Should the underside of white painted semi custom upper cabinets be fi

Should the underside of white painted semi custom upper cabinets be fi

Mark Bischak, Architect

Maltby, how do you . . . never mind.

Comments (119)

• HU-405263396

  2 years ago

  This is ridiculous … under side should never be left unfinished … totally embarrassed as we sat down at the bar. even the cheapest cabinets should have finished underside to top cabinets ! How can we fix this ? Will the paint stick ?

• Brickwood Builders, Inc.

  2 years ago

  There seems to be more than enough suggestions on this thread without beating the issue to death any longer. Read through all of the posts and you’ll find out what your options are. It is not an error, it is just different than what you expected – and obviously forgot to ask about. Wall cabinets run though a manufacturing line (i.e. almost every cabinet made today) do not have stained or painted undersides. The undersides are an extension of the interior cabinet and the material is purchased already clear coated.

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• Debbi Washburn

  2 years ago

  Standard cabinet construction. the edges of the plywood ( or particle board sides ) may or may not have an edgebanding and the rest is usually a wood veneered which has a clear finish on it. Glass door cabinets will have a finished bottom only because the interior of the cabinet is getting finished so the color is on both sides of the walls and bottom of the cabinet. In some companies you can pay to upgrade and finish underneath or order wood skins and a light rail molding or scribe molding and cover the reveal .

• David Rudin

  last year

  @Brickwood Builders, Inc. Your comment speaks volumes about how you conduct business and your customer service. Blaming the client for not knowing about the unfinished, underside of the cabinets. You are supposed to be the expert. Many clients are first time renovators and they don’t necessarily know to ask certain questions. Damn, you sound pompous and stupid. I would stay miles away from you and your company, I don’t care if you do great work. Good luck with that attitude, sir.

• Kelly Sullivan Galica

  last year

  I was not given option and my underneath on uppers are not painted white like the rest of the cabinets, to me this is odd. I may paint the bottoms white……………we shall see. it should be automatic in my opinion for uppers.

• kculbers

  last year

  I have small trim work at bottom of all my upper cabinets, & they hide the underside of the cabinets.

• Sandy Hanselman

  last year

  We also have trim on the bottom of our cabinets. Our cabinets are going to be painted next week and for an upcharge, they will paint the undersides of the cabinets. I honestly don’t think it will be necessary in our case since the trim makes it pretty impossible to see the bottom of our cabinets.

• Diane Puzio

  last year

  I have trim too where my under cabinet lights are. However, when you sit at my kitchen table you can see the underside, so I painted mine.

• RMC

  last year

  We splash occasionally under the cabinetry and the splash is not always seen right away. Much easier to clean up finished cabinet bottoms than non finished.

• felizlady

  last year

  In my opinion, and in my kitchen, upper cabinets must have finished bottoms. Did you discuss this with your cabinet supplier? Sometimes we forget to ask about something which we consider normal and proper, but the cabinetmaker would charge extra for.

• Deborah Taggart

  last year

  I am literally stunned by this thread. I just remodeled my kitchen for the third time and lo and behold, my new white shaker upper cabinets are unfinished on the underside as described by others in this thread. I’ve never seen this before, ever. Brickwood Builders (above) says this is standard. Since when? My first remodel was with Diamond pre-fab cabinets and they were finished underneath. My second kitchen was with semi-custom cabinets and they were finished underneath. My sister has Ikea pre-fab cabinets and they are finished underneath. I would never have dreamed of asking the contractor if the cabinets are finished underneath. Is this some cheap new trend that has developed since my last remodel six years ago? IMO it looks tacky and awful. The cabinet installer is coming back in a few days and I’m expecting a fight if he’s anything like the Brickwood Builders representative.

• HALLETT & Co.

  last year

  Deborah you haven’t posted any photos so I am guessing a bit, but your cabinets are probably finished on the bottom- they are finished to match the INTERIOR of the cabinet because they are made from pre finished birch. Your sisters IKEA cabinets are the same- she has a white interior to her cabinet so the underside is also white. This is true of almost all brands of cabinets from stock through semi custom- the bottom of the cabinet matches the interior. If you have glass fronted cabinets that have a painted interior you end up with a painted bottom. Your kitchen designer should have explained this to you but I assure you this is standard and not new.

• Deborah Taggart

  last yearlast modified: last year

  Here are three photos of the undersides of my new cabinets. It’s true they are white but there is a birch rim and the screws are visible. How can a cabinet be properly finished when the screws are visible? The first photo shows an upper cabinet where it meets the backsplash. The birch wood strip is right above the backsplash. To my eye, this looks terrible. The backsplash should be flush with the bottom of a white box. The second and third photos are of cabinets that are installed above a door between the kitchen and the laundry room so the undersides of the cabinets and screws are visible to everyone without stooping to view. Painting the birch strips white would be an improvement but for the screws.

• HALLETT & Co.

  last year

  Your kitchen designer should have shown you a sample cabinet and certainly should have ordered a panel for that exposed bottom over the door.

• Deborah Taggart

  last year

  Thank you for that.

• Jim Czekaj

  last year

  I had new (Medallion) cabinets installed in the kitchen a couple of years ago. I had to pay extra to have a finished piece to cover the bottoms of each cabinet. I was told that if I didn’t cover the bottoms, the “finish” would be the same as the interior. This was just as surprising as when I read the brochures that said medium density fiberboard was allowed as an inner layer of plywood. Lots of things I took for granted that weren’t.

• Deborah Taggart

  last year

  This is all so depressing. When I bought my house 20 years ago, the cabinets were very dated but were solid wood. No plywood, no fiberboard, no screws showing underneath. They had to have dated from the 1960’s. Every time I remodel, the quality is worse than the time before and the price is higher. Same with some of my appliances. Six years ago, I replaced my 11 year-old Bosch dishwasher with a newer model. I should have kept the old one. Plastic pieces keep breaking off of it, inside and out. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you pay. I paid top dollar for a Bluestar range and I have to have service done on it every 16 months for one thing or another. I do love it though.

• Brickwood Builders, Inc.

  last year

  Ikea cabinets are made of laminates and plastics that encapsulate mdf or particle board – the same type thing as thermofoil cabinets and/or melamine cabinets that took over the U.S. market since the 1990’s. Each board is encapsulated prior to being assembled therefore the plastic color shows on all sides. There is no paint on these type cabinets and they are not wood. What you see on the bottom of these is the color of the plastic/vinyl/laminate. Ikea, melamine, thermofoil type cabinets are not manufactured the same way as wood cabinets. They are not a valid comparison to production line manufactured cabinets that are wood products painted after being assembled. For roughly 20 years, the standard for production line wood cabinets is that the materials used to build the box are purchased already clear coat finished for the interior of the cabinet and the sides extend down beyond the floor of the wall cabinet. Therfore the clear coat finish shows on the underside of the cabinet. If a cabinet has no door, clear coated material is not used so it goes through production differently and it is finished inside and outside including the underside. Some custom cabinet makers finish the undersides and some don’t unless the buyer specifies it to be done. Production line efficiencies for wood cabinets and the introduction of non-wood products (thermofoil, melamine, RTA and Ikea type stuff) have helped to keep cabinets affordable over the years. Not sure that will be the case any longer given current market trends. For those people that have an issue with it, every possible way to address it has been suggested in this thread. Folks just need to read through and pick the solution that they feel works the best for them. This manufacturing process was standardized a long time ago and manufacturers are not going to change their processes back to something that will drive cost up further.

• Jim Czekaj

  last year

  Going through a major remodeling of interior ad exterior was certainly a learning experience to say the least. I admit up front that I’m guilty of not doing my homework.

  If I had to do it over again I would have done a deep into all the parts and material (e.g. cabinet construction, hardwood flooring choices, T-111 vs James Hardie Board, latex vs oil based primer, granite vs quartz vs quartzite, … etc …) prior to the start of the project.

  .

  As it turned out the parts and material were selected at the start of the project when the clock was ticking and we were essentially following a schedule set by the contractors’ labor planning. This put me at the mercy of the information provided by the sales person. They were doing their job.

  In some cases I felt like I was cramming for an exam over the weekend. Cabinet construction was one example of this. There were numerous “I didn’t know that!” moments during this process.

• Deborah Taggart

  last year

  I appreciate all the information provided above (which I did read) and learned a lot. I agree with Jim; self-education before embarking on any remodel would likely have spared me the surprises and disappointments. My resolution is to have the cabinet installer put a white panel underneath the high cabinets above the laundry door, and paint the birch strips that are visible underneath the upper cabinets in the kitchen. We can’t install panels to those kitchen cabinets because of the under-cabinet lights. Remodeling my kitchen only 6 years after the last remodel happened because I now realize the last remodel involved custom plywood cabinets (nicely finished underneath) that were not painted/finished properly so the paint peeled everywhere. The contractor basically told me it was my fault because the peeling was more apparent in areas exposed to moisture — above the dishwasher, under the sink and near the range, although it happened in other places as well. Having them sanded/repainted was an option but I worried that the problem would just happen again. I didn’t realize that replacing them with manufactured cabinets would leave me with exposed edges underneath the upper cabinets. I live in Los Angeles which has an ordinance against using oil-based lacquer paint; I’m wondering if that could have been part of the problem leading to the peeling. This pic is an example of the peeling (and of the broken handle of my Bosch dishwasher – luckily that was an easy fix).

• Sherry Doney

  last year

  If you can see the underside of the cabinets when sitting in a chair in the kitchen, they need to be painted, in my humble opinion. My painter and contractor say this isn’t standard. Obviously, substandard work should be blindly accepted.

• Anne Duke

  last year

  Even the underside of my counter height granite bar is finished and all the upper cabinets are as well. The cabinet maker took pride in his work even when unnecessary.

• felizlady

  last year

  When ordering cabinets, you MUST ask the salesman or rep about how the bottom/underside will be finished. If “unfinished” is the answer, order higher quality cabinets with finished undersides. If you don’t ask any questions, you may end up with something you don’t like.

  Regarding chipping/flaking paint above the dishwasher, it could be a combination of an improper paint job and/or steam and heat from the dishwasher. I have never had any exposed painted wood above the dishwasher door, so never had this problem..

• Deborah Taggart

  last year

  Thanks Felizlady. The chipped paint happened most prominently next to the stove and near the rice cooker where there’s plenty of steam, and all around sink area. But it occurred in other areas too, so I agree, there had to have been some element of poor paint job. I’ve had a white panel placed under the high cabinets and with a little caulking, it looks finished. The birch strips that were exposed under the upper kitchen cabinets have been painted white. An easy fix for a problem I wish I had foreseen.

• Debbi Washburn

  last year

  I know this is an old thread but it bears repeating…

  Shame on the designer for not going through the construction of the cabinet. And a little shame on the customer for making assumptions on how they “think” a cabinet should be constructed versus just asking about the construction.

  The frameless cabinet industry pretty much always has a finished bottom to their cabinets because of how they are built – NOT because of any quality issue.

  Framed cabinets can be a toss up – entry level and semi custom lines generally do not have finished bottoms – sometimes it can be a modification otherwise it needs to be covered with a panel. Some custom lines it is standard to have a finished bottom and in others it is not.

  Either way these are not quality issues – it is simply how each manufacturer makes their cabinets and has been doing so for many years.

  I wish that designers would be more thorough in the basics with their customers. Just to be sure every boring little detail is covered so things like this don’t spoilt the whole experience.

  I also wish that customers would not use blanket statements – ” well my last cabinets were finished underneath” , ” my neighbors cabinets don’t have a bottom that looks like that” , “My sister has all solid wood cabinets ” ( which do not exist – solid wood doors – yes , faceframe – yes, drawerbox – yes, sides tops and bottom and shelves – no ) ..

  Sorry so long

  I hope this helps someone

• Deborah Taggart

  last year

  Thanks Debbi for your comments. I do kick myself for not asking more questions and not educating myself about what I was contracting for. I have a designer who is amazing but I didn’t use her for this kitchen remodel because I (thought I) knew exactly what I wanted. This was a limited remodel; I kept all my appliances and only replaced cabinets and countertops/backsplashes and one light fixture. I used a contractor who has several beautiful kitchens posted on Houzz. I should have insisted on having all details covered beforehand. Now I realize I made assumptions about the finishing of the cabinets that I had no business making. Hopefully others won’t make the same mistake.

• Debbi Washburn

  last year

  It’s a hard lesson to learn sometimes – I so wish that there was more of a standard – it would help everyone.

  Good luck

• sunshine_31

  last year

  I had this happen to me and it’s really bad when you spend so much money only to be viewing unfinished raw cabinet bottoms when sitting in your breakfast area, living area, etc. I feel that it’s 100% the fault of the designer/pro who does this for a living, and should be sure of details like this, whether the customer’s plates will fit on the shelves, what direction the doors open, etc. I’m also one who never had a kitchen with unfinished bottoms and didn’t even know such a thing existed. The literature also promised a finished bottom. This is what Wellborn Forest claims is finished. Some of the bottoms were wood color and some were painted to match the cabinets. What a hideous mess. More in my ideabook if you need any further incentive to avoid Wellborn Forest.

• Deborah Taggart

  last year

  Hi Sunshine, the unfinished undersides of your cabinets look hideous. I feel like the pre-fab cabinet industry has taken a position that unfinished undersides are not only standard but they’re supposedly finished, as your brochure states. We the consumers and our contractors have evidently let this happen by accepting this type of shoddy production and blaming the consumer for failing to ask the proper questions and to request an “upgrade.” IMO there shouldn’t be a choice to accept unfinished cabinetry in this condition. But I’m baying at the moon as apparently the experts think it’s OK. I hope you found a fix for your cabinets. I had a panel installed to cover up the mess on one set of cabinets and had the undersides of the other two sets of upper cabinets painted white to match the exterior cabinets. They look 100% better. My painter had to spray paint the exposed particle board strips because they’re so porous but it worked out fine.

• sunshine_31

  last year

  My husband fixed mine, and many other problems that Wellborn Forest and my kitchen designer did not/would not. Still waiting on some things we can’t control, like cabinet doors that are all the same size :/

• The Kitchen Place

  last year

  I have a showroom full of displays that show what we are discussing here. I’m immediately going to make a sign to tell people to LOOK underneath the uppers.

  Each manufacturer (and construction method) is different. But here’s what you ask for:

  • Finished bottom modification (some brands have this, most don’t)
  • Finished interiors on all your upper cabinets. For this, you’ll pay a hefty percentage upgrade for those units. 10-30%
  • Order veneered finished panels to have your installer finish them…may need some moldings as well.
  • Paint the bottoms of the cabinets DIY, as others here have done.
• Brickwood Builders, Inc.

  last year

  Our primary cabinet provider charges 35% upgrade to finish interiors, which would also finish the bottom. In 20 years we have never had anyone willing to pay that. A panel on the bottom or painting underside DIY (or with painter) is the best way to go.

• Sharon Fischer

  last year

  We are in the midst of a complete kitchen remodel and the same happened to us-the under belly of our white shaker cabinets is exposed and doesn’t look good-i just thought they didn’t get to finish it yet, but going over punch list items found this out. I agree it’s an issue of communication, I had no idea and no never seen this before so it never would have crossed my mind, ever. I thought I did a lot of research! I don’t think this should be put on the consumer, I’m not sure how I would have known this?

• Steph H

  last year

  Mine look like this. They were installed in 2019.

• Sharon Fischer

  last year

  @ Steph H thank you for this! Are your cabinets painted on the inside?

• Lisa Dipiro

  last year

  Out a piece of trim like this. Hides all that and the lights. Zoom in

• Brickwood Builders, Inc.

  last year

  The cabinets that Steph H posted are inset doors. The construction on these cabinets posted are not the same as standard cabinetry. You can however attach a board to the bottom of standard cabinets and make them look the same as this. I would be more upset about lights just stuck to the bottom of a cabinet where they are visible, no light rail or recessed area to hide them, than I would be over the color of a recessed area under a wall cabinet.

• K L

  last year

  I feel both silly and delighted. I don’t know that I have ever owned kitchen cabinets that had any other interior or bottom than raw fiberboard, so I feel silly that I didn’t know any different. I am delighted to read all the options available and to know some cabinets are not raw fiberboard inside. I no longer need shelf liner! I no longer will have dust cloths snag! I feel like a kid again at all the possibilities. I wonder now if “unfinished” as standard makes sense, because a cabinet maker doesn’t know how the cabinets will stack or what type of lighting an owner might want underneath. I suppose tract-home builders don’t automatically install these finishing touches, because tract homes are made affordable to start with and customizable afterwards. So it’s up to the homeowner to discover, as I just did, these wonderful options. But if I were in the remodeling or interior design business, I would enjoy letting customers know about these possibilities and letting them prioritize them if they want.

• jackowskib

  last year

  I remember when we did our own replacement of cabinets years ago with Kraftmaid cabinets and found the bottoms exposed. What saved it was they had a nice ogee trim we put along bottom and finished off nicely.

• jenroseh

  9 months ago

  Whoa, we are getting ours done as well and same issue. They put lights under the cabinets and the wires are also exposed so surely i thought it wasnt finished but boy was i wrong 😳 going to have to get creative here…. For how much we paid this is a little ridiculous…

• The Kitchen Place

  9 months agolast modified: 9 months ago

  I have been in the kitchen industry for 40 years and it still perplexes me that this is something that so many people just don’t know. Probably since mass production machinery, cabinets have been made this way. Do they not know because they had old site built cabinets for eons and just didn’t realize things have changed? Is it because honey oak and maple were hot for so long, no one really noticed???? Did the trend of white cabinets make this stand out more???

  Should a KD let you know? Probably. But there are a MILLION other DETAILS we are trying to educate you on (disclose to you) and to make sure the order is correct and everything will fit. We are trying to find installers and other subs to get your installation scheduled. Letting people know the cabinet bottoms aren’t the same color as the cabinet finish….is the last thing on my mind….also when I have 20 kitchen displays in my showroom that all show this type of construction. It’s one of those things that I just don’t disclose. I still need to make a sign for my showroom….and I plan to make a flyer with list of cabinet expectations for my clients. It’s getting too hard to satisfy everyone all the time. Selling/designing a kitchen never used to be this hard. I started in my early 20s…and I’m almost 60 now.

• jenroseh

  9 months ago

  @The Kitchen Place i get what you are saying but we are spending thousands of dollars on this renovation. This is not my area of expertise. i dont do this for a living. And this is my first time renovating. I just wish SOMEONE told us. It’s not a huge deal but now we have to spend more money and time trying to make it look finished.

• Chessie

  9 months agolast modified: 9 months ago

  I think it certainly IS due to more people going with white or painted finishes, rather that wood color. It really isn’t noticeable with a wood finish under a wood finished cabinet. I certainly did not care that it was not a “cabinet finished” surface underneath. But once I painted them white, it just was not acceptable. Made all the difference in the world after I painted underneath.

• decorpatti

  9 months ago

  I realize how old this thread is, but I have had my Omega Dynasty cabinets (considered semi-custom) since 2009 and never ever noticed (or even gave it a thought), so I had to look at mine. My cabinets are a color called something like “Oyster,” which is a warm white. I just looked, and the undersides of the uppers are white (not “Oyster” but it looks seamless and finished), with under-cabinet lighting. The insides are the same. We also have a bottom trim piece that finishes them off. There is no raw wood showing anywhere, which is probably why I never noticed anything. This was probably the ‘standard’ finish with this level of cabinetry, as I don’t remember asking or paying for anything to be done to the undersides.

• HU-362434778

  9 months ago

  The eternal problem: You don’t know what you don’t know.

  Sometimes you have to keep asking questions ’till it hurts. You can see my earlier posts. That’s what I did.

• Ruby Okamoto

  3 months ago

  My family just had our 30 year old cabinets replaced and installed last week. i too was horrified at the raw edges of the joining cabinets and the designer calling it ”finished”. Below a bank of wall cabinets is a pass through that opens to the family room.

  i had to sign off on each page of cabinets but there was no discussion or comment about the underside of the wall cabinetss. When we called her to ask anout the exposed raw edges she simply replied that’s how they are. Worse yet, that i must have seen the one set of cabinets in the showroom.
  i totally understand that there are numerous details going into ordering and installing cabinets, but i cannot believe that we are her first customers to be angry enough to yell at her (soeaker phone) about this issue. So I offer an option to designers and cabinet makers—set up a checklist of items you’ve been yelled at or had disagreements with prior customers and share with potential clients. Have the client sign this sheet too. So we all have a clear understanding of changes (in the past 30 years) or ”improvements” that we are not aware of or know to ask. This would save the heartaches and yelling.
  Oh by the way, my door pulls should not be more than 5” for the size of my cabinets —after i ordered 70 of the wrong size. i’m still angry.

• The Kitchen Place

  3 months ago

  Ruby, I started a thread a while back (year maybe?) to start a checklist of things to go over with clients exactly as you stated..and the underside of wall cabinets was definitely at the top of the list! I’ll try to find that thread. I never did type up the checklist! lol

• The Kitchen Place

  3 months ago

  Found it! Here it is.

  https://www.houzz.com/discussions/6278727/kitchen-remodeling-expectations

• Helen

  3 months ago

  What an amazing coincidence that this old thread was revived because yesterday I peeked under my cabinets for the first time since they were installed after my remodel some years ago. My cleaning lady had managed to turn on all the under counter lights and I was looking for the switch to turn them off 🤣

  FWIW the underside of my cabinets is the same wood as the doors. I am not sure based on this discussion whether wood stained doors generally have the same stain on the underside as the doors but mine do. FWIW they are custom doors done by a local place.
  But really my point is that I often read threads in which a homeowner is scolded by professionals for not realizing that something is “how it is done” and if they didn’t want it that way, they should have asked their designer or other professional. And I just think most people doing a remodeling are doing it for the first time and just being reasonably well informed enough is a huge learning curve.
  Why is it unreasonable to rely on professionals to provide guidance based on their having worked with non-professionals. Why shouldn’t they just proceed and assume that their clients do not realize certain things – haven’t they received shocked feedback from clients which should alert experienced professionals as to how to advice clients. I don’t think most people would assume the underside of a cabinet would be raw and look unfinished nor do I think that most homeowners installing a counter for the first time would realize that templating is going to impact the end result. Shouldn’t an experienced counter person – or designer as applicable – alert their client when they select a very patterned/veined/busy stone that important decisions have to be made in terms of the end result and how the slabs are cut etc.

• The Kitchen Place

  3 months ago

  There are literally a gazillion things Pros need to make sure that their clients are aware of. Having displays help but over my 40 years in business, I’ve only had a few clients complain about the undersides of the upper cabinets not being stained or painted to match the fronts/doors. So it’s not always something I think of telling my clients. This should definitely be brought up at the final ordering phase. I agree.

  I plan to have a showroom sign made with an arrow pointing to the undersides to explain this. Factory produced cabinets will not have finished bottoms or interiors.