What Are the Amish Kitchen Cabinets Offered By JSB Home Solutions?

Kitchen cabinets see a lot of action. In fact, kitchen drawers are opened 7-10 times per day on average. That’s 3,500 times per year! Even more if they hold snacks!

What you need for your kitchen cabinets is durability, longevity, stability, functionality, and of course, beauty. But do you know how to spot quality kitchen cabinets to make sure you are getting the best bang for your buck?

JSB Home Solutions was started out of a desire to bring the best value to central Ohio homeowners for a kitchen remodel. In 1978, our sister company J.S. Brown & Co. started business with a custom cabinet shop in the back of the office building. Harold, the cabinet builder, was known for his craftsmanship and intricate designs. The cabinet shop closed when he retired but our appreciation for unmatched cabinet quality has never faded.

In this article, we will show you how to recognize good-quality kitchen cabinets and how JSB’s kitchen cabinets stack up to this quality standard. You will also know what questions to ask of contractors to make sure you can compare cabinet quotes apples-to-apples.

Table of Contents:

• First Thing First - What Are The Parts of a Kitchen Cabinet?
• How Do JSB Amish Kitchen Cabinets Stack Up?
• What Kitchen Cabinet Materials Are Available? And What Does JSB Offer?
  
  • What Wood Are Cabinets Made Of? What Does JSB Use?
  • What Wood Is Used For Cabinet Refacing Materials? What Does JSB Use?
  • What Are Drawer Glides? What Does JSB Use?
• How are JSB Kitchen Cabinets Constructed?
  
  • Bottom Shelf Flush with the Face Frame
  • Cabinet Hanging Rails
  • Dovetail Corner Joints on Drawer Boxes
• What Kitchen Cabinet Finishes Does JSB Provide?

First Thing First - What Are The Parts of a Kitchen Cabinet?

Before we get started, let’s define some kitchen cabinet terminology so we are all on the same page. Understanding the different parts of kitchen cabinets is something that most contractors assume a homeowner knows, but for you to get the most out of this article we don’t want to make any assumptions.

Cabinet Box: the structural shell of the cabinet; supports the doors, drawers, shelves, and countertop.

Shelf: a shelf to put things on.

Face Frame: the front face of the cabinet; stiffens the box and provides a solid mount for hinges.

Toe Kick: recessed, flat piece of lower cabinets under the drawers or doors.

Door: the door; usually made of 5 pieces including 2 vertical stiles, 2 horizontal rails, and a raised panel in the middle.

Hinge: a metal piece that connects the door to the cabinet and allows the door to swing open and close.

Drawer Front: the piece of the drawer that is visible when the drawer is closed.

Drawer Box: the container part of the drawer which is only visible when the drawer is open.

Drawer Glides: metal supports that provide a smooth surface for the drawer to open and close on.

Base or lower cabinets sit on the floor and support the countertop.  These cabinets hold sinks, stoves, and ovens, and sit next to dishwashers and refrigerators. They can be any combination of drawers and doors with fixed shelves, adjustable shelves, or pull-out shelves. There are many different kinds of kitchen cabinet accessories.

Wall or upper cabinets usually only have doors and fixed or adjustable shelves. Wall cabinets hang on the wall.

How Do JSB Amish Kitchen Cabinets Stack Up?

Generally in the market, most kitchen cabinets are machine-produced at certain dimensions. This limits a contractor as they must choose from a few selected products that broadly match your space. And if there’s not a perfect match, they’ll get as close as they can.

At JSB our cabinets are handmade and custom built for your kitchen project. This comes with a slightly higher price tag than a machine-produced cabinet. It also guarantees that there’s no wasted space in your kitchen and you have more flexibility in how your kitchen is organized.

Now that you’re oriented to the technical lingo of cabinetry, we will discuss what indicates a good quality cabinet. The table below summarizes JSB’s New Amish Cabinets and Custom Amish Cabinet Refacing.

What Kitchen Cabinet Materials Are Available? And What Does JSB Offer?

What Wood Are Cabinets Made Of? What Does JSB Use?

Kitchen cabinets can be made out of many different materials including solid wood or wood products. Here is a list of commonly used kitchen cabinet materials in order of increasing strength, durability, and quality.

• Particle Board/Low Density Fiberboard: an artificial wood product made from wood waste such as sawdust or shavings and adhesives.
• Medium Density Fiberboard (MDF): a manufactured product that is composed of pulverized wood fibers mixed with resins and wax, before being pressed into flat panels under high temperatures and pressure.
• Plywood: consists of layers of wood veneer glued together, with each layer's grain direction perpendicular to the adjacent layers. The layers can be made of soft or hardwood.
• Softwoods (ex: soft maple, beech, and birch): solid wood harvested from a tree species that produces softer wood.
• Hardwoods (ex: poplar, cherry, walnut, ash, oak, maple, and hickory): solid wood harvested from a tree species that produces harder wood. Hickory is about 3.5 times harder than poplar, one of the softest of the hardwood species.

Kitchen cabinet materials can get confusing when different wood products are combined. For example, a cabinet might have a particle board core with a hardwood veneer covering the outside. Without further investigation, the cabinet would look like a hardwood cabinet but would be significantly less durable and water-resistant than solid hardwood cabinets.

You can recognize solid wood (soft or hard) in cabinets because it will have wood grain on all sides of the boards, known as face grain, edge grain, and end grain.

Which Kitchen Cabinet Material Does JSB Offer?

At JSB we choose to use hardwoods to build our cabinets because they last longer, are harder to scratch, and are warp and water-resistant. Cabinet boxes and drawer boxes are constructed from hard maple and door and drawer fronts can be various species of wood based on the design you are looking to create. All will be solid hardwood.

What Wood Is Used For Cabinet Refacing Materials? What Does JSB Use?

A common material used for cabinet refacing is a plastic laminate like formica or Wilsonart. This material is glued to the existing face frames and the excess is trimmed off.

Which Cabinet Refacing Material Does JSB Offer?

At JSB, we instead use a quarter-inch hardwood panel that gets pinnailed to the original cabinet box for refacing. Kitchen cabinet refacing involves installing the hardwood panel onto the face frame of the cabinets, new doors, new drawer boxes, drawer fronts and glides, and all new hardware. Our drawer boxes are made of hard maple and the refacing panel, doors, and drawer fronts can be different species of hardwood, once again based on the design you are looking to create.

Explore our kitchen project galleries for examples of new cabinets and cabinet refacing. You will also be able to see my personal favorite, before & after photos of the kitchens to see what kinds of transformations are possible!

What Are Drawer Glides? What Does JSB Use?

Drawer glides are mechanisms that allow drawers to open and close smoothly. They are made up of two parts: a stationary part attached to the cabinet and a moving part attached to the drawer. The two parts are connected by rollers or bearings that allow the drawer to move horizontally. Drawer glides also support the drawer's weight and reduce friction, making it easy to open and close, even with heavy contents.

Different drawer glides are rated for various weights. You can also choose soft-close drawer glides (and door hinges) that slowly close the drawer the last little bit to avoid slamming drawers and doors by accident.

Drawer glides can be mounted to the sides of the drawer boxes or to the bottom of the drawer boxes. Mounting them to the bottom hides the glides from view and allows your drawer box to be the maximum width that the cabinet can hold.

Which Draw Glides Does JSB Offer?

The Amish cabinets offered by JSB use soft-close under-mount drawer glides that are rated for a 100 lb. load capacity. The higher the load capacity, the harder it is to overload your drawers to where they would not slide in and out with ease. Clips also allow you to remove the drawer completely from the cabinet. The drawer glides used on roll-out shelves can also be adjusted up or down to change the height of your roll-outs.

How are JSB Kitchen Cabinets Constructed?

Bottom Shelf Flush with the Face Frame

Framed kitchen cabinets have a face frame that looks like a picture frame around the opening of the cabinet. In good quality kitchen cabinets, the face frame will not impede your ability to put things in the cabinet or get them out. There will be a small lip on the sides and top of the cabinet from the face frame, but no lip along the bottom shelf. This lets you slide things in and out of your cabinet without constantly bumping into the face frame.

JSB’s kitchen cabinets are framed cabinets but the bottom shelf is flush with the face frame to allow easier access to the cabinet. There is another advantage of having the face frame flush with the bottom shelf which we will cover in a minute.

Cabinet Hanging Rails

Upper cabinets are attached to the wall using screws, usually by screwing through the back panel of the cabinet box into a stud in the wall. Most cabinet boxes are ¾” thick; some are ⅝” thick. Depending on the type of dishes you plan to put in your cabinet, you could be hanging 100 lbs on a couple screws and ¾ of an inch of wood.

Some cabinet builders, including JSB’s, put a hanging rail inside the cabinet box along the top of the cabinet. This is a 1” x 2” rail that lets you screw through 1 ¾” of the cabinet and then into the wall. What you end up with is a cabinet that is capable of holding much more weight.

We said there was another advantage of your bottom shelf being flush with your face frame and here it is! With your face frame flush with your bottom shelf, there is a little bit of extra room under the cabinet for a second 1” thick hanging rail that allows the cabinets to hang much more securely on the wall. The bottom of the cabinet is finished (painted or stained) so you won’t notice the extra piece of wood

Dovetail Corner Joints on Drawer Boxes

Dovetail joints are a woodworking technique that uses interlocking fan-shaped pieces of wood to join furniture. They are known for their strength, resistance to pulling apart, and attractive finish. Dovetail joints are often used for high-stress applications, such as the front face of drawers, and are considered a sign of quality craftsmanship.

Here at JSB, dovetail drawer boxes are the standard for all of our cabinetry.

What Kitchen Cabinet Finishes Does JSB Provide?

Kitchen cabinet finishes include color (paint or stain), door/drawer front styles, cabinet overlays, finished cabinet ends, insides, and bottoms, and cabinet accessories. Cabinet finishes do not necessarily affect the strength or durability of your cabinets but they do speak to the level of quality and craftsmanship that has been used to build them. These features are what create the design and aesthetics of your kitchen.

In addition, cabinet finishes can influence the usability of your cabinets. For example, adding cabinet accessories like roll-out shelves, built-in utensil organizers, pull-out spice racks, single or double-bin trash pull-outs, and cookie tray pull-out organizers can greatly increase the organization of your kitchen. And make cooking a more fun experience for you!

Are JSB’s Custom Amish Cabinets Worth It for You?

As you collect contractor quotes for your kitchen remodel, making sure you spend your money wisely is usually top of everyone’s priority list. Contractors can have bad reputations for taking your money and then cutting corners to put more of your money in their pocket.

If you are looking for cabinets that add value to your home, will stay strong and beautiful for 30+ years, and help you maintain organization in your kitchen, then JSB’s custom Amish cabinets could be worth it for you.

If your priority is finding the lowest price for you kitchen cabinets, then our cabinets might not be the answer. In that case, knowing what to look for and what questions to ask a contractor will prevent you from being taken advantage of as you shop for your kitchen cabinets. Honest contractors will love that you are asking the following questions and will be happy to answer them:

• Ask about the cabinet features listed in the table in this article. They should be able to give you the same information that is listed for JSB’s cabinets and refacing materials.
• Ask to see pictures of completed kitchen jobs with features that are similar to what you want (ex: an island, two-toned kitchen, open shelving) to see the quality of their finished product.
  • As a follow-up, ask which pieces of the kitchen the company did and which were already existing.

Your cabinets will be just one piece of your project and knowing what costs to expect on a kitchen remodel can help you compare companies to choose the one that will best fit your needs. JSB’s approach to kitchen remodeling is to Save Money And Remodeling Time (SMART) for our homeowners.

The work you put in to find a reputable contractor who values bringing quality to their customers will pay off in the end…literally!