Hello friends! We are finally nearing the completion of our kitchen project. As I mentioned here before, we’ve run into several delays along the way with our contractor, but I am pleased that we at least have a usable kitchen! Today I thought I’d share some little glimpses of the kitchen with you and focus especially on our cabinetry. When it came to choosing cabinetry, I had a few requirements. I wanted white shaker style which can lend to traditional, cottage, or modern styles. I wanted a large pantry space with tall cabinets, as well as other specialty cabinets like one for our trash and a lazy Susan. Lastly, I wanted something that would fit our budget yet still have a custom feel to it. Even though I didn’t have my dream budget, I didn’t want to make any sacrifices in style and function. I came across Cabinets to Go and saw that they ticked all of my boxes and I knew they could help me make my dream kitchen a reality, even without a dream budget. I reached out to them and am thrilled that they agreed to partner with me on our kitchen project and am super excited to share today a little more about our cabinets and Cabinets to Go. (Cabinets to Go provided me with the cabinetry for our kitchen; I was not otherwise compensated and all opinions are my own.)
As I mentioned earlier, I am just sharing some glimpses today as I don’t want to give too much away just yet, plus there’s still a lot of work to be done. I do want to share my Cabinets to Go experience with you today. Cabinets to Go began just over 10 years ago with one store in Florida. Since then, they’ve grown to about 70 stores across the United States. We are fortunate in that we live not too far from the Raleigh or Charlotte locations. We opted to work with the Charlotte location since we have family there and could kill two birds with one stone when we were in the area. Ricky, the store manager there, was super helpful throughout our entire planning and ordering process, and has been there with any questions I’ve had arise along the way.
In our planning, we began by submitting or floor plan to Ricky at Cabinets to Go and told him exactly what we wanted. We were just about to order when I decided I really wanted to go into the store and just make sure the Malibu White Shaker style was in fact what I wanted. We booked an appointment for Monday of Memorial day weekend and Chris, Wilder, and I headed down to Charlotte together. I looked around the showroom and my decision was solidified. I absolutely loved the Malibu White Shaker cabinets. 
They are the perfect shade of white, and featured the stylistic details I had wanted. We also don’t know that we’ll stay in our current house for more than 10 years, so I wanted a style that would stand the test of time and easily suit someone who liked modern or someone who liked traditional. They do offer a variety of other styles, and the Shaker comes in other fabulous neutral finishes, but this was the one for me! (As you can see, we are rocking the plywood countertops and still have nail holes to fill.)
Cabinets to Go offers free in-store 3d Design of your kitchen, so we ended up taking advantage of that while we were there as well. I was so glad we did that because we left there with renderings of our new kitchen that got me so excited!!! They were able to provide me with the floor plan as well as a more visual guide that I gave to my contractor to help his workers see how it was supposed to come together.
As you can see above, on the single wall, there is a gap where we opted not to put a cabinet. We have dogs and I wanted a place to be able to set their water and food bowls, so that’s why we left that open. 😉
Now, this is where the drawings get a little more exciting! Here you can see the exact layout of our new kitchen. Of course, we will have open shelving and a hood over the range, but you get the idea.
This view shows you basically what you see from our entry. We moved around the refrigerator and dishwasher from their previous location and this has worked out SO much better for us. Seeing it in the drawings Cabinets to Go created for us really helped me visualize the changes we had discussed.
And would you just look at all of that pantry space?
This pantry is now in place and in use and is the pantry of my dreams! It offers so much storage! We were all so excited to fill this bad boy up after living with a wobbly plastic shelf full of food in our basement for the past few months. Wilder loves to open it up and play with all of the plastic cups I put in a basket for him, or grab snacks and ask me to feed him. He’s already a typical boy. As you can see from the photos of our cabinets, the hinges are hidden! Hallelujah! Our old kitchen had visible hinges, and I just was not a fan. If you ever change the hardware you have to then consider changing hinges. I prefer a much cleaner look and for the hardware to stand out more. I was so thrilled to see that Cabinets to Go Shaker style cabinets feature the hidden soft close hinge.
I have not done a whole lot yet in the way or organization, but that will happen eventually. Cabinets to Go also offers accessories like slide out shelves (that could be great in a pantry!), slide out spice racks, drawer organizers and more to truly create a custom feel kitchen. In our case, we opted to add in the sliding trash cabinet. As you can see next to the trash cabinet, we have retrofitted another to fit a microwave. I will be painting that to match the cabinets, and we will be replacing that microwave with a better fit…. especially after Emmy decided to cook chicken nuggets for herself when I was sick. She intended to hit 1 minute, but we’re pretty certain she accidentally added a zero and cooked them for TEN MINUTES. Let’s just say our microwave has a weird smell to it now.
Our old kitchen cabinets had this weird really deep cabinet in the corner and it was so hard to access anything in the very back corner of the kitchen. Now we have a new Lazy Susan style cabinet which has made life so much easier! The skinny cabinet next to the stove holds all of our baking sheets, cooling racks, and our fire extinguisher. The cabinet to the right of that is the Lazy Susan which is hinged in the corner so that it opens out.
Inside it holds a two shelved lazy Susan that I can easily swivel around to access what I need. As you can see, ours holds a lot of items we need for baking. We like to bake in this house! Again, we just moved everything in so it’s not quite as organized as it will be soon.
Up to now, we have always had old cabinets in our houses, and getting pots and pans in and out has always proven to be a challenge and they’ve been hard to keep neat. In our new kitchen cabinets, I opted for roomy drawers to hold everything and I am SO happy with that decision. It’s so much easier to get my pots and pans out and see what I need!
The same goes for all of our bakeware pans. I used to detest having to go digging in my lower cabinets for cake pans. Sometimes you need to find that snowman cake pan! Thank goodness I can easily access that now. 😉 Seriously though, we’ve already baked muffins and our favorite pumpkin bread, and it’s just so much easier to find what we need.
As you can see inside of these drawers, they are thick wood, well made from solid maple and they feature dovetail joints. As a former furniture painter and refinisher for years, I appreciate the quality of a great dresser joint, and dovetail is where its at. After some years of experience with furniture, I stopped purchasing pieces to refinish that were not dovetailed because they just were not the same quality and were not going to stand the test of time.
We are honestly so thrilled with the quality of our cabinets and drawers and the custom feel that we were able to create using Cabinets to Go. If you would love to renovate your kitchen and want quality on a budget, I would strongly recommend checking out your local Cabinets to Go because they probably have exactly what you need! You can also check out their current sales because they often have great deals and they also have special long-term financing options available. Don’t let your fear of your smaller kitchen budget hold you back! The kitchen you want is possible, and I can’t wait to show you how we’ve made ours possible soon. 🙂 (If you’d like a refresher on where we started, you can check here.)
