The following is a documented summary of my experience putting together a basement kitchen. I worked with Canada Kitchen Liquidators for the cabinets. A fairly comprehensive review of their services follows. I am in the Toronto area.
For the kitchen cabinets I wasn't looking for top of the line stuff but had some quality criteria.
Our criteria was -
- solid wood. I don't believe partical board belongs in kitchens. Home Depot and a lot of local suppliers utilize partical board for the cabinets. Probably more of a personal thing than anything. A lot of the high end suppliers use particle board. When I open a cupboard and see white I think cheap. Probably just me. Although our upstairs kitchen is starting to rot and fall apart in several areas from repetitively getting wet over the past 27 years. Imagine that...water in the kitchen. Plywood likely would have faired better.
- soft closing drawers. Most of the suppliers had this standard.
- soft closing doors. Not all of the suppliers had this.
- a garbage pull out. Not all of the suppliers had this.
- a 27" sink unit. Not all of the suppliers had this.
- a pantry.
- Price. My basement is nicely done but top notch stuff wasn't absolutely necessary
- Wood Doors.
January 17th, 2015. Susan and I drove up to Canada Kitchen Liquidators showroom in Barrie to see the cabinets. We liked the quality and asked a few questions. There was no negotiating on price. I asked where they were made and I was told they came from British Columbia. More about that later. I asked availability and was told it would take about 2 weeks to get the cabinets to my house for installation. Happy with everything we ordered and payed in full for the kitchen. The kitchen included a garbage pull out, several cabinets, a fridge panel, crown molding and a leg for a counter extension. The price was about 6K after taxes. They only took full payment. The price seemed right so we did it. I left my phone numbers so they could contact me for delivery instructions.
February 3rd, 2015 I phoned Canada Kitchen Liquidators to inquire on my order. They informed me it had not left the warehouse and They would send me a tracking number when it left.
February 9th, 2015 A tracking number was sent to me.
February 16th, 2015 The shipment arrived. It arrived unannounced. I was watching the tracking info so we did have some idea it was about to come. I was surprised to see all of the American cherry cabinets were made in China. Shipped from BC yes. I guess they didn't really lie to me. I am not sure if it would have changed my decision. It will definitely be taken into strong consideration when ordering my next kitchen.
February 17th, 2015 After doing an inventory of the items it was noticed that a couple items were missing. The fridge panel and a piece of filler were missing. I reported them. They acknowledged the issue and informed me they were on backorder until March!.
February 18th, 2015 I started assembly on the kitchen. I looked everywhere for instructions. They were not provided. Once again I emailed the liquidators. They gave me a website with instructions.
I spent the next few weeks assembling the cabinets. It definitely was some work. I did get faster with it and probably could have done it in a day or 2.
The Good.
- The construction was OK.
- The cabinets were plywood as advertised.
- The doors were well finished
- They were all the correct sizes.
- The hardware seems to be quality and works fine.
- The cabinets differed in colour. Not so much the doors but the sides and shelfs. Some were a red colour and others brown. I needed to mix some of the pieces to put pieces that would be seen more in proper places. We were looking for the red panels. I think the cabinets might have been made by another company. The hinges on the brown ones were also slightly different. There was no mistake. The doors matched. I upgraded to a couple glass doors. Those unfortunately also did not match.
- The RTA cabinets use camlocks to hold on the cabinet faces. They are OK but felt cheap to me. I glued everything just to be safe.
- The instructions did not match. They had nothing in them about camlocks. In fact the instructions showed a stapling type tool to put the cabinets together. The instructions for the pantry weren't even close.
Above are the cabinets going in. It is difficult to see in the picture but the 2 doors with the glass over what will be the sink are a slightly different shade.
The granite process is interesting. They all say $40 a square foot but it never comes to that. There is the square footage for the edges. Also it is difficult for them to do that price on granite especially for a small kitchen because it only comes in big slabs. The fabricated quartz can be ordered by the square foot. A simple pattern is definitely cheaper. We were told that most people get quartz now. We wanted the granite to blend with our travertine floors.
March 9th, 2015. We had a granite fabricator over. Ali from Ali Granite, or Style Granite or GTAMarble. Not sure to be honest Ali seemed like a straight forward guy although he did push the Quartz a great deal.
March 13th, 2015. i queried about the missing items. I was told they still aren't into the warehouse yet (from China one would assume). They are still expected to arrive into the Warehouse in March. Even when they arrive they are still 10 days away from me.
March 15th, 2015. We went to 6 or 7 granite warehouses looking for our slab. Ali gave us 2 of the warehouses. The others we looked up with the intent of pricing the stones ourselves. Nobody would give us a quote on the slabs. Online I see them for really cheap. ($100-$200 each). These warehouses likely cost a fair piece to rent and the have some fairly nice showrooms in some. Some were like BMW dealers. I don't think the fabricator is paying much more than $1000-1500 per slab. Maybe more for some of the exotics.
Above is the granite piece we selected for our basement kitchen.
Above is the kitchen March 30th, 2015. It is ready for granite I hope. Notice the chipboard at the end. It is a temporary panel to allow for the granite install. I can't continue past that panel until it comes as I am not positive of the panel width. 3/4s of an inch can mean a lot of different things. Also notice the lights. They are LED RGB strips from ebay. It took a bit of work but work amazing. the strips needed to be cut and wires soldered to them. The colour can be changed which might be cool for parties but definitely not for day to day use. It is nice though being able to adjust the white. The strips simply stick to the inside lip of the cabinets. The total for the lights was less than $40. Possibly I will write more about them in another blog.
To level the cabinets I spent another couple hundred dollars and got a system called ezlevel. I recommend them especially for the amateur like me. The basement floor was very uneven (about 3/4 of an inch out of level from side to side). It could have been shimmed but would have taken a very long time and I doubt the result would have been the same (with me doing it). The ezlevel site has a bunch of videos on hanging cabinets that were very well done. They helped me a lot. I did make mistakes but less because of the videos.
Soon to come......granite!!!!! Hopefully soon after a fridge panel and the other remaining items.
