Kitchen Cabinets

Buying kitchen cabinets with us

New kitchen cabinets decide how the room stores, works and looks, and they are usually one of the largest line items in a kitchen budget. With us, one team handles the whole purchase: we help you choose a line, measure the room, draw the layout in 3D, order the cabinets and install them with our own crews. If you need new countertops too, our fabricators template the installed cabinets and cut your slab in our own shop.

This page is about choosing and buying the cabinets. If your project also moves walls, plumbing or appliances, start with kitchen remodeling.

Stock, semi-custom or custom

Cabinet lines fall into three broad groups. The labels are not standardized, so judge a line by what it lets you change.

• Stock and ready-to-assemble: a set menu of sizes, doors and finishes, usually at the lowest cost. J&K Cabinetry and US Cabinet Depot sell ready-to-assemble cabinets, which ship flat and are built before installation, and TimberPeak offers a ready-to-assemble range too.
• Semi-custom and made-to-order: built after you order, with more sizes, finishes and storage accessories. KraftMaid and KraftMaid Vantage describe their cabinetry as semi-custom, TimberPeak offers a semi-custom range, and Yorktowne calls its cabinets made-to-order.
• Custom: built to your specifications. Crystal Cabinet Works says it builds every cabinet to the customer's specifications, and its Premium Custom series adds custom finish matching and custom doors. Our custom cabinets page covers when that is worth it.

Fabuwood, Forevermark, KCD, Quality Cabinets, Waypoint Living Spaces and our own Gold Cabinets private label round out the fourteen lines we carry, each with its own mix of construction, door styles and price. Compare them on our cabinet lines page.

Construction basics

Framed or frameless

Framed cabinets have a solid wood face frame on the front of the box, and the doors hang on it. It is the traditional American construction and suits shaker and raised-panel doors. Frameless cabinets, often called European-style, skip the face frame, so the doors cover the whole box and drawers gain a little width inside. Fabuwood and US Cabinet Depot both make framed and frameless series, which makes it easy to price one layout both ways.

Box material

Plywood is lighter and holds screws well. Particleboard and MDF are flat, stable and cost less, and they perform well as long as they stay dry, so the difference matters most at the sink base. KCD's Premier Series has plywood sides where its Builder Series uses particleboard, Quality Cabinets offers an all-plywood upgrade, and KraftMaid Vantage includes all-plywood construction as standard.

Overlay or inset

Full overlay doors cover nearly all of the face frame. Traditional overlay leaves more of the frame showing around each door. Inset doors sit flush inside the frame, a tailored look that leaves little room for error in installation. Yorktowne's Historic Series and Crystal Cabinet Works both offer inset.

Door styles and finishes

Shaker doors are the most flexible choice, at home in a painted white kitchen or in stained oak. Slab doors suit modern and frameless kitchens, and raised-panel doors lean traditional. Paint gives a clean, solid color; stained wood shows the grain and tends to hide small dings.

Browse door styles online to build a short list, then open full-size doors and drawers at a showroom. Plan the interiors at the same time: deep drawers instead of base shelves, roll-out trays and pull-out waste bins change how a kitchen works more than the door does.

From measurement to installed cabinets

We measure the room on site and draw the layout in 3D around your appliance sizes, so you see cabinet sizes, the island and walkways before anything is ordered. One written proposal prices the design, and we can price the same layout in two lines to show what an upgrade adds. Once the design is final, we place the order and confirm the lead time for your line.

Our crews then set, level and secure the cabinets, fit fillers and panels to your walls, and adjust the doors and drawers. Our cabinet installation page covers that work step by step.

Countertops from our own shop

Countertops are templated on the cabinets our crews installed, not on a drawing. Pick the exact slab from our slab inventory, and our fabricators cut it in our own shop and install it. There is no handoff between a cabinet installer and a separate stone shop.

Start with your kitchen

Book a showroom visit in Tysons, Manassas or Front Royal to compare lines side by side, or request a cabinet estimate and we will start with your measurements.