Shop History

Hartville Cabinet has been a family owned company since it's beginning in 1982. Ownership changed hands in 2003 and the new name Hartville Cabinet and Design was established. 40 years later we’re still refining and reinventing custom cabinets.

Cabinetmaking Process

Design

Every project starts with a dream. The design phase is for turning that dream into a plan. Using your Pinterest and Houzz pictures, hand sketches, and measurements of the existing space, we come up with a design that fits your style, space, and budget.

This will include shop drawings, but along with line elevations and floor plans that can be hard to visualize, we use rendering software specifically built for cabinetmakers that accurately show what your cabinets will look like in a 3D rendered picture.

Samples are another important component that get a plan off the ground. We have many sample chips already made of our most popular colors and stains, but we can also produce custom finishes or provide full door samples to visualize with your selected profiles.

And at some point during the design process, we will need to come field measure to ensure the cabinets are built correctly. Not using fillers, we measure to the 1/16” and take everything into account; ceiling height, window and door placements, electrical, walls and floors built plumb and level, angled ceilings, and points of entry for large cabinets.

Production

The average project has a shop span of 7 weeks. This starts with final approval and down payment and ends at install. Obviously that number ranges with different projects, and lead times can grow during busy seasons.

The 4 main stages through the shop are purchasing, building, finish, and assembly. Each area will have the project for 1-2 weeks.

Purchasing

Many of your materials will be ordered specifically for your project. When stain grade woods are kept in stock too long, many will change color tones based on light exposure, so we don’t allow S4S to sit in our bins too long. It also becomes more prone to warping and bowing. We outsource doors and drawer boxes to a few local companies that can more efficiently produce high quality products. This helps keep cost down, while still allowing us to maintain high standards.

Building

We offer both faceframe and frameless construction. Faceframe projects have a luxurious, built-in furniture look. And rather than building each cabinet box individually, which would result in on site seams and wasted space, we build our cabinets as big as we can reasonably carry and fit into the house. All our end panels are integrated onto the cabinet face and sanded flush, with no v-groove or 1/4” offset. The alternative, frameless or euro construction allows for more contemporary designs. All of this is done with high quality solid wood, plywood, and MDF.

Finish

Our finish process is all hand done with an HVLP spray system. Most cabinetry gets 3-4 coats of finish depending on the desired result. It is hand sanded and great care is taken to ensure no runs or sags, no light areas, or burned through corners. Our color matching is very precise; well beyond industry standard.

Assembly

The final step to ensure your cabinets are perfect is fitting them all together. This involves assembling the interior cabinet box or carcass, then applying the finished face frame. Then, of course, the doors are hung and drawers installed. The final reveal for inset cabinetry is 3/32” all around the openings; 1/8” for frameless construction. We use the highest quality Blum undermount drawer slides and 2 piece Blum hinges.

Install and After

Install

Lots of contractors and home builders can install cabinetry, but very few can do so with the precision and expertise that we offer. While we don’t require that you use our installers, we highly recommend it. Keeping this process in house allows us to construct special case cabinetry with incredible intricacy that we wouldn’t expect an average installer to achieve. The final results speak for themselves when it comes to our margins and reveals, tightness in our joints and moldings, and overall cleanliness and care.

Warranty and Follow Up

Unfortunately, not everything always stays quite so pristine as when first installed. Our policy for call backs is simply that we want to make it right. Often, that means no charge. We will certainly cover any mistakes we made or failing hardware or construction at no cost. Even beyond that, we know your cabinets will take abuse from daily living, and will do what we can to repair or replace at minimal cost.

We’d love to hear from you! We’d love to get photos of your space, be able to pass on a testimonial, or hear that your cabinets inspired friends and family to call us.