When it comes to renovation projects, especially in the kitchen, everyone admits that stock cabinets are going to give you your best price point. They’re also going to limit you as far as wood species and availability, and stock styles are also limited in their variety. Here, Paul DeFeis, senior managing partner at Trade Mark Design & Build, based in Hawthorne, New Jersey, discusses the pluses and minuses of stock vs custom cabinets:
Some of the pluses of stock cabinets are their quick turnaround time. If you need a cabinet in a pinch, you can definitely get a stock quickly. Often, however, quality is not a big part of stock cabinets as they are mass produced in factories, they make thousands of pieces at one time, and as a result, the overall quality suffers.
The most common room size has an eight-foot ceiling, and usually stock cabinets don’t offer an upper cabinet of 36 inches high. What that means is that you will not be allowed to properly use the room height space, which decreases storage. It creates a lot of wasted space inside the cabinet that would have been used in custom cabinets.
With stock cabinets, you also face the possibility of not having replacement parts in future. Ten years down the line, there might not be any spare parts available. And with the last economic hiccup we’ve had here, we’ve seen a lot of the stock cabinet suppliers go out of business, and their main stock suppliers are gone.
Plus Side to Custom Cabinets
There are more plus sides of custom, semi-custom and full-custom cabinets. People have a perceived notion that semi-custom is custom. A lot of people think because they can increase their cabinet size to any size they need, that means it’s custom. But what truly sets a custom cabinet apart from a stock cabinet is its ability to be interpreted and manufactured from a drawing - without any compromise.
Custom cabinets can be used in their entirety. They can take into account awkward spaces, abnormal ceiling height and artistic finishes, and they can replicate parts from existing architecture. And, of course, they are better quality.
What happens when you get into custom cabinetry is that becomes a lot more thorough, a lot more detailed throughout. People like us at Trade Mark Design & Build are not into pushing the product with quick turnover, we are really spending the time with it. Even when it comes down to putting in simple hardware like door slides and hinges, we are putting them appropriately using the appropriate screws with the appropriate tension.
Detail and Longevity
Our custom cabinets are a product that ends up lasting a long time, largely because of the attention to detail that went into manufacturing. And take it from us: Just because you’re buying custom cabinets from a well-known manufacturer doesn’t mean you can rest assured that everything will go to plan. It all depends on the designer who takes your order.
We can take stock cabinets and make them look custom-made. A good designer can add value to a stock product. But it all comes down to durability. And in the long run, that’s the most important question people have to ask themselves when choosing a cabinet.
