He uses Pioneer, which is made locally.

Different pioneer. http://www.pioneercabinetry.net

You need to decide if you want framed cabinets or frameless. That reduces the choices immediately. If you don't know the difference, it's time for some research on your part.

We prefer frameless, but if someone were to say XYZ brand of framed cabinets is great and worth checking out, we’d be interested there too.

How large is your kitchen and how much is the allowance? You will have these cabinets for a long time. Often people have a dream kitchen in mind with various pullouts and accessories, which quickly raise the price.

We just redid our master bath and a simple, better quality vanity was $4k. We ended up buying a cheaper, import one, which is adequate. For my kitchen I did higher-end custom, but it gets a lot of use.

Latifolia - Kitchen is 15x18 with an island and pantry is 16x7.5 but only a few cabinets in there. We will also have some base cabinets in the office and great room.

Marinello - The cabinets at teh showroom were showing a ton of shrinkage -- almost like they were cut short, then shrunk even more. That caused us to go online an read reviews, which aren't very confidence inspiring. We liked the Crystal Elements line, but looking for alternatives.

So how much is your allowance? That sounds like at least $75k of cabinets. Maybe have a look at Ikea.

Latifolia -that’s the stage we are now. We want to get a strong idea of the cost before setting an allowance. Doesn’t do any good for the builder to toss out a number not grounded in reality and then for us to go out of pocket.

This seems to be a bit of a chicken and egg question.

People are asking what the budget is for the cabinets - at some point YOU are the person who is going to determine how much you want or can spend on cabinets.

That budget might be unrealistically low for anything other than junk especially if you want stuff that costs more - e.g. like mostly lower cabinets with deep drawers.

There are good cabinet lines at different price points depending on your budget - again assuming that your budget is realistic so you could have moderately priced cabinets like Kraftmaid or very high end fully custom like Rutt or Crowne Point.

" willing to use any brand we like. "

At what cost? Most builders charge absolute top dollar for changes and or upgrades and pennies on the dollar for credit's, plus a substantial change order fee. Still cheaper to do it before you move in but expect to pay almost double for the cabinets.

Crystal is one of the higher priced cabinets if I recall correctly. Will your budget be able to handle that?

CPArtist - One of the two builders we talked to spec'd out Crystal. We're going elsewhere, but I think he spitballed $80K if I remember correctly.

Appreciate the insight Raimondi. Agree with finding more budgett friendly options for some of the base cabinets in the other spaces. Builder may even have his finish carpenter build them, which he says is cheaper.

Build price on the house is expected to be roughly $1M, so your ball park helps a lot.

Thanks!

Where will you order the cabinets? Who will be designing them? Measuring and prepping the final order? Installing? For semi-custom, you generally have to work with a dealer or retailer. WHO is designing the cabinetry is as important as WHAT is the cabinetry. You may want to seek out some reputable dealers and/or designers to see what lines they like to work with. There are some smaller semi-custom lines that are excellent quality but that are only available in certain regions. Or an independent designer may be able to direct you to a quality local custom fabricator.

As a cabinet builder for a few years. I would suggest that you try and find a cabinet maker/furniture maker. And work directly with them. And I believe that most cabinet makers would build you a very nice custom kitchen for less money and less stress.

There are some great folks who have experience. And cost money. That never cut a board.

There are great craftsman around that can build your dreams

I used to be a professional kitchen designer. I recently wrote a blog about how to choose a cabinet company. Perhaps it might be of value to you.

Begin by having everything specified in Crystal. That'll give you a starting point.

Ton of people here know more on a deep level about cabinetry than I. But I don't often see it framed this way: how particular about wood finish are you? Because that is what you pay the big money for. If you're the kind of person who walks in a house and says, "nice walnut there....oh, good choice with the oak here, and the tones are so compatible....etc." "I just ran my hand across this finish, and it felt like silk. Where did you get this?" If you are not, don't waste 10s of thousands extra. Ikea can be a great choice. I personally have bought fake wood frameless thermo fused laminate from local custom makers (Ikea doesn't have enough variety for me). It can look great, especially with higher end TFL makers like Cleaf. Wood veneer (look up Shinooki) with frameless is a middle ground between solid wood and engineered laminate. Anyway, don't be locked into thinking that you MUST spend 50k+ on cabinets. They don't spend huge on solid wood in Europe, and European kitchens are amazing - go look up Lube, Leicht, etc and many others.

Are you near an Amish/Mennonite area? I got gorgeous, quality cabinets for less than I would have had to pay for quality semi-custom.

Ikea can be a great choice.

I'm a huge fan of Ikea cabinets, but sorry, you don't put Ikea cabinets into a 1 M house.

They don't spend huge on solid wood in Europe, and European kitchens are amazing - go look up Lube, Leicht, etc and many others.

Hahaha. All of those brands can be more expensive than some of the better US brands.

@cpartist In California, and I'd bet in many places in NY and elsewhere, you certainly do put Ikea in 1M houses. I personally know of about 5 here in SF Bay Area. If you think you should laugh at me, I got a price on Lube delivered that was 15k for my 13 x 9 kitchen - TFL, furniture board frames. Local custom TFL ranged from 15 to 19k. US made solid wood was over 22k min for low-midrange, so I didn't even bid. Don't want it for maintenance/durability anyway. Sure, you can spend 20k on a Toyota, up to 140k for a Toyota Land Cruiser. So I'm not sure where you see the humor.

I'm in the midwest, so while I think the current cost of living here is too high, it is nowhere near that of the high-cost centers.