When people shop for new kitchen cabinets they think brand names and completely put their faith in a set of cabinets they trust will serve them for quite some time in the future. I’ve heard many stories such as, “my wife redoes the kitchen every few years and it costs me a fortune!” and, “oh, we don’t intend on being here forever so we want something cheap” or.. “custom cabinets cost too much!” or.. “This brand of cabinets offers lights in the top drawers and your cabinets can’t give me that”.. Or can they? Quite frankly I’ve been around kitchen cabinets .. in fact a lot of cabinets all my life. I was around them when I was a little guy of 7 years old and fascinated over my father using his German made block plane on a piece of wood. I was so intrigued with the wood coming out of the plane so perfectly and so thin and so very curly. It was pleasant to touch and try to spread it out and make it flat. The result of this? I was hooked! I wanted to do what my father did!

Back during the earliest days of my life while living in Elizabeth, N.J., there was no lumber yards selling cabinets, no Rickles home centers® , no Home Depots® nor even Lowes® back then.  It was just my father and his crew working crazy hours to fill the need for new kitchen cupboards (pronounced cubburds for all you younger folks) that everyone wanted from him. His shop was so limited back then that he had to expand and quick! The only solution? Use our entire backyard to fill the need for a huge addition to his shop of course! Unfortunately for us (my brother and sister, I was the baby of the family) now had our backyard on top of his flat roof shop. Back then (this was the early 60’s), it was enclosed by a green wooden fence. Can you imagine how people would be screaming about that today???

So, why wouldn’t you buy a new kitchen from someone who’s been around cabinets all of his life? I mean my experience with cabinets of all types is like this, I’ve lived around them, breathed them, bled from and on them, sweated over them, designed them, built them, delivered them, carried them, installed them etc. etc. etc.. you get the idea. I think my question is fair. Why not?
I’ll share some experience in my next Blog post. Until then.. May your kitchen last long enough until we can build you a new one 🙂