Designing & installing furniture-quality cabinetry
Just as important as the fine cabinetry designs our Bluebell team executes for our clients’ kitchens is the exceptional installation our crew executes. Exacting attention to detail forms the basis of both processes.
The results of our focus are evident in our contributions to the kitchen of Philadelphia magazine’s Design Home® 2019, which include fumed oak veneer cabinets by Premier Custom-Built Cabinetry of New Holland, Pa. We count on the skilled professionals at Premier to be just as precise and demanding in their cabinetmaking—and we’ve never been disappointed, only awed, time and again, by their finished products. (And if we, with our wide-ranging experience, are awed, you can just imagine how completely amazed and delighted our clients are!)
Our installation team, capably led by Bluebell’s Joe Barta, a cabinetmaker who’s been building beautiful kitchens for over 30 years, makes certain every BBK kitchen exhibits the highest quality fit and finish that is the company’s hallmark. Think of it as fitting the finest custom furniture into a kitchen space—because quite honestly, that is exactly what Joe’s team is accomplishing.
“We can design the most amazing kitchen with cabinetry that has no equal, but if the install isn’t perfect none of that creativity and master cabinetmaking matters, because it just won’t look right in the room,” says Pete Cardamone, BBK’s principal designer.
“That’s why we’re so particular. We see the details, we plan in advance for the customization that goes into the installation, and in the end, it is perfect because Joe and his team make it so.”
How does he do it?
Pete explains what a lot of people aren’t aware of: he’ll design the highest quality custom kitchen cabinetry with “extended styles” if he knows that it will be set against crown molding, uneven walls, natural stone floors or in other awkward placements. This means he adds an inch or more to a cabinet’s dimension to allow for the final onsite fitting.
Another term is “scribing.” That’s what Joe Barta does with that extension: he trims it, sometimes a fraction of an inch at a time, till it fits precisely into its intended spot. Seemingly seamlessly.
Picture a stone or brick wall against which a row of fumed-oak-veneer cabinets must sit. It makes a lot of sense that you’d take some extra steps for it to work. But when you accept that nothing in this world is precisely square or plumb, including new construction, then you can see there are many situations calling for the critical fine-tuning Joe must do so you can walk into a new BBK kitchen and say, “Wow, this is really perfect.”
In the process of putting together a kitchen, sometimes an installer must put the piece into place, take it out, make minor adjustments, put it back in place—four or five times or more. Or, for example, Joe finds plumbing located where it interferes with the closing of a drawer, requiring him to rebuild the cabinet on site so it functions as expected.
In the kitchen of this year’s Philadelphia Design Home, A Modern Farmhouse Revival in Villanova, you’ll see two sections that required extensive customization at the install stage. The range area is encased by framing and the bar is set into a framed wall. (Well, actually, you’ll know to look there, but you won’t see anything but perfection because Joe is a perfect installer.) It doesn’t seem like it would require so much effort, but it does.
“Almost fits” isn’t good enough for Joe, which is great, because it isn’t good enough for BBK, either.