Friends of mine posted up awhile back that they used RTA Cabinet Store for their kitchen and they were very good. Based on that I ordered 2 base cabinets and two matching uppers to complete Kat's hobby desk in the mudroom.
Having used Barker in the past and installed hundreds upon hundreds of "box" cabinets doing kitchen remodels including the generic crap from Home Depot and Lowe's, I was astounded at just how bad these are. I tried to complete the assembly but when I got to the drawer face with 3 of the 4 screws stripped out that hold it on, I'm over it.
The dado in the backside of the face frame for the cabinet sides to slot into is 1/8" oversize so the cabinet side can bow and does with nothing to straighten it out.
The sides are held to the back and front with small angle brackets and very short screws since the thickness is on the short side of 1/2". In fact, most of the construction is based on the angle brackets.
The toe kick is held on with 2 of the angle brackets and the toe kick panel is too long on both lowers.
The back panel to side panels has a bizarre rabbet into dado connection that has no method to shoot a few brads into it from either direction to tighten up the bowed sides. Very annoying.
The instructions are pure crap. The videos are not much better.
The drawer slides are adjustable to the point of being just bizarre. After trying to assemble the boxes, I see why. One could likely make them work in a cabinet that was over a 1/2" out of square and 3/4" wider at the front than the back. I'm not that one.
There are corner gussets that mount with one screw at the tops of the boxes on the inside. At least one per box is not cut accurately.
The only tolerable level of quality is the drawer box with decent dovetail construction and pre-finished maple. Only thing of note is the maple is finger joint construction and I doubt there is a single piece bigger that 2" x 3". That's a whole bunch of work to use up the scraps.
They got back to me and said they would replace anything that was wrong. I asked how they intended to replace the terrible design.
Having used Barker in the past and installed hundreds upon hundreds of "box" cabinets doing kitchen remodels including the generic crap from Home Depot and Lowe's, I was astounded at just how bad these are. I tried to complete the assembly but when I got to the drawer face with 3 of the 4 screws stripped out that hold it on, I'm over it.
The dado in the backside of the face frame for the cabinet sides to slot into is 1/8" oversize so the cabinet side can bow and does with nothing to straighten it out.
The sides are held to the back and front with small angle brackets and very short screws since the thickness is on the short side of 1/2". In fact, most of the construction is based on the angle brackets.
The toe kick is held on with 2 of the angle brackets and the toe kick panel is too long on both lowers.
The back panel to side panels has a bizarre rabbet into dado connection that has no method to shoot a few brads into it from either direction to tighten up the bowed sides. Very annoying.
The instructions are pure crap. The videos are not much better.
The drawer slides are adjustable to the point of being just bizarre. After trying to assemble the boxes, I see why. One could likely make them work in a cabinet that was over a 1/2" out of square and 3/4" wider at the front than the back. I'm not that one.
There are corner gussets that mount with one screw at the tops of the boxes on the inside. At least one per box is not cut accurately.
The only tolerable level of quality is the drawer box with decent dovetail construction and pre-finished maple. Only thing of note is the maple is finger joint construction and I doubt there is a single piece bigger that 2" x 3". That's a whole bunch of work to use up the scraps.
They got back to me and said they would replace anything that was wrong. I asked how they intended to replace the terrible design.