We are in the process of redesigning our 1910 kitchen (with peeling lead paint cabinets, drop ceiling and self igniting oven) and were thinking of putting in Prevo cabinets. Whatever cabinets we put in will be here forever – so I want them to be the best. Does anyone have experience with the Prevo line or know of other cabinets that might be of similar quality and finish? CR had a 2004 review of cabinets but even that did not cover custom.
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If you want truely the best Cabs,I would go with a True Custom shop and request No Partical or Fiber Board. Later Rickk
Probably cheeper, too.
Hi Garbo ,
With state of the art post cat finishes and top of the line hardware a high end custom shop can be your best investment when it comes to your kitchen . you owe it to yourself and the professionals in your area to at least take a look and get a feel for price .
Look at the limitations on size and configurations in the factory made product line in comparison to what your layout requires .
Custom is made to fit and will not require filler strips and other such sizing methods .
good luck dusty
I'm currently installing Omega Custom cabinets. Finish and construction is great; things are going together well.
One suggestion that I have learned the HARD way is to make sure that whatever cabinet you choose, they also make the doors, drawers and face frames. I initially ordered cabinets from CWP, Custom Wood Products, in Roanoke Virginia. The sample they sent was gorgeous; the cabinets were horrendous. Turns out that the sample they sent was laying around in the shop, then they gave it a natural stain and sent it. Unfortunately, it being cherry, the natural wood aged greatly before they applied the stain, hence the sample was much darker than the cabinets.
When I also complained about the quality of the wood I learned that they use doors made by Conestoga Wood Products, hence they really don't have control over the most important part of the cabinet, from an appearance standpoint. I learned that the majority of the manufacturers I looked at did not make their own doors and drawers. Beware!!!!
Any other questions or comments please let me know.
Wait a while , all the Cherry will be as dark at some point .
Understand that cherry will darken with time. I am not certain that "green" cherry that is finished will in fact darken to the extent that an aged raw panel that is subsequently finished will. In any case, issue is sample looked nothing like delivered cabinets and the quality of the wood was terrible. As a matter of fact I have an email from the Customer Service manager of CWP who acknowledged that the delivered cabints and the sample did not match and it was e that floated the idea that the sample was prepared with aged wood, and the cabinets were green.
The retailer, when he saw the difference between what was delivered and the sample, said they may age to the color of the sample "in about 30 years". As to the quality of the wood, he said he had seen better on stock grade cabinets.
CWP was a disaster!!!
When you say Green Cherry in the new cabinets do you mean not dry ? as in too high of moisture content or do you just mean new and not aged ?
If the factory and outlet you bought the cabinets from supplied you with unfit defective or wet as in not 6-10% MC then you have every reason to demand what you ordered , that's not right and I have a hard time believing they would make cabinets out of green wood .
As far as color there is little to do but quality or lack of it in the product should be fully warranteed , good luck .
dusty
As to green, apologies I should have put in " "; as I meant not aged, as the sample probably was. Long and short of it, dealer sent them back to CWP, who inspite of being told "refinishing was not acceptable", refinished the cabinets. Disaster continued. When they were returned to the retailer I refused product; got half my money refunded before the dealer went bankrupt.
On to Omega; so far so good!
Why is outsourcing doors, drawerfronts, and drawers bad?
The big name brand cab companies do it, and also a whole lot of the custom shops.
Consider the best power tool you have ever owned, or the best truck or car. Those manufacturers outsource a lot of the parts that go into those products.
I am a very small-timer in cabinets, and buy my fronts and d'boxes from Walzcraft, Conestoga, and Keystone. The style, species, and finish will determine the source. The catalogs I have from those manufacturers all show gallery pages, with kitchens, baths, and office and den photos. The installations are all by "custom" shops, and look pretty wonderful to me.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
Gene,
Outsourcing as a business strategy certainly has it's place. Unfortunately when a cabinet maker chooses to secure their fronts from a third party supplier, they are losing absolute control over one of the two major aspects of their product, that being appearance. I think you will agree that an appearance that fails to meet the consumers' expectations, regardless of the quality of the cabinet carcass, will lead to a dissatisfied customer.
In my subsequent "exploration" I also found that Conestoga has different grades of cherry. My guess, though CWP would not confirm, is that my cabinets were done with the basic grade cherry. Based on this experience I limited my search to those cabinet makers that made their own doors, drawers and face frames. Granted this certainly limited my choices as I soon found that a great many, in my case a majority of those considered, did in fact outsource these parts. I was fortunate in that the Omega Custom cabinets I am now installing have both the quality carcass and appearance I was looking for
I will concede that a cabinet makers' outsourcing of these parts does not inherently result in an inferior product; just that should a problem arise a third party to the transaction suddenly becomes involved.
I would just suggest that the original poster be aware that in many/most cases a significant portion of their cabinet will be outsourced and that they enter into their purchase with their "eyes open".
Thanks for taking the time to respond.
Roger
Hi Gene ,
I run strictly a custom cabinet and furniture shop , I understand in a case where you may or may not be set up to build your own cabinets you have to rely on and use factories .
The advantage is more to the home owner by using a custom shop , I have total control of the production timing as well as the grain selection and quality desired . When a door is wrong or missing it may come back looking different then the others and in general they don't grain match the sets of doors and drawer fronts as we can .
For discriminating buyers and home owners and real true quality in looks as well as durability custom will win hands down every time in the real world . The prices and lead time are usually what makes folks use modular cabinets .
I totally do agree with the soft close on each door , my clients do too .
regards dusty
Dusty -Me too on making my own doors and drawer fronts. Not only do I have better control of grain matches, I can compensate for the "glitches" that sometimes creep in during carcass & faceframe construction. If I outsource my doors and drawer fronts, I lose the ability to "tweak" them, if necessary, during fit up.Soft close hinges and glides are another matter, however. I've used them on a couple of projects, but most customers balk at the extra cost. - lol
I can certainly agree about small shops versus "factories" when it comes to grain matching, wood color, grain choice, bookmatching, figure matching, and the use, for example, of one board to do a sequence of adjacent and aligned drawerfronts.
That kind of treatment commands a top price, and can be appreciated by a small sliver of the client pool. Often even those that can afford the best, have no appreciation for that degree of wood selection.
Conestoga would be pushed to do that for me. OTOH, I can get Walzcraft to do some or most of that. For a price.
If the fronts are painted, though, and a lot are, the whole grain and match thing is out the window. I find I can get and offer a huge choice of dusted, antiqued, distressed, flyspecked, crazed, spotted, glazed, min gloss, hazed, and more, in painted finishes from my suppliers, than I could possibly offer if doing it myself.
And I don't do modular. If it needs to be 32-11/16", it is.
My suppliers will give me fronts to 1mm accuracy, and square. If I want an inset piece, they'll make the frame and marry the door and drawerfront to the openings, and give me exact 2.5mm margins, if that is what I specify. I use the right techniques for fixing such a frame to a carcase or carcases, so fit integrity remains.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
"........can be appreciated by a small sliver of the client pool. Often even those that can afford the best, have no appreciation for that degree of wood selection."Ain't that the truth!! - lolI've found, however, that once I show them the difference, they become super-critics of everything else they see.I did a house full of beech cabinets for a couple earlier this year in a very contemporay style and went to great pains to cut the doors & drawer fronts to get aligned grain. When I pointed it out to them, they became instant "grain snobs" and began nit-picking the cabs that some of their friends had bought. - lolI did the same thing on a china hutch for another customer who also became a "snob". She works for a major high tech company and wants me to do a couple of other projects for her just as soon as her stock price recovers. - lol
Hey Dave ,
I think you hit it on the head , once we show them then they know .
I feel it is my / our job to educate the clients so they have data to make intelligent decisions once that is done if they look else where they will be armed with what to look and ask for and a base for comparison so to speak .
All my cabinets are built from 3/4" hardwood plywoods , I heard of very few if any factory made 3/4" , some extreme high end factory cabinets are more then custom , so where is the wisdom there ?
They may say Dave wanted $1,800 more but his doors and drawer fronts and grain will be better matches .
dusty
I believe they make everything, but I will check. We ran into a problem with our dining room table set, where the table was made in this country but the chairs were made overseas. Both were finished here, so there was no issue with stain, however quality of the chairs was unacceptable. Thanks!
Best of luck with your project!!
For us it has been very exciting and a learning experience but as I see it coming together it has been well worth it.
Roger
I speced Omega Cabinets for my parents house about 20 years ago. The quality as you mention was good and they are solid. In retrospect though, if I had it to do over again I'd be less likely to spec them out again. Some of the little details (which are probably industry standards) in their work I've found to be quite irritating. The one that bugs me the most is having the face frame sit proud of the carcass at the bottom.
Does proud mean the it extends below the carcass? A 1" - 1.25" overhang is a "standard feature" in my upper cabs so they can be fitted with undercabinet lighting. IMHO, seeing the undercab lighting looks really tacky - lol
Dave,
One of the things I liked was the overhang on the upper cabinets. It was deep enough to no only "hide" the undercabinet lighting but also a power strip mounted to the back, as I was avoiding the outlets in the backsplash. I ordered moulding to put along the front, not light rail moulding as that was terribly "heavy" looking, but honestly I'm probably not even going to use it; cleaner lines.
No. What I was referring to was the little 1/8" lip or so the face frame hangs proud above the carcass on the interior. Absolutely an irritant. the lip gets dinged by cups and glasses going in and out of the cabinet and soon looks beat up. Besides that it is a hassle to clean the interior. No way to just brush the crumbs and debris out the door. Either has to be sucked out with a vacuum or sopped up with a wet rag.
You gotta be kidding!! That's one I've certainly never done - or even seen. - lol
Ted,
I can understand the issue. The Omega cabinets I am installing don't have any lip; the carcass at the bottom is flush with the face frame. perhaaps they listened to people and fixed that annoyance.
Thanks for clarifying.
I went to a website for a Prevo Cabinets of Ephrata, PA. If that is your intended source, they look like they make a pretty good line of stuff.
Probably Amish. I lived in a part of Indiana where all the cabinet shops had Amish ownership and Amish workers, and can say this about them. They are not innovators, and they make good traditional cabinets.
Being in the cabinet business, sort of, I can offer these thoughts.
The very first thing you want is a good design, and by that I mean the design of all of the elements of storage, appliance integration, task surface arrangements, work flow and access (the "triangle"), and very importantly, lighting. If the Prevo designer can best do this for you, then by all means stick with the Prevo designer.
Every single door should be hung with soft-closing hinges. Period. The soft-closing mechanisms will do more for door and cab (where the attachment goes) longevity than you can imagine.
Likewise every single drawer. Slides should be full-extension soft closing. Grass "Elite" and Blum "Tandem with Blumotion" are the only two I would specify, in your case.
Pantrys and some of your base cabinets should be fitted inside with roll out trays. These are shallow drawers that allow the best way for storage and retrieval of stuff. The drawers should run on 3/4 or full-extension slides, and for these, soft-closing is not desirable. What is required, though, is for the cabinets and hardware to be such that you can easily re-set the location of any drawer, height-wise. We use products by Tenn-Tex that hang the slides with hook-studs, and permit tool-free unhooking and resetting of slides.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
I second everything you are saying, The soft close dorrs are great!!
One question though, you do not recommend soft close on the pullouts? I am curious as to why not as I have them on all and they seem to work well for us.
Thanks
We have found a lot of folks get unhappy with the wait they have to endure, before they can begin closing the doors, if softclose slides are used for R.O trays.
I know it ain't much, but do it with softclose and then with self-close, and the diff is significant.
Furthermore, there is no drawerfront to slam against a FF or carcase front, with a R.O.
Offering a choice here between a Blum "standard" self close 3/4 ext, and a Blum Tandem full ex, I find most choose the standard, and save money. R.O. trays are usually spaced so that a 3/4 ext will work just fine.
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"A stripe is just as real as a dadgummed flower."
Gene Davis 1920-1985
Thank you for your thoughtful answer. We have three large (102") pantries, 15" deep included in our design; however there were no roll-out shelves planned. We will add some.
I don't have any experience with Prevo other than I know they tout themselves as a high end cabinet maker.
I don't have a problem with a local custom shop, but I think they are hit or miss, just like any company is. And don't forget, the larger cabinet company probably started out as a small custom shop. One of our lines actually started out in the 50's in the garage of one of the owners. This year they will do over $85 million in sales.
Me thinks it is a good idea to ask around and visit some showrooms and installations to see firsthand the quality of the product.
We use Dakota Cabinets out of Sioux Falls, SD whenever we specify custom cabinetry in a remodel. These guys are still small and they do excellent work. They are the easiest cabinets company we have ever worked with. They are 100% custom and they still hold on to much of that genuine craftsmanship.
We had one job this year where we had to have cabinets delivered 18 days after ordering(the client screwed up not us). Dakota didn't blink an eye, and they got them there on time. Excellent customer service.