

Dishwashers are easy. If you're going with a 24" dishwasher, it seems that they all fit in the appropriate opening.

Fridges are different though. Some of them require more clearance at the back than others, so if you're boxing the fridge in, it may be best to actually select a model whether it'll be on sale or not. My fridge requires 25" of space (an extra inch in the back). I did have the option to arrange for a deeper box than needed, simply because there happened to be a space behind the fridge area that we were sacrificing to the wall gods. But if you're short on space, you may end up with a shallower box than needed for whatever fridge you get, and so the fridge will stick out and annoy you for all time.

I don't know much about range sizes/clearances. I only considered one and it is a free standing one so it's pretty easy to determine the space required. If you're doing a separate wall oven and cooktop, then yes, those cutout requirements probably vary by manufacturer.

Hi. When we were building an entirely new house that was one of our first shopping trips. It is very important for the cabinet maker as you say. Even the fridge doors are pretty important to pay attention to… depth and the hinges… We were shown Refrigerators that were over$10,000! Eek! Sticker shock had us looking elsewhere. I do admit the service and product quality at the high end appliance stores are better than what we finally chose but we can replace this one 5 times for that… of course any replacement has to fit in that spot in the cabinetry. And a few items had to be chosen from a catalog since the models weren’t on the floor… complicating things even more! These days… product supply would be a big concern for me if I were buying appliances right now. Not sure you can count on the right thing being available in your time frame if you wait. I’ve seen quite a few remodels around us sitting around waiting on back ordered supplies.

You will quickly lose any savings if you don't get the measurements right. I would choose properly now and live with the outcome.

Since cabinets take 12-30 weeks to get, (and appliances even longer!) and you are still working on the layout, it is highly unlikely you will begin any remodel ”next month”. You should never do any demolition until all of your orders are received and inspeced for damage. And the reorders are also received too.

Good points, Helen. I guess the difficulty comes in if you decide to get the larger higher end refrigerators most of all. I did notice that if we replaced our current stove in might also cause an issue. I thought it was a slide in but it turned out that the cooktop portion overlaps the counter a bit and they installed a sliver of the counter at the wall to bridge a small gap. Weird little things that we weren’t expecting. I would still worry about supply issues though.

@Chris - I think there can be issues depending on exactly what OP got but I was mostly relying on their saying they were not looking for higher end stuff and that tends to be mostly standardized.

I think refrigerators and dishwashers are replaced so frequently without having to alter the cabinetry. Sinks are actually more of an issue since one truly as to decide on size and configuration in order to order the appropriate sink cabinet.

Thanks folks for the feedback. I think @Helen is probably right, we are overthinking this. Yesterday we went to a local appliance store to checkout options and for our budget most french door fridges were pretty much the same size (0.5 inch here or there), same with slide-in ranges.

One appliance that people forget about is the exhaust hood. Not just the hood itself, but its size and configuration, and the ducting for it. Then they end up having the walls and cabinets installed, only to realize the duct to the outside is too small. That is because contractors tend to install 6” ducts unless they are told otherwise. The duct to the outside needs to be 8” or 10” in diameter, so get that specified before closing up the walls.

Then you need to allow a distance of 30-36” from the cooktop to the bottom of the hood. If you are getting an undercabinet hood, the cabinet that the hood will hang from needs to take into account that distance plus the height of the hood itself. Or you can get a chimney-style hood and not have to consider a cabinet there. The upshot is you need to decide several factors about the hood exhaust before you order your cabinets.

That's a good point @M Miller, in our case the stove will be in island so we have a little more wiggle room for a bigger chimney style exhaust

It is fine to buy them later--you just need to pick them now and then watch for them to go on sale. (If you plan to buy whatever is cheapest, then choose an option you could live with that has fairly standard specs to build to, and you'll know you have at least one reasonably-priced option that will work.) Refrigerators and dishwashers are pretty standard, and many ranges are too. Cooktops and wall ovens can get a little trickier with specs.

When we did our kitchen we put in an adjustable shelf above the refrigerator to allow for refrigerators of varying heights to go into the space, and that's been helpful as we finally get around to replacing the refrigerator since it means we're only really limited by width (and again, chose a standard width).