Since much of the house is now renovated and it’s looking great – but the one piece of the house left to do is the kitchen…so we’ve been looking around at contractors that do this work. Clearly, there are a ton and quality is all over the place.

Should it be wood or some “wood-like” material? What about colour? White is very popular and so are mixed kitchens – top cupboards one colour and bottom cupboards another. Should they be dark or light, should it look country like or a more formal appearance? Lots of questions to consider.

Wendy, of course, has a pretty good idea of what she wants and with the money, in the bank, we’re getting ready to design and order. Ikea has a good planning tool that she has been using to determine what goes where. We don’t have a big kitchen so we need to use every inch carefully.

We have two vendors to compare – the first is Ikea and the second is Cupboards Xpress. We’ve been to both showrooms and continue to compare and decide. Ikea’s price and finish is hard to beat, but Cupboards Xpress has very sturdy design and we think can do the install for a very reasonable price.

Ikea has a couple of new finishes as below…which looked great.

At our age we’re not likely going to be around to see the warranty run out! So that’s one thing to consider.

The variety seems endless. And then there’s the hardware!

The factory for Cupboards Xpress is right on site – and you can see it at work.