Went looking to buy a Horn sewing cabinet. While in Los Angeles, I was quoted around $1000. I thought that seemed high. Online (sewingmachinecabinets.com) it is around $850 (no tax). Locally (my misfortune of the Bernina dealer only selling Horn's locally), from one of those Bernina (insert "grossly overpriced" here) dealers $1350 plus a delivery charge of $50 too. Nearly a $600 spread.
Com'on now. Are Bernina dealer's just grossly high to begin with? I've heard about their $100 sewing feet, but this is a ridiculous price spread on what is basically a particle board laminated table. The dealer offered a
20% discount if I bought one of their overpriced machines (another $6000!), but Criminey, do they think I'm that stupid? Cripes, I could buy a maple or oak computer hutch with a secretary-L extension arm for half that and still have more furniture - and better - than what I am getting from these local Horn dealers (aka Bernina especially).
$1350 for a particle board cabinet! ? I am feeling less likely to buy a Horn cabinet now - to say nothing of buying a Bernina!
Totally agree. I am sitting here with a Sylvia Design Cabinet I picked up after UPS ruined it,from a customer. I hand delivered the replacement. They Broke the hinge off the lid. Wholesale is $340 plus $60 for delivery and retail is .....choke choke, $699. Ridiculous. Particle board with plastic fling out cubbys. the only thing of value is the lift, which I priced out at about $180. And Yes they must think we are stupid because the darn things keep selling. I bought a used 100% wood (mahogany)one from the good will, ($15) installed the lift, put a piece of pine, stained to match the rest of the cabinet on the lift and I have an 7' long by 22" wide cabinet when both sides are open. It also has 5 nice deep long drawers and the door is covered with cup hooks to hold my "special" scissors away from the family. Check the second hand stores to see what you can find. Also look into kitchen cabinet places for miss matches or one of a kinds. They also have scratch and dent ones and that is what my serger is on. 4 big drawers with a cut of piece of counter top on top. It was one side of a bathroom vanity that I picked up for $25.
My DH has promised me he will retire next February. One of the projects on his list is a decent sewing cabinet for me. We have seen plans at a very modest cost in the Rockler woodworking catalogue,
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The price they quote for the lift is something like $118.00
Wish I could find a readymade one like you found at the Goodwill!
I saw that the Bernina dealer close to me was having a sale on Koala cabinets and I went in to take a look since they wouldn't give prices over the phone. Turns out the sale prices were more than double what I wanted to pay. I went home, printed out two ads ( the lowest prices I could find) from internet sites and went in and asked for the owner of the store. I showed him the ads and said how much I wanted to do business with my local stores but would HE pay a mark up like that? We wheeled and dealed for almost an hour. He finally said he'd sell me the cabinet I wanted for 10% over the internet price. I hmmmmmmmm-ed for a little while and said if he tossed in the chair and deliver it, since I lived less than a mile from his store, I'd hand him CASH right then and there. He went for it, and I know he wouldn't have if he hadn't still made a profit on that cabinet. I figured it up when I got home and it was less than the internet low price if you figured in the HUGE shipping charge I would have had to pay,plus I got the very nice chair to match. I think it makes a difference who you talk to (the sales people in the store don't usually have the authority to make those kinds of decisions) and just how well developed your bargaining skills are. Have some visual documentation to back you up and CASH in your pocket. This will help get things rolling. I dicker prices at Home Depot too and almost always get a better price than marked.
Val
"B. Peg" wrote in message news:DzPab.150019$ snipped-for-privacy@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Regular price $699. down to $329 and $499. I haven't bought one of these because I can't afford it yet. But I'm saving$ and will buy one as soon as I can.
This is a very good start, especially since old cabinets are designed to store the machine. I have a gorgeous parlor cabinet with a lift for the machine that would work with any modern machine.
Another suggestion is to watch for people redoing their old kitchens with new cabinets. I think they're nuts for getting rid of sturdy wooden cabinets to replace them with paper-thin modern cabinets, but to each his own. You might be able to pick up some very good base cabinets with drawers and doors that you can put a new countertop on - or theirs might still be usable. The wall cabinets can be installed as a solid wall of cabinets, or whatever arrangement suits your sewing room. A coat of paint or some Howard's or Formby's refinisher, and you have a terrific new work surface and storage. An island makes a great cutting table, too. You can put wheels on them.
I agree in general, but my "sturdy wooden cabinets" are sturdy only in the sense of the intact condition of the wood. The joints are all weak and the doors keep falling off, drawer fronts keep falling off, etc. I will be positively ECSTATIC when the new ones are finally hung (estimated to be completed in about a month -- my BIL is helping me on weekends)
I know and I see that kind all the time. I guess I am just so frustrated with (a) having my kitchen in an uproar for the past two months with about another month to go until I have a kitchen something resembling "normal" again and (b) all the people who tell me that I am crazy for replacing the cabinets and that I should just reface them. Yes, yes, the unprintable adjectives who lived here before *did* reface them in a spit-and-chewing-gum manner, and the way they did it ruined them -- so now I have to replace them. PTUI!
Try a whole year of PITA after the fitters do it wrong (me), or a whole year of no kitchen at all (and almost no house to go with it!) after having to sack the builders (my Little Sis)!!! A month of uproar? Pah! Nothing to worry about! ;P
(chuckle) I'm not upset in general -- I am just absolutely SICK AND TIRED of the people who tell me basicallyi to the effect that it's all my own fault because I shouldn't be replacing them since refacing them is so much cheaper. I can live with the chaos -- I just can't live with the criticism by people who don't know what they are talking about.
I have put a lot of thought into doing this remodel, because it takes me forever to make up my mind, and I am SOOOO looking forward to having it all done -- and we are taking pictures, so if I ever learn how to put them up on a web site somewhere I can show my kitchen's Cinderella story.
I couldn't bear to have pix of my old kitchen - too bloody ugly! The new one will be great when it's finally complete! You can see tiddly bits of it here an there on the web site. My bit that wraps round into the dining room is exactly the right size for my big cutting mat, and exactly the right height for cutting on, so is frequently in use as a cutting area for quilt bits and small garment pieces. I just wish I had room to have a cutting table large enough for a whole wedding dress! Mind you, a while back someone said they did theirs on the tables at their village or church hall, so for the Feb 2005 wedding, I may well have a day at the village hall booked for cutting out! :)
Picture this: porridge coloured melamine doors with a hessian weave finish, brown edges, brown work top, black eye level double oven, brown & black floor, one of those triple sinks where you have TWO that are too small for a decent dinner plate or roasting dish, and one the size of a head of celery... Oh, and before we painted it, Ambrosia creamed rice school of interior design walls - wood chip painted cream! That was, where it wasn't painted ginger biscuit coloured! AKKKKK! Some pictures are just too evil to take.
Now, some folk would say that the doors are very little different in colour from the way they were before, and this is true, BUT (and this 'but' stands 9 feet high!) the texture is smooth and the look is that of a pale birch finish. It's coupled with blue walls, an almost navy mirror finish WIIIIDE (as in 900 mm wide) marble look work top, mid blue wood work, and will have blue Spanish terracotta tiles and under cupboard lights to finish it off. The appliances are all stainless steel, and the floor is almost the same colour as the cupboard doors. The whole look is subtly different and makes the place LOOK much bigger (though technically I have a couple of cubic feet less cupboard space since I added the fridge!)
Some of the previous incarnation's cupboards and work top are now providing much needed overspill cupboard space in the lean-to area grandly known as the conservatory, but which is in reality a cross between a utility room and a disaster area!
Well we have just got rid of our white laminex with gold glitter in them benchtops ( well around Easter the Kitchen remodel started). But we had matching lino, yes complete with gold glitter! Our kitchen dated to 1061, sorry typo 1961. We had a lovely 45 degree angle on the drawer fronts and the back of the sink. The good points...well it did have a drawer over all possible cupboards (7 drawers in all). We got a second hand set of cupboards cheap and installed these to fit around the new 90cm stainless steel Emelia oven allowing space to install my first ever dishwasher also stainless steel. DH has just made new wall cupboards with adjustable shelves that go to the ceiling ( because I was not going to clean the tops of cupboards) and installed the matching s/s Emelia range hood. DH also managed to buy a slide out pantry for $200 instead of $750 as it was an 'old & outdated" model ( plastic coated not s/s). The cypress pine for the doors is still 'wet' but will dryout over summer ready for DH to make new doors.Next step is plan colour of bench tops, stainless splash back between stove and range hood and floor coverings (probably floating timber floor).
Yes we have had our problems (eg wood not cut square etc,etc) but DH has done it all himself ( the money he saves by not paying for labor is used to buy new tools so he is way out in front).
My biggest regret id that I forgot to take photo's at the beg> >
That sounds so much better, even with holes where the work tops should be!
My sister USED to have a matching kitchen and breakfast room, with lovely ceramic tiles on the floor, and limed oak doors on all the cupboards. The areas were HUUUUGE compared to my tiny house... But she wanted more bedroom space, so they started a loft conversion. The builders ripped everything out, tore down walls, took a couple of feet off the tops of all the remaining walls, and were then sacked for not doing the work properly! They left the house with the joists not tied to the new beams and no supports round the edges, and thus in danger of the roof falling into the house! This left her over Christmas and all last winter with a 'kitchen' that consisted of a pipe coming through the wall, with a wrench to turn the water off, no sink at all, the used-to-be-fitted fridge stuffed in a corner, her cooker poked in another corner, uneven concrete floors, no drainage for the washing machine, and no heating! The bathroom WAS still intact, except that it had no ceiling at one point! The bedroom ceilings were temporarily nailed up... She gave up housework over the summer and took to gardening instead. And then she helped her hubby lay 40 tons of concrete for a shed base! Looks more like a minor barn to me. The new builders are very good, but spent the first three months on remedial work. She hopes to have her lovely new kitchen fitted by Christmas this year. I think they took LOTS of pix as evidence in case they have to sue the original builders for the return of their deposit. They have a stack of surveyors reports nearly two feet high!
I think we escaped lightly! ;)
To bring this back on topic, I have offered to make curtains for the boy's rooms if she would like me too, but I don't have room to do the big patio door curtains needed for the living room. The new bedrooms in the roof have sloping windows and will have blinds. I am about to start patchwork quilts for the boys - they need something snugly to help with the last year of horror story and living in a building site! Making curtains for my sisters is something I do to earn time off in Purgatory
- a bit like buying Indulgences in the middle ages!
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