Monday, 29 September 2008

Cabinet detail

This blog chronicles my entire kitchen renovation from start to finish. Greentea Design has provided me with their solid wood kitchen cabinets, and I'm taking care of the rest.

If you'd like to be brought up to date, check out the archive in the sidebar for previous posts. In this post I will show you sketches of the cabinets I chose, what my cabinets cost, and the process involved with ordering kitchen cabinets from Greentea.


In my last post I showed some of the sketches Greentea created to demonstrate how my kitchen will look. Here is one for a recap.


I thought I would show the sketches that were designed by Greentea that include the dimensions of each cabinet ordered for my new kitchen. This first one is the base cabinet that will be next to the fridge. I love it because Mike suggested instead of having 3 drawers the same size, that the drawer on the left be 3 smaller drawers for take out menus, chopsticks etc. The cost of this cabinet is $1200.


Next is the base cabinet that will be on either side of the stove. I love the originality of the Japanese style sliding doors in the base cabinets. I can’t wait to try those out. The cabinet to the right of the stove will have a bit of an overhang on the right side since that side will be visible from the living room. The cost of this cabinet is $1400 (x2).


The upper cabinets are solid doors that match the lowers. Greentea suggested 4 doors, with the ones on the end being the same size. I’m excited to see how cute the hinges look. The cost of these cabinets is $3000.


I don’t have a sketch of the pantry cabinet since it is a freestanding piece of furniture and can just be placed against the wall, but I found a great image on Greentea’s website of it with some dimensions included. The cost of the pantry is $2750.


So that’s the details of the cabinets. I think the cost is great for the product, the total being $10,675 including $925 for shipping. For solid wood cabinets, made of Ginko wood – they’re like pieces of furniture. Well, they are really, since they’re freestanding. I thought I’d show a copy of what a quote from Greentea looks like. Below is the one they sent me.


A normal quote wouldn’t have “See drawings” which refers to the sketches since the quote usually comes before the drawings. The whole process that Greentea follows with their customers was a bit different than what they followed with my kitchen project. We did a lot of designing and they produced some rough sketches before we finalized the order to help decide on the extent of the project. We made some changes to the final plans, and usually a customer would figure out a bit more precisely what to get before sketches would be done. They have a brand new section on their website to show the process they follow with customers. Check out their kitchen design page here. It’s so informative for new customers like me who aren’t sure how to go about getting a kitchen from Greentea, and they’ve incorporated detailed slideshows of 4 kitchens, including a new open concept kitchen design I hadn’t seen before. I love that it shows photos of each cabinet in the space, and a sketch of each piece with prices.

Since I had sketches done early on in the process when deciding what cabinets to choose, I found that really helpful to visualize what the space would look like. Since they don’t usually do this until after the cabinets are ordered (which also makes sense so they don’t end up doing a bunch of work for potential customers who then turn around and decide not to get cabinets from them), I think that a quick sketch early on may help seal the deal. That’s my 2 cents regarding the process they follow. Greentea would love some feedback, particularly on their design process so please feel free to direct some comments their way.

Stay tuned this week the beginning of posts about all sorts of purchases I've made for lighting, appliances, sink etc. for the new kitchen.