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Who makes Lowe's cabinets?
Are Lowe's kitchen cabinets any good?
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I've never renovated a kitchen before and I need a relatively large renovation done. I have a contractor I may use vs using Lowes / Home Depot's subcontractors; however, how are the cabinets from them quality wise? When I Google for reviews for their brands I see a LOT of complaints but is that just bias bc those are the people who post? Which Lowes / HD brands are good? Is it worth going through them or should I do a local smaller store? I feel like those prices would be higher? I'm clearly new to this and could use some advice.
Hi, we just bought our first home in Los Angeles and want to remodel the 80s kitchen. It's 8' 4.5'' x 8' x 16' 5'', and Lowes quoted us around 13k for cabinets and installation, for their Shenandoah line upgraded to all wood instead of "furniture board". I've read both good and bad reviews online, and we've checked out like 5 other places with similar prices. I personally like the look of the Lowes cabinets we picked out the best of all other places, and they make it very easy and and had a really helpful and nice salesman. However, I'm afraid they won't look nice for very long if the quality is really as bad as I hear online. I can't tell the difference in the "quality" of them, maybe because we like the off-white painted style so you can't see the wood, but they all seem the same to me. Anyone have experience with Lowes cabinets, or know of somewhere better to go around LA/Burbank/North Hollywood area? I don't like the look of the Ikea cabinets so that is out, although I heard good things about them. Thanks!!
Edit - Thanks so much everyone for the replies! They were much needed and appreciated, and really helped ease some of the stress in making this decision. We are starting to reach out to carpenters with good yelp reviews to see how much they charge, to have them install instead. I'll try to post an update in a month or 2 with before and after pictures :)
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.
From my experience the Lowes "in-stock" cabinets are garbage. The "special order from the manufacturer" cabinets should be the same quality you would get from wherever else you might buy them.
Does Lowe’s let you put down a deposit to order custom cabinets and then pay for them in full later?
Scenario we are building a custom home on our own land with a construction loan and our bank told the builder said we should be able to put down a deposit on the cabinets and when they are delivered on-site then they would cut a check made out to Lowe’s to pay them off. This is supposed to be to protect the bank, the builder and us. It seems my local Lowe’s doesn’t really know the answer when I asked. The order will be around $30k