Kraftmaid Outlet Store details

A lot of people have asked us about going to the Kraftmaid outlet store, so I thought I'd post it here and just refer people to it when they ask. We learned about this opportunity from the internet and Tony Paat (thanks Tony!).

Essentially, Kraftmaid has a warehouse at 5232 Tod Ave.S.W. Lordstown, Ohio (Warren/Youngstown area) in the Ohio Commerce Park, where they receive overruns, returns, or slightly damaged cabinets, trim, furniture pieces, and other accessories. The prices of the cabinets are ridiculously low. For example, the cabinets we were looking for were $60 a piece - not by lineal foot, but total! Other finishes were $80 or $100, but still that's a big savings.

Here's a link to a forum that discusses the process. It has changed a bit recently.
http://www.ownerbuilderbook.com/forum/messages.aspx?ID=135

So how does it work? Well they only open the warehouse on Saturday mornings from 7AM to 1PM except for holiday weekends. You have to call (330)393-8520 for the holiday schedule. To get in you have to arrive early. Cars and trucks start lining up at 5AM to get an instruction paper. At 6AM instruction papers are traded for wrist bands with a number for the lottery. At 7Am a number is chosen from a hat, and the next 150 numbered wrist bands are allowed to go in. If the 150 exceeds the number of people there, they go back to number one and roll on up from there. At 7:30 the next 150 are let in. At 8:00 everyone else is allowed in. The 2 times we were there, about 350 people showed up and the number chosen was in the high 100s. We were let in for the second wave (7:30) both times. There seems to be no advantage to arriving early, so just before 7AM might be best actually. The last people to arrive were actually the first ones in when we were there.

Once in the door it is pretty orderly. All the cabinets are arranged by finish, some by finish and wood. It wasn't always accurate, so you just have to look at the tags on the piece. Kraftmaid has a naming system for each finish and wood (eg. CGO = cognac oak, ABO = autumn blush oak). There are a lot of cabinets up front, but also more in the back of the warehouse. Just keep walking around until you find what you need.

Just inside the door there were also full kitchens for purchase as a whole. If you are doing a new build or have a lot of flexibility, you can get a good deal. Also inside the door are accessories like glass shelves and wastebasket inserts. It was not as organized, and we didn't spend much time here.

In the back of the warehouse there was also molding, trim, toe kick, replacement doors, and other finish pieces. I think there is a lot of value looking here. We got all of our trim, crown molding, and some toe kick. Molding is $3 per stick. Toe Kick is $1. At Lowes' it was $75 and $50 respectively!

When you find the pieces you need all you need to do is mark them. Most people use masking tape or a grease pencil. There were reports of people ripping masking tape off, but we didn't see it. It was pretty civil, really. There were a lot of people (us included) who marked everything that might work. The rule of the house is if you want to buy something that someone else has marked, you can put your name on it with another number. When you check out you can have the first name tag paged and they have 15 mins to claim it; otherwise it's yours.

When you find all the pieces you want, you need to find a worker dressed in orange to write up the order. Then you take the order to the front cashier. Payment is accepted via cash or credit card only! After paying you get a number and wait in line for a dock worker to get your cabinets off the risers and take them to the dock. We found that they would drop your stuff at the dock and leave it there. It is totally up to you to load it in your truck, trailer, or whatever. The dock is a dock, and it can get congested. Actually, there are 2 docks - one up front for full kitchens and one in the back for everyone else.

That's pretty much it. As I said we went twice and got 5 cabinets, molding, trim, toe kick, and some other stuff. Essentially, we saved about $2500 from the Lowe's purchase. Oh, another thing, we were able to find mostly matching doors, but where we didn't, we were able to purchase doors from Lowes' for about $75-100. Even with the $60 for the cabinet, it was a huge savings. We highly recommend this approach. It wasn't all that hard, really. Thanks also to my sister Joni and her family for helping us. They live about 30mins from Lordstown, so we camped at their wonderful home and they helped drive our stuff to our house, too! What a blessing my sister is to my life!

If you have questions feel free to post to the blog, and I'll try to answer. Good Luck!