A Curiosity of Cabinets.

Why is it so hard to figure out how much this shit is gonna cost?

Londo Lodge Kitchen render by Lars Gradel

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and ladyboys. Sit down and allow me to weave a tale for you. ‘Tis a tale of wonder. ‘Tis a tale of mystery. ‘Tis a tale of Ashley Tisdale!

Just kidding it’s about kitchen cabinets.

Anyone who’s done a kitchen knows, one of the major expenses is the cabinetry. My Londo Lodge kitchen renovation (see my plans for it here) has low-key taken three years. I started planning it before I closed on the house and I’ve been wracking my brain month after month to try and get it done in a timely way that wouldn’t lead me to immediate financial ruin. One thing I kept getting stuck on: the cabinets.

Cabinets for a kitchen my size, which is about three-hundred square feet, typically cost between $30,000 and $80,000. A baseline Ikea kitchen (which I’ll detail later) costs almost $13,000. Today I’m going to take you through a few options I looked into for my kitchen, starting with the Ikea bid, delving into a DIY I almost attempted out of desperation, and ending with what I actually ended up going with. Let’s go girls!

INSET VS OVERLAY CABINETS

Okay, this is getting into the weeds a little bit but something I’m going to mention a lot today is that I was dead set on wanting inset cabinets rather than the more affordable overlay cabinets. An inset cabinet sits inside the face frame (front of cabinet) while an overlay cabinet sits in front of the box and doesn’t requite a face frame (the doors just go in front of the boxes). See examples of both below:

Left: Inset Cabinet (Courtesy Emily Henderson) Right: Overlay Cabinet (Photo by Zeke Ruelas)

See? It’s a VERY subtle difference but the inset cabinets just look more bespoke, more historic. I think overlay looks great on more modern cabinets and it looked fine in my old rental kitchen (above right). But the goal with my kitchen isn’t fine it’s forever. So I basically dug my toes in and decided to make this the one non-negotiable. Which has made finding affordable cabinets ALL THE MORE CHALLENGING. We all have our things, I guess.

IKEA

I guess given the fact that literally everyone in the US and Europe probably knows at least one person with an Ikea kitchen, it should surprise literally no one that they have excellent tools available to help people figure out their kitchens. Ikea kitchens are too big an industry to not have created user-friendly kitchen design tools to attract the masses. From my understanding, these services are all free: in-store kitchen consults/design, online kitchen design tool (I tried it. It’s wonky but pretty impressive for what it does if you can get it to work), and Zoom design consultations (which I also did) where they will literally lay out your entire kitchen for you.

The fact that Ikea - the cheapest option I looked at - does all this for free was pretty great because their list of ready-made components would make even a designer feel a little overwhelmed, much more so someone who is nervous about designing their kitchen. The layout of your Ikea kitchen will be constrained by the sizing on the boxes (back part of cabinet) and the doors/drawers. I found that I actually couldn’t really design the kitchen I wanted with their system. And even after a two hour Zoom consult, the designer couldn’t either. There’s only so many creative Tetris solutions you can come up with for the ready-made Ikea components.

Ikea online render tool.

There’s a number of reasons I never was really considering Ikea. The number one reason is that I don’t want to redo anything I’m putting in my house. Meaning I want to do renovations that will last at least fifty years using materials that are made to be repaired and repainted over time. The Ikea boxes are very plasticky and only come in white, so if I’d gone with them I likely would have faced them with a veneer to make them feel more historic, which is the house vibe I’m going through.

My feeling about Ikea cabinets is they’re kinda designed in a way that if they break the part needs to be fully replaced. This is because of the type of finishes they have (mostly some sort of faux wood or foil wrapping) are not made to be painted or refinished (though I did see my friends Sherry and John do that and it looked amazing). So if a door breaks, you have to go buy a new one at Ikea. And if Ikea doesn’t carry it anymore, then you have to have it made by a cabinet company, which in my opinion would be challenging because of how machine made all those doors look.

Ikea’s Vedham Oak Kitchen photographs beautifully but doesn’t hold up in person.

In so many way Ikea has democratized the “designer kitchen” by making stylish kitchens a whole lot more affordable. But I think it’s definitely come at the cost of quality and the environment. Sure, many of their kitchens photograph well. But in person the finishes look fake and you can tell the quality is bad.

I want to tread lightly here because this is an oddly sensitive topic and I think that many people out there keep and maintain Ikea kitchens for decades, but my sense about them is that they always seem to be going into houses as a “good for now” solution. And then ripped out in another 8-10 years when the style is no longer relevant. In the short term, this is of course a savings. But in the long term it’s more expensive having to replace your kitchen every ten years than it would be to just build one out of more permanent materials (more wood, less plastic).

There’s a reason you see Ikea kitchens in Airbnbs. There’s a reason you see them in a lot of flips. They’re cheap. They look great for now. And no one feels guilt about ripping them out to put the kitchen they actually want in. And in that way, they’re toxic. All that being said, I have a lot of advantages most people don’t have (I got my expensive appliances for a media trade, for example), so I understand that for some people Ikea is it.

Now, you can’t really talk about Ikea without talking about Semihandmade. I’ve worked with Semihandmade before and I really like them and the premise of their business. They started as a way to help people not waste. They started as a way of helping people with the type of dated Ikea cabinets I mentioned above. They’d replace the old Ikea fronts with higher end, more bespoke doors. And I think that’s a great solution. They’ve expanded to do WAY more than their original Ikea refacing and now they make their own boxes.

The main reason I didn’t go with Semihandmade was that they don’t do inset cabinets as far as I know and I was pretty adamant about wanting inset cabinets because that’s what was in the Yosemite Valley house I grew up in and also in keeping with the 1940s cabin vibe I’m going for. They do very good work, however so if you’re looking for cabinetry they are another great place to start.

The constraint of the layout, the complete inability to make the island I wanted, and the fact that I knew I’d be throwing at least the doors and drawers (if not the boxes too) into a landfill the moment I had money again, made my decision to not do Ikea cabinets.

Which brings me to a juicy topic. I’m in a very weird position right now. My general feeling about interior design and houses in general is that when face with the following question:

Buy cheap now and replace in five years or save for five years and keep forever?

…My response is generally doing the permanent option. Because I’m pretty good at doing “good enough for now” DIYs, which is what I’ve spent the last two and a half years at Londo Lodge doing, I’m not usually keen to go with a cheap option I know is going to get ripped out. However, this particular project has really challenged that belief. After spending almost three years in financial turmoil, I really need to get this kitchen done so I can rent the house out and stop living this Double Household Expense Purgatory. So there is a pretty significant need to get this kitchen done ASAP and for ALAP (as little as possible).

So, I’ve basically been in an impossible position: broke but also not wanting to do something wasteful and environmentally destructive. Oh, and also I wont settle for anything other than inset cabinets (more expensive). And I want drawers everywhere (more expensive). I’m a lot.

I was so married to NOT doing something I would later have to rip out that I actually considered a pretty involved DIY, which I’ll describe next.

THE HOME DEPOT INSET HACK

This year started off good in that I made a lot of money at the end of 2022 and it seemed like things were on the right track. A few problematic design clients and not much booked work made things start to go downhill in February. Oh, and also a messy breakup I won’t be talking about. The pressure to get Londo Lodge up and running by summer was coursing through my veins and keeping me up at night. It’s occupied my brain most hours of the day.

“If I don’t get this burden off my chest I will never get this crippling anxiety off my shoulders”

So my wheels started spinning. What could I do, like literally do myself, that I wouldn’t have to hound or pay a contractor to do? Then I found this DIY online:

Sincerely Marie's brilliant cabinet hack.

This is a super simple, super smart DIY created by blogger Sincerely Marie using ready made cabinets from Home Depot. Basically, you take the cabinet doors off and trim them so they fit inside the face frame (the piece of wood that covers box and presents a finished cabinet front). The upside to this was most definitely cost and how pretty it looked. The downside was that, much like Ikea, the layout was heavily constrained by the ready-made components. I even went as far as to SOURCE LITERALLY EVERYTHING I’d need to make the cabinets, come up with a budget, and draw the whole thing multiple times in Sketchup (the render program I use) more than a dozen times.

My plan was to head up to Londo Lodge for the month of May and work the whole time on these cabinets while the contractor finished everything else.

Then I booked a TV show (press release coming soon!) that shot for, you guessed it, all of May. With that much appreciated shift in my schedule and the accompanying money involved (almost as much as I made for BOTH seasons of my previous show), I decided to pivot back to having someone else make the cabinets, mostly because I was worried about time frame and also worried I might not be able to do as good a job on construction as I would like.

An older kitchen render made by Lars Gradel in early 2022.

THE FANCY BRITISH CABINETS

Not to be a bitch, but the New York Times Home section kinda sucks lately. I think they’re trying really hard to NOT be bloggy, to kind of seem more authoritative and scientific in their approach to design, but typically their pieces come across so stale and old and elitist. I’ve noticed it’s very rare any of my friends, hugely popular and influential thinkers in the design space like Emily Henderson, Justina Blakeney, and Leanne Ford, are rarely if ever mentioned or quoted in the New York Times. They do mention people I love like stylist Colin King sometimes but mostly they’re concentrating on really high-end projects that most people cannot even fathom tackling in their own spaces. So hey, New York Times Home Section, hire some of my friends. You’ll be better for it. Bloggers and other online content producers aren’t all idiots, I swear! We’re good at talking to the general public about design and houses.

Why am I mentioning the New York Times? Well that’s easy, I had ADHD! And also, there was an article months ago describing how to choose cabinets. It was a fine article except that every kitchen they showed was very expensive. Looking through the images only one kitchen seemed like it had cabinetry that cost less than $100K. The article focused mainly on the function (Add drawers! Duh) and didn’t mention cost. I’d venture to guess that 99 people out of 100 looking for cabinets are interested first in one thing: Cost. The other one percent is literally the one percent.

New York Times commenter James saying what we’re all thinking.

The article is sprinkled with beautiful photos of cabinets and I noticed all the cabinets I liked were from one company, Plain English. From my internet sleuthing it seemed that Plain English was ready-made cabinets for Rich Britishes. I WANT TO BE A RICH BRITISH! So I decided (mostly for your sake if I’m honest) to do some fact finding and get them to bid my kitchen.

I knew I was doing something kinda shady by having them bid the project but I also know how frustrating it is to read stupid articles like that New York Times article (I love the NYT but I’m gonna keep dragging their home section until they get with the times, pun intended!). Like it’s annoying to see Plain English presented as “hey this is what you should do in your kitchen” while having absolutely no idea what they cost. Spoiler: these are not cabinets most NYT readers can afford.

Plain English didn’t charge me for a rough render, though when I say rough it was pretty rough. I think they make their proposals illustrative and not entirely representational so people don’t just use them for their design expertise and get their cabinets made elsewhere.

I misunderstood a few things about Plain English. Firstly, I thought the idea was “hey these are fancier cabinets but they’re ready-made so they’re a bit more affordable than inset cabinets you’d have made custom.” Apparently they do ready-made, less expensive cabinets BUT ONLY IN STUPID ENGLAND. As a person who’s 50% British (my mom’s last name is literally ENGLISH), let me say that it’s not fair that the Britishes get fancy ready-made inset cabinets and we got… whatever the American version of Plain English is.

Instead of fulfilling an actual need (high end ready-made pretty inset cabinets that don’t cost a million dollars) in the U.S. market, Plain English decided to use its brand name for evil, and just brought over a company that designs fancy, expensive, custom, traditional, inset cabinets. Are they well made? Looks like it! Can you get cabinets made just like that from any proficient cabinet maker if you’re willing to pay a lot? Yes.

The Plain English bid was $155,000. Which honestly isn’t as crazy as it sounds. Basically the more times I’ve tried making things myself, the more sensitivity I have to how expensive it is to actually make something. There’s a number of reasons this company charges so much. Firstly, it’s a luxury product catering to a higher-end buyer who instead of going with a mom-and-pop-type small business cabinet maker (usually the go-to for designers) wants something that has a brand name, a proven track record, and a certain look.

Just a short plug for my friend’s cabinet line, DBN cabinets. They can make cabinets that look exactly like the Plain English ones for less. So if you’re looking for that style, start there.

The Plain English cabinets are beautiful and they seem to be made from solid, quality hardwood. Which is not the case for almost every other cabinet. Most boxes for cabinets are made from composite woods, laminates, veneers, and so on. These materials are rife with VOCs and harmful chemicals that outgas directly into your home. So part of the reason this stuff costs so much is that it’s just made out of more expensive materials that are likely way less harmful than the ones laden with chemicals. In all honesty I was expecting the cabinets to cost around $75,000 so even I was shocked when I got the number.

Interior design and renovation costs are one of the most explicit places to see wealth disparity. When you think about the fact that in some parts of the United States you could buy a full house for $155,000, the idea that someone is putting that much just into cabinets seems fully insane. But I guess you could say the same about how the sticker price of the kitchen I’m putting in (which I haven’t calculated but I’m guessing is pushing $150,000 at the very least).

We all have these things we want. These splurges. And they’re different for all of us depending on where we live, class, family history, and so many other factors. I think I have pretty high expectations, partially because I’ve been surrounded by design for the past fifteen years. Partially because the spaces that I’ve dreamed of, like actually dreamed about while I was asleep, have always been palatial, well-appointed, and grand.

So I’m not gonna judge a company that makes expensive-ass cabinets or the person who puts $155,000 cabinets in their kitchen. If I could, I probably would do the same. I’d like to think if I had that kind of money I’d do something good with it, something that helped people instead of feeding my own materiality. Wherever you live on the wealth spectrum, there’s going to be someone who looks down on you for not living up to their expectations. And other people who think your high-end desires are frivolous, your need for aspirational spaces an indication of how spoiled and untethered you are. We all live within our own spectrum of “normal.”

I’m fully aware that the kitchen that I designed is in many ways aspirational. And I guess the way I’ve justified it to myself is that A: Having a fancy kitchen is sort of a perk of doing a job (social media marketing) that has become more and more soul sucking as the years pass. B: I see this as my forever home and as a dream house I want to share with my family and friends. And C: As a designer, my home is a calling card and it’s important that it show potential clients and collaborators that I am a talented and proficient designer.

I think this is one of the most interesting conflicts I feel about my life and personality. Like I want to do the right thing that isn’t wasteful or elitist. But I also love objects and beauty so much and feel that they bring meaning and joy to my life. Which sometimes means I do things that not everyone can do, which feels weird because I guess I don’t see myself as having as much agency as I do. Like every fancy space I pull off feels like I’ve just pulled a rabbit out of a hat, some sort of magic trick that took blood, sweat, tears, and trauma to pull off.

OKAY SO HERE’S WHAT I’M ACTUALLY DOING

The refrigeration wall features three Bertazzoni panel-ready refrigeration columns (freezer, wine fridge, and refrigerator) and a built-in china hutch.

If you’ve gotten this far, congratulations! As much of a saga as this post is, BELIEVE ME it’s been an even more ridiculous and winding journey in real life. Just for cabinets. Just for one of hundreds of elements that make a kitchen.

When I booked my new show, I immediately realized I didn’t have time to do both the show and my DIY cabinet plan. So I basically reached out to my friend Rebecca, who has a cabinet company that I previously thought I could not afford, to ask if she could work with my budget of $20,000 (which is nothing for custom cabinets for a kitchen as big as mine).

Basically, my friend is giving me a REALLY good deal. But she can only discount so much because she has costs from her fabrication team that are hard costs. But luckily, we came up with a few ways to cut costs:

• Instead of receiving the cabinets assembled (as is standard) they will be flat packed. I will have to put the cabinet boxes and face frames together once I unload them at Londo Lodge.

• Instead of shipping the heavy, large cabinets I will be driving a Uhaul to Vegas (where the workshop is) to pick up the cabinets and drive them to my cabin, eight hours northwest.

• I’ll be getting the cabinets unfinished and paint ready, so they will have to be sprayed on site. This actually saved more time and money than anything because the finishing shop is backed up and also very expensive.

I’m guessing that if I wasn't getting a huge discount and doing a bunch of the work myself these cabinets would cost around $50,000-$60,000. For DBN Cabinets, this is pretty much a wash. But in return they’ll get a ton of marketing assets including photos, video, and a ton of shout outs online so it’s really just a marketing project for them. I’m getting these cabinets because my friend hooked me up and because I am going to shout the hell out of them.

I’m definitely thankful that I am finally in a position to be getting this kitchen done. And I am also thankful that my career and life has landed me in a place where I’m able to pull off a much more impressive kitchen than I’d be able to if I were paying for everything out of pocket.

I guess what really interests me about this whole cabinet situation is what it reveals about our motives when we tackle an interior design project. Firstly, we’re worried about what things are going to cost. We can only do what we can afford. But we also want the best for ourselves and our families, which sometimes means we stretch our budgets to their very limits. Finally, there’s the whole environmental guilt factor. It seems like the most affordable option is usually the worst for the environment.

All the affordable options in my case were more environmentally destructive (aside from the Home Depot idea which I just didn’t have the bandwidth for). And it kind of feels like that’s a choice we’re often stuck with as consumers: having what you want or protecting the planet. In all honesty, the best thing I could have done for the planet was just keep the original kitchen. But I didn’t work my whole life to get my first and only house to have it not be what I wanted.

We’re all the victims of our own desires, I guess.

Oh, and I’m going with drawers instead of lower cabinets almost everywhere. Duh.