Top 5 Things to Check When Buying Cabinets
- dwight253
- Jun 24
- 5 min read
When you're buying cabinetry, it's easy to get stuck on the visual appearance and ignore the most important features that ensure you're purchasing a quality product.
Your blue shaker particleboard bathroom vanity may look nice now, but you're not going to feel great in five years when you're replacing it because of water damage.
Let's go over the top five things to check when buying cabinetry to ensure you get a high-quality, durable product that looks good, too.
I. What material are the cabinets made out of?
Look up the cabinets you're considering online or ask your salesperson to check which materials are used to make their door frames, drawers, and boxes.
The most common materials for making home cabinetry are natural hardwood, softwood, particle board, and medium-density fiberboard (MDF).
For most homeowners, Stone & Cabinet Outlet recommends buying cabinets with hardwood doors, drawers, and plywood boxes for their strength and durability.
Hardwood cabinets with plywood boxes are incredibly strong and last longer than particle board/MDF cabinetry.
When hardwood cabinets get wet, if you act quickly and dry them out, they'll be just as strong as they were on the day you installed them. This makes them great for use anywhere your cabinets might be exposed to water, like kitchens and bathrooms. Particleboard and MDF absorb water, swell, and expand when wet, which ruins the material and guarantees your cabinetry will need to be replaced.
Hardwood and plywood are also much more forgiving materials. For example, if you're installing your cabinets and need to remove a screw, you can do it without worrying about damaging the screw hole. When you remove a screw from particleboard/MDF, it can compromise the hole, making it impossible to reuse.
Particle board and MDF also wear out and lose integrity faster, which leads to common problems like door-hinge screws pulling out when a door gets bumped, screw holes stripping, or screws and hardware loosening, making your cabinet wobbly and out of alignment.
Most people we meet who are considering buying particleboard or MDF cabinets are doing so because they're cheaper. Particle board and MDF cabinets can be more affordable, but that is offset by their poorer quality and durability. There are higher-grade versions of particleboard and MDF used for custom frameless cabinetry and commercial construction, but their prices are even higher than those of hardwood cabinetry with plywood boxes.
Affordable hardwood ready-to-assemble cabinetry, like the ones we sell at Stone & Cabinet Outlet, are a happy medium that is guaranteed to last for decades.
II. Are the cabinets well-made?
Good carpentry is the key to strong, well-made cabinetry.
We recommend looking for cabinets that use tongue-and-groove dado jointery for the boxes, similar to our Stone & Cabinet RTA cabinets:
This type of interlocking jointery makes your cabinet boxes stronger and sturdier, while also making assembly much easier.
Run-of-the-mill budget cabinetry often uses butt joints, which are weaker and less durable.
For drawers, we recommend buying cabinets with dovetail joints for added strength and rigidity, as well as a nice, finished appearance. Here's an example of the dovetail joints on our SCO cabinet drawers:
You should also check the tolerances of the cabinets, or how well the different pieces fit together. Cabinetry with "good tolerances" indicates it was built with high-precision carpentry.
Look at the cabinet doors, frames, and boxes - do you see any gaps, or do any pieces look out of alignment? Are the seams where the wood pieces are joined smooth and well-sanded? You should not notice any glaring issues.
At Stone & Cabinet Outlet, we have our own cabinet factory, which means we strictly control quality and can guarantee tolerances within an eighth of an inch. If the cabinet shop you're buying from can't show you their tolerances, or there are visible defects with their cabinetry, walk away.
III. Are the cabinets assembled using good-quality hardware?
Only buy cabinets built with high-quality, heavy-duty soft-close door hinges and drawer glides.
If your salesperson can't tell you what kind of hardware they use for their cabinetry, check them yourself by opening, closing, and lightly jiggling the doors and drawers. If the hinges and drawer glides close smoothly and quietly, and they feel sturdy and don't shake or make noise, the hardware is good quality.
At Stone & Cabinet Outlet, we use premium full-extension, soft-close undermounted drawer glides. Each set of glides is rated to hold up to 90 lbs, so they can handle a large stash of heavy cookware without bending or buckling. The undermount alignment gives the drawers a nice, clean appearance, helps prevent them from getting dirty, and makes them much easier to adjust.
For doors, we use sturdy, six-way adjustable hidden soft-close door hinges, which makes keeping your doors aligned much easier, while the soft-close hinges help cut down on obnoxious door slamming.
We only recommend considering cabinetry with similar-quality hardware.
IV. What type of paint or finish is used?
You should only buy cabinetry finished with professional-grade paints and stains that are low-VOC (low in caustic-smelling ingredients).
Check with your salesperson and ask what type of paint or stains they use for their cabinets. If they can't tell you, or they use an obscure brand name you've never heard of, it's a red flag.
You can also check online reviews for complaints about their paint or stains.
Stone & Cabinet Outlet's RTA cabinetry is coated with Sherwin-Williams professional-grade cabinet paints and stains that are scratch-, chip-, and UV-resistant, and low-VOC. Choosing cabinetry finished with a similar name-brand professional-grade paint or stain is a safe choice.
V. What's the price?
While good cabinetry tends to be more expensive, price is not always the best indicator of quality, particularly when you're shopping with big-box retailers.
Stone & Cabinet Outlet helps many customers who were previously shopping at the big-box stores, and we've heard horror stories of them being quoted upwards of $30,000 for materials and installation for cabinets with particle-board boxes.
This happens because pricing at the big-box retailers involves more than just the quality and availability of their products. Big chains have high overhead costs, such as rent, salary, and benefits for hundreds of employees, marketing, and logistics, which they pass on to consumers through higher prices.
Additionally, most large home supply chains source their cabinetry through middlemen rather than buying it directly from the factory.
All of the above lead to customers being quoted high prices for very average-quality cabinets.
High-end custom hardwood or frameless cabinetry is also too expensive for most homeowners.
In the opposite direction, budget cabinetry is often made with poor-quality materials, so even though the prices seem great now, you could very well be fixing or even replacing your cabinets within a few years.
Buying hardwood ready-to-assemble cabinetry, similar to what we sell at Stone & Cabinet Outlet, is a good way to get premium-quality cabinetry at a more affordable price.
We make, import, and sell our main line of RTA cabinetry, and we keep a full inventory in stock in our warehouse. No middlemen and low overhead costs mean we can sell our cabinets at wholesale prices, offering standard discounts for walk-in retail customers and contractors.
We aren't the cheapest cabinet shop in town, but we offer a high-value-for-price product that will last you for decades. If you're working with a budget, we can also help design your kitchen or bathroom to achieve the most economical and functional layout possible.
Look for similar cabinetry that offers a good balance of quality and price.
If you want to learn more about shopping for cabinetry, or you'd like to have us help you design your kitchen or bathroom, give Stone & Cabinet Outlet a call at 503-285-5606, or stop by our showroom at 14130 NE Airport Way in Portland, OR, to get started improving your home.
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