High Gloss Kitchen Cabinets

One of the many things I love about our cabinets are the high gloss doors that are available at affordable prices. You have seen these type of cabinets in high end, super modern kitchens where they are often sourced from Italy. There are few other suppliers of high gloss in the US, and almost none with quality boxes also.

Why might you want high gloss cabinets? The first reason, for me, is that they are SO easy to clean. Just a smooth high gloss finish with no ridges or endges to trap dirt or grease. If you want a sparkling kitchen, go with high gloss cabinets for your remodel or new build.

But also important to mention are the color choices with high gliss cabinets. Take a look on our website, Truly, the options are amazing. If you are a fan of white, you need to see both Glossy White and Frosted White. Also get a swatch of the brushed aluminup

Satin Cabinets

You should choose what YOU love, of course but I wanted to tell you about the SATIN finishes we have and my favorites:

Satin Blue White Satin Midnight Blue Sea Glass

It is impossible to describe the beauty of these finishes and photos don't help much either. Use promo code FIVEFREE to get swatches and see why I love these.

Susan

How to Have a Great Kitchen

Of all the rooms and areas of my home, the kitchen is always the most important to me. Yes, I like a cozy bedroom and an inviting family room, but the balance of beauty and functionality in my kitchen is always the most interesting and vauabole to me.

I like to cook. Not all the time, but having tools and space to be creative in the kitchen is a gret pleasure to me. It is not much fun to try to make a loaf of bread or brew kombucha (easy, by the way) if there is inadequate counter space or no room to store the pans or glass jars needed.

This is why, when you are remodeling or building a kitchen, planning for your own uses and priorities is key. A "standard" kitchen that a builder assumes an average family will want, is rarely just right for you, for your uses and for your family's needs.

Working out the ideal layout, the ideal storage and the details of both is well worth a small investment of time and money when you start a remodel. It is a mistake to assume your contractor can design a great kitchen, even if he/she intends well.

The person who can help you create a beautiful and beautifully functional kitchen is a kitchen designer. It is a profession. It requires considerable knowledge and expertise. Avail yourself of such a person and you are likely to save time, save money, have many fewer hassles during construction, and, most important, the finished result will make you happy.

Finally, if you envision selling the home you are remodeling, a kitchen designer can show you how to create a kitchen other people will want. In terms of home sale prices, this is not a small factor.

Most savvy homeowners know that hiring a qualified kitchen designer is a must when they remodel or build a new kitchen. It is the FIRST step, in fact. Laying out the floorplan, the cabinet placement and then storage details, expert drawings showing these, will allow your project to proceed in an orderly way and result in the best kitchen.

Alternative to IKEA Kitchen Cabinets

IKEA is a huge international corporation. They have a lot of great marketing and we love the quick weekend trip for meatbslls and some low cost housewares. But would we use IKEA as a kitchen cabinet resource for a remodel? Never.

For those who need the lowest cost modern-looking cabinets, IKEA cabinets might be ok. Watch out for store displays though. Many show veruy low price tags for cabients alone and it's easy to think the entire display ius $3500! Keep in mind also that those kitchen displays are created with fake walls, no windows, infinitely movable electrical and no plumbing. Why, you can do anything if you have no walls and no plumbing! So those displays look cool.

For most of us, even those who are building new homes, incorporating plumbing, electrical, window placement, existing walls, and other structural issues makes designing a much greater challenge.

This is not to say you can't have a fabulous new kitchen affordably. You can. But you will need:

1) a talented kitchen designer to spend time with you 2) CUSTOMIZABLE cabinets

IKEA design services are just not the kind of service upon which to base a kitchen remodel. It takes more time, talent, attention and revisions to create the very best layout for any one individual project.

Even more important, with IKEA cabinets you are stuck with their stock sizes. The doors cannot be cut s while you can make a box less deep, you can't design with custom sizes. This often wastes valuable kitchen space and limits what a designer can do for you.

IKEA often has installers available that you can hire. These companies contract with a local IKEA and are allowed to do plumbing and electrical IF licensed. But they are not the best, in our experience. Their prices are fixed by IKEA so they have to find ways to make a project profitable. They often do. Some get terrible reviews but since they are being "fed" customers from IKEA, there is little motivation to earn great reviews.

We built our company out of a love for modern European styling that is affordable. We understand IKEA. But we want for our clients a mich easier experience, a much nicer remodeling result, amd a quality cabinet that isn't just a surface look.

We continue to do this work year after year and continue to be proud of it.

Story of a Crummy Kitchen

I am staying in a friend’s guest apartment in Florida this week. She has a lovely home on a large lot and over 30 years has planted outside and designed inside with her artistic flair. It’s lovely.

In the original garage she built, over time, a studio apartment for guests and to rent occasionally. The main room is about 20 x 25 and has a king bed, a wood stove, a desk and two large closets. Two ceiling fans keep the warmer months comfortable though an air conditioner was built into a wall 20 years ago.

It is a nice space and since the French doors lead to a deck, a pool and a dock on Clearwater bay. The sunsets out there are magnificent.

The crummy aspect is the kitchen. Probably the 6 x 8 kitchen was once a mud room off the back of the garage. The sink cabinet has cabinets on either side and a fridge, and the stove wall has a very small buffet and china closet for…china. In this case it’s IKEA porcelain and old mugs. The 24” stove must be from the early 50s.

There is no venting, no microwave (my friend is suspicious of microwaves) and very little countertop for food prep. She’s added a metal chef table for seating and food prep.

My number one beef is the lack of outlets. There are none at all in the kitchen itself except behind the fridge. Lots of modern outlets is high on priorities list for a new kitchen. Also counter space. You don’t realize how valuable kitchen counter space is until you have very little. In fact, lots of counter space is a primary goal of many of our clients. Not all cook, but all have kids doing homework or pizza boxes or places for beloved gadgets, their coffee maker always in a central location. Sometimes, taking things OFF the counter, such as an under-counter microwave or built in shelf for an expresso machine or toaster can change the way a family uses a kitchen.

Right now my borrowed toaster is on the living room floor. It’s the closest outlet. The cord is short. I love toast.

We could make this apartment kitchen so much better. Though it is tiny and thus needs very careful design, it could be done, Guests for decades to come would appreciate it. Otherwise, it’s Uber Food for dinner.

About Cabinet Prices, 2022-2023

While oil companies might be gouging us at the gas pumps theses days, the majority of consumer product price increases are factually price increases along supply lines and shipping. Small businesses and local farmers are trying to stay in business!

A major corporation usually has reserves to rally them through economic storms. Those reserves came from high profits, and high prices, over decades.

Small businesses rarely have such reserves. They are affected directly by supply chain price increase and transportation of those supplies. When you are dealing with a small business, if price increases bother you, know that it is not the business that is trying to make more money off of your purchases. It is, rather, a business trying to stay alive and cope, as well as possible, with the current soaring prices of raw materials, and goods in general.

Modern Family Kitchens is a small business of expert kitchen designers and administrative helpers. We offer hands on support to our clients and we do all we can to provide excellent service. We believe ourselves to be trustworthy and trusted.

The factory, here in the US, from which we procure our clients’ cabinets, is considerably larger, but still a small business (under 500 employees). They deal, daily, with supply chain price increase and the challenges of finding ways to contain their cabinet prices. Over the past few years the quality and production time of our cabinets has remained excellent.

We know that price increases are real (we buy groceries, too!) and unavoidable for some businesses. Nonetheless, we are doing our best to keep our prices down. There have been factory price increases since Covid started and there was a small increase in mid-2022. It is possible that, based on the economy in the US in 2023, there will be further increases though we expect them to be modest, 10-15%.

Note that fees for our professional design services have remained stable for over 5 years.

Whether or not you can manage a remodel in the coming year, please understand that under any economic circumstances, we’ll always work to help you create a beautiful kitchen for the most affordable price.

Why You Should Buy Cabinets Online

There are some great reasons to buy your new kitchen cabinets online instead of at a local cabinet shop or a big box store.

While it's true that you can walk into a big box store or a local dealer, keep in mind that this convenience comes at a cost. The overhead to provide that local convenience to you, the cost to the company for a showroom, salespeople, rent, etc. is directly reflected in the price you will pay for cabinets. The cost is hidden, buit it's there. You'll get lower quality for the same price you might pay for similar cabinets online. In other words, you'll pay more.

When you buy things online, in almost all cases, you don't pay sales tax. Same is true with cabinets. The savings on a major purchase like cabinets is big. Say you normally pay 8% sales tax in your local area. If you purchase $15,000 worth of cabinets that adds TWELVE HUNDRED DOILLARS to your cost.

Here is another factor to consider: there are THOUSANDS of companies selling cabinets online. Some are terrible. Many are good. We like to consider ourselves excellent because we provide true customer service, fabulous design and designers, and beautiful quality cabinets our clients love.

You might prefer the convenience of a local showroom. It's easier than ordering sample doors or cabinets from an online supplier. But if you prefer to invest in better quality for your dollar, purchasing your cabinets online is best for the consumer in almost every case.

A generation or two ago there were mom and pop csbinet shopw in some cities and towns. But now it is mostly big box stores, Home Depot, Lowes, Ikea. Most of their products are manufactured overseas. The employee you work with gets commissions and hasn't got the responsibility level, the care level, you can find online. You might have to experience the difference to see this, but it's true anyway.

If you are concerned that you will need help or parts and local is better, see if this is factual. Kitchens are complicated projects and you might find yourself arguing with a return desk employee or waiting for months to get parts. IF you do look online, find out how the site deals with problems after the sale.

We handle such things for clients, say one who wants something extra after delivery or who needs a warranty handled. There is no waiting ona line or waiting for a reply. We are responsible.

I am biased. But I also know that you will get a better product for a better price online,

A New Kitchen for the Holidays

How long does it take to plan and execute a kitchen remodel? Every project and every person is different, of course. But generally you can get a project done in three months, if well planned. Or it can take longer. Our quickest client was done, start to finish, in six weeks.

The key is to run it yourself.

Choose your own materials. If you can’t trust the supplier to deliver what you order within the timeframe you need, look elsewhere. If you turn over your materials selection to a contractor, for example, you lose quite a bit of control. So figure out what you want and, with a battle plan and timeline in hand, order sooner rather than later. You can almost always schedule delivery when you are ready.

2) Start early. Every project runs into barriers and delays. That is the nature of kitchen remodeling (and life!). If you start your planning today, you’ll have that much more time later, when you might need it.

3) Every successful kitchen remodel starts, once you’ve planned and budgeted, with a great kitchen design. The design, a professional detailed design, will include spots for appliances. You don’t need to know which appliances when you start design, though a general idea helps (microwave vent hood or chimney hood, for example).

4) Once you have a design you are excited about, tweak it so it is PERFECT. Communication with your designer is key here. Let them work out the inches, you supply the details.

5) If your design is done, you can get a quote from the cabinet supplier you have chosen. Don’t let the limitations of the supplier, either production time or materials availability, change your plans or your design. Find a supplier that can meet your needs and schedule.

6) Order your cabinets as soon as you can. You can always wait to arrange delivery but ordering soon a) locks the price in and b) keeps you from having to wait weeks or months of production when you are ready for cabinets.

7) Plan the delivery of both appliances and cabinets. If you have an indoor space for storage, that is best. But if you don’t, plan accordingly. You can time delivery within a few days even with freight shippers. Once again, communication is key.

8) Once your deliveries arrive, inspect them closely. First, look at the item as it comes off the truck. Do you see damage? A lot? You can refuse shipment of something badly damaged but most important, if you see any shipping damage is to mark it on the driver’s receipt before signing it. A small detail but important. Also, have a crew of your own available to help with deliveries if needed.

9) Once your cabinets or appliances are indoors, unwrap and inspect everything carefully. There could be a limited number of days to report defective items. It isn’t always obvious until you install something but inspecting right away can help avoid delays and get you customer service support quickly.

10) Install! You or your contractor now have what is needed, insofar as cabinetry and appliances. The other projects, flooring, paint, lighting, etc. fit around these two major deliveries.

11) Touch up. Every kitchen project is major and every one is going to need a few tweaks. Your contractor calls this a “jump list” which is a list of small tweaks and adjustments needed before they consider the project done. Make your own jump list.

12) Finalize with trays, shelves, decor. Get what you love, always. But don’t buy these things until after the kitchen is mostly installed. You will know better what you really need and want then.

Invite some guests. Show off and start using your new kitchen.

Great Kitchen Design is Key to a Kitchen Remodel

The key to a nice result from a kitchen remodeling (or new build for that matter) is not the cabinets, the lighting, the flooring, or even high end appliances. It isn’t even the skill of your contractor although having a professional installer dies make a difference.

But the real key and, surprisingly, the least costly part of a kitchen project, is the quality of the design.

You might be a good artist, good at planning or able to use online or purchased design software and come up with a layout you like. You can try Sketch Up or other online programs. They work and they are fun to use.

But mastering some software is not the same as design expertise.

You can go to a big box store and have them draw up a design for you.

On the other hand, you can hire an interior designer, many are skilled in kitchen design although that is not their real expertise.

You can hire an architect also. They can surely create a layout for you. Whether this will enable you to purchase the cabinets you want is unlikely. Architectural drawings are, for kitchens, general layouts usually. The downside is that you could pay $5000 for architectural drawings when you can get truly expert design for a few hundred.

Why is the design so important? Why aren’t your self-drawn layouts enough? Why do you have to pay for design?

If you want professional kitchen design you will WANT to pay the designer. You will WANT to be sure your project is BASED on a layout you love, that your chosen appliances will fit, that you purchase all the materials you need for the design you want, without having to pay for shipping several times. Yikes!

It is called a false economy to skimp on kitchen design. Maybe you save $200 upfront but the cost is much higher to do without professionally rendered drawings.

One thing we know is that if you let your contractor design for you, or if you let him design on the fly (this doesn’t fit so we’ll put it over there…) your new cabinets will not look the way they should look when you are done.

It’s sad but true that even high priced remodels suffer from poor planning. It’s not just how the kitchen finally looks, but even more important, it’s how it feels, how it functions, for anyone who uses it as a work space or just hangs out at a party. Does it have adequate storage for YOUR needs? Do the appliances go where YOU need them to be? Is there a special spot for each which is determined by how you use them (for example, an under counter microwave might be terrific for some, not so great for others.)

Enough said. Spend a tiny percentage on your project on design service. Always use a pro. Do not use a contractor. Work closely with a patient professional and end up with a fabulous kitchen.