I'm looking for some brand recommendations. It's a little daunting so far. Has anyone had luck purchasing them online? Purchasing this kind of stuff online is new to me, so I don't know which sites to be looking at. It sounds like you can save money on better construction by getting them online, but I'm open to any advice, online or not. Thanks!

We've built two kitchens. The first remodel I have no idea what brand the original cabinets were, but they were mostly press board with laminate faces (read: cheap). They came out with ease, breaking up into pieces for easy disposal. We replaced them with KraftMaid. Like many things you buy, there are upgrades available. We went with their top end; all plywood construction and solid door fronts. Then Katrina came.... these things, even after a good soak in brine required sawz-alls and sledge hammers to remove. If the bob cat had fit through the door, we'd have used that!
So for the second rebuild, we went with KraftMaid again, this time upgrading to auto-close drawers on top of the aforementioned APC and solid door fronts.

In both cases we went through Home Depot and felt that we got a good deal. My parents also went to HD and got Thomasville brand cabinets and basically got the same quality as KraftMaid at an inflated price due to Thomasville's reputation as a furniture maker.

The nice thing about going through a HD or Lowe's is that part of the design process comes with a real person to come measure your kitchen to make sure there are no errors. And HD was ~$2000 less than the boutique kitchen design shops just for the cabinets and didn't include installation.

Shop around, you'll find the combination of price and service you're happy with.

Unless you have at least some experience in kitchen layout and design, you're probably going to be much happier having a real person involved (like HD) to help you figure it out. This is something you're going to live with for a long time and if the layout doesn't work, you'll regret it daily.

Look for solid plywood boxes, dovetailed drawer fronts (the drawer backs are not as critical), solid wood face frames and doors, and good quality hinges and drawer slides.

There's nothing wrong with buying online to save a few bucks, but don't skimp on the quality.

Last time I looked at different cabinets (actual hands on evaluation), I felt that Dewils was the best bang for the buck. That was about four years ago, so they may have changed since then. At any rate, the quality of construction, materials and array of different sizes and styles they offered was above the others I looked at, by a large degree. They were however, not the "cheapest", but were significantly lower than custom built. http://dewils.com/

My wife is honchoing a complete kitchen reno starting after XMas.

Our cabinets will be custom made in solid 'Natural Cherry' (that evidently slowly darkens with age) & fitted by a local company that makes them from scratch. The business owner is European & uses a lot of cool hardware & ideas from across the pond.

The installed estimate is about $12,500 including a $800 premium for the real cherry wood over maple. We have a very large kitchen so I guess that it's worth it.

In order to pay for it all, my wife just can't retire as soon as she was originally planning, ha!

TAM

Thanks for the responses, guys. We went to Home Depot to see what a really rough guess might be for the dimensions we're looking at. I understand there's going to be a huge variation in price based on the quality of the cabinets as well as what options are added. Based on the dimensions, the little chart that the woman had said it could be anywhere between $5,800 and $19,600. That makes me think we would end up somewhere around $10k. That would be 1/3 of the total loan we got for the entire basement remodel, so I'm trying to look for ways to reduce that. I'm considering doing just the lower cabinets traditionally, spending what I have to for better construction, and putting in floating shelves in place of the upper cabinets, though I really need to think about what needs to be behind doors and if I can get by with that. I know I'd rather have less of something well-made than a whole kitchen of shoddy garbage.

Scott, I was actually just looking at KraftMaid last night, albeit briefly. Mike, I'll check out DeWils. Thanks again!

I feel your pain. In my basement project, the cabinets were the least bang for the buck item. They were pretty pricy considering they just sit there holding action figures and other collectibles.

...and JP goes for gold in the nerd olympics.

You haven't SEEN it. He gets the platinum.

Dewils looks expensive.

I tried the dealer locator, giving a zip code and the pins in the map didn't go with the areas listed. Also, when I tried by entering city and state, it didn't work at all.