Cabinet Hunting (No Store Left Unturned): a house log

First of all- holy cow. We simply had a crazy earthquake a few minutes ago. Quite strong! It was fully unexpected for our area (we have never had a strong one before). The epicenter was right outside of Richmond (only about 35 miles from our house) and it registered about a 5.9! We have even heard from friends up in NY who felt it. Miraculously nothing fell off the walls or broke, but the whole house shook violently and it was insanely loud (we all gathered under a steel-enforced doorway and stared at each other). So yes, we were all shaken up by it but quite thankful that we are ok and hope that everyone else who experienced it is too.

Now for the cabinets. We promised to share all of the other places we hunted/solutions we considered when it came to the office built-ins (mentioned here) – because our thrift store cabinets certainly were not the first things we found. And we figure since not everyone can stumble upon six cabs for six bucks (uh, we never even thought that was possible until this recent discovery) we hoped that detailing a few other options that we considered might assist anyone else who cannot find secondhand cabinets that work for them. So here we go, on a virtual cabinet-hunting whirlwind of sorts…

Our first stop was in fact the Richmond Habitat for Humanity ReStore, but we did not find much in the way of cabinets. We did find that Clara loves the breeze from a big industrial fan.

And that they had this crazy big leather / zebra-print lounger thing if anyone’s interested. Tres practical for storytime, no?

The cabinet situation though was nearly sufficient to make us give up on the ReStore entirely (everything was too tall or too wide and we could not find six identical cabinets (or three identical double-wide-ones) that would work to make our wall of built-ins look related sufficient (and not like a mismatched secondhand cabinet sale). They did put us on a notification list in case anything that matched our needs came in, which was pleasant (never knew they did that).

So next we dragged the children (yes, Burger included) to Lowe’s and Home Depot to see if their stock cabinets could do the trick. They had a lot of affordable-ish options for unfinished cabinets in a slew of shapes and sizes. Our rough math put us at about a $300 investment for three double-wide cabinets (to create left, middle, and right cabinets with two open spaces for our chairs along the built-in wall like this). Then we could have simply painted them and topped them with a wood counter, which would not have been too bad for a wall of built-ins and a pleasant long two-person desk (around $400 for two desks or something custom built-in along an whole wall sounded about right I guess).

The only hitch in our plan were the cabinet sizes. Base cabinets were the ideal depth for a standard counter (24″) but their toe-kick made them too high (35″) for our chairs (27″). We contemplated adding casters to our chairs to make them higher, but were not sold on the idea (especially because 2″ casters might be cool, but 4″ casters would be a bit much for our chairs). So we looked at 30″ upper cabinets instead, but at only 12″ deep it’d make for either a especially narrow desk or cabinets that floated a foot away from the wall. Certainly something we could remedy by buying additional lumber, but again, not ideal.

Then it was time to do some Craigslist surfing, but nothing turned up in the way of cabinets that would be the right depth or height off the bat (and we worried about sacrificing stability and making things look a little – uh, shady- by trying to cut something down or build it out). If we had found something especially low-cost or nearly ideal (like our much-shorter-than-average $6 ReStore cabinets) we would certainly have pounced on them. Even for around $100 for the set. But nothing with the right dimensions came up after a few consecutive weeks of checking back.

Then we turned to Ana-White.com to see if we could find any excellent plans to build something ourselves (like the plans that inspired our giant console table build). There were certainly a few workable options, but we realized that a lot of the plans would cost more than $30 per cabinet (thanks to lumber, hardware, hinges, and interior fittings) – and because we noticed that many secondhand cabinets on craigslist and in thrift stores were under $30 (and some were priced waaaay under that), it made us wonder if we’d in fact spend more building something than retrofitting something existing.

Next we checked out Ikea. From their website, it looked like we could build their cabinets without a toe-kick, making them the ideal height (around 28-30″ instead of 35″+, which would be too tall for our existing chairs (even if we brought in casters to them). Score! And we all know Ikea has tons of customization options, so it was starting to feel like a ideal solution… even if it was a bit pricier – roughly about $500 if I did my math right, since we certainly hoped doored cabinets over open shelving (for Clara reasons along with the general desire to quite roughly mimic the look of the base cabinets from our built-ins – though not exactly). We were in fact fairly invested in this being a good solution, so I began mapping it out using their online planner tool (technically for kitchens) since we were planning a stop there after our visit with Cat, Travis, Elsa and their new son Edison.

But that trip to Ikea never happened, thanks to our decision to give the Alexandria Habitat For Humanity ReStore a chance while out of town. Though even that trip began off somewhat discouraging. They certainly had more cabinets than our ReStore in Richmond…

…but the prices were not necessarily screaming “take me home” at first. Yowsa.

Of course, that was until we came across the ones in the quite back with $1 stickers on them that screamed “You’d be an idiot not to take us home. We are six friggin dollars!” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Well, not totally history – there is still plenty to do to these puppies. But that is a story (and a project) for another day. Someday soon hopefully. You know Sherry and her propensity to paint anything that does not move…

So in summary, it was harder than we thought to find cabinets that were deep sufficient (24″) and not too tall (over 30″) and we ended up checking two thrift stores, two home improvement stores, an online build-it-yourself website, a Swedish warehouse, and the list of a man named Craig. The cost of the project ranged from around $300-$500 at most places that in fact had things that might work (not including a countertop), which was certainly making us sweat a little. Custom built-ins can obviously add function and value to a house, but unlike adding a patio to a monkey-grass-riddled side yard, it somehow felt a bit more like a rushed gamble to spend half of 1K on a desk, at least for low-cost-os like us (who built our current desk from an old bathroom door). So we are glad we took our time and eventually came across something around 95% cheaper. The lesson: hold out if you can, and leave no stone (or store) unturned (unvisited?). Whenever we dive in too soon we get all nervous and twitchy and sometimes even lay awake wondering if we rushed into something that might not be the best thing for our house/lifestyle in the long run. So there you go.

What have you hunted down after visiting a bunch of stores or googling a ton of options? Is there some sort of magic number (like five places) that typically results in a major score? Have you been searching for something for months or even years that continues to allude you? Is not it funny how the ideal thing is consistently in the last place you look? Likely because once you find it you at last stop looking.

Psst- The lady wife did a lively little interview about how our journal has grown and revealed a lot of behind the scenes blogging and book-writing info for anyone interested right here (it is long, but full of tons of juicy stuff, at least in my humble husband opinion). We are also over on BabyCenter talking about a sweet little boy’s nursery that we crashed (coolest light fixture we have seen in a long time).