Designing Kitchens and Bathrooms - Lowes Kitchen Cabinets? - Hi, I'm looking to get Lowes kitchen cabinets. The store says 4 week lead time on special orders. has anyone experience anything more or less thru lowes? More on doityourself.com

We are likely going to do some updates to our kitchen this year. At a minimum, we will reface cabinets, replace the countertop and replace appliances. While replacing the countertop, we will probably go ahead and replace the sink and faucet (I despise our faucet). We are also open to replacing ca... More on forums.welltrainedmind.com

Take a breath and remember you just started a couple months ago. These things take time and practice to get right. The product knowledge and knowledge of the tools you have at your disposal will grow. I know its hard to get any form of great training, you need to simply focus on what you can control. As far as time goes, you are the person customers need to go through to get what they want/need. This means if it takes you more time to do a quote, take the time. Do a quality job and try to keep a growth mindset, eventually things will start clicking and you will feel less stressed. Hopefully this helps. Best wishes. More on reddit.com

Ok so let me give you some totally unsolicited advice here. I'm in the process of building about 30 total cabinets for my fully remodeled home. I've got a lot to learn still, but here's the BIGGEST thing I've learned so far:

The quality that a homeowner perceives in their cabinets comes about 80% from the quality of the installation and 20% from the quality of the cabinet manufacturing. A really good installer can take Ikea crap and make it look wonderful. He can make it level, square, plumb, true. He can make them pop by making sure that everything lines up nicely and slides smoothly. Give him quality cabinets to install and he will work magic.

Now the problem with Lowe's installation services is that they hire the job out to a third party carpenter. This person might wind up being talented, but they probably will not be. Talented cabinet installers can make a very comfortable living by working directly with cabinet makers.

I don't want to go so far as to knock all carpenter's who would work with Lowe's, because I'm sure that plenty of them are pretty good guys who are just trying to get their start somewhere, so they are taking the "easy job". Like I said before, you might wind up getting a very skilled craftsmen to install your Lowe's cabinets, in which case you will be much happier with those cabinets than if you spent twice as much on custom cabinets from a shop.

The bottom line is that cabinets can be mass-produced at a very high quality in a very cost-efficient manner. Installation is another bear altogether. You get what you pay for, because there are way more people out there who would rather slop cabinets together quickly than take the time to carefully get everything perfect. It's an old school art-form...one of the last few left.

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