For the cottage projects that I have worked on at Ross Chapin Architects, we have typically put in white painted cabinets with a granite 12x12 tile counter. The look is classic, clean and has always been received well. Fred Kimball of Kimball Woodworks in Port Townsend, has been our cabinet maker of choice. Thinking about it, I realize I've worked with Fred on 70 some homes...repeating plans of course, but still that's a lot of homes. When it came time to choose cabinets for the Karina, to me it was a no-brainer to use Fred. Neil did get 2 other bids just to be sure. One from a much larger company, that was cheaper, but was not a true custom cabinet maker, so we would have had to use standard sizes. Our kitchen doesn't have a lot of extra space, so I wanted to maximize cabinets. The other was a similar outfit and gave a similar price. We are going with the Shaker door style as shown in these photos of past RCA projects, but they will be maple cabinets and we still haven't decided on the countertops.
