Galaxy Horizon 3 Drawer Base Cabinets

The three-drawer bank is the workhorse of the base line, and it is the configuration offered in the most widths, from 12″ to 36″ in three-inch steps. Each is 34½″ high and 24″ deep, with a shallow top drawer and two deeper ones below, on ⅝″ dovetailed boxes and Blum Tandem plus Blumotion runners.

Prices are our displayed figures on the review date; the grid above the article is the authority if they have moved. The carcass column matters if the box is damaged but the fronts are fine, and it is covered at the end of this page.

Fabuwood’s spec book prints a note beside every stained finish, this one included: “Due to the nature of wood and the complex finishing processes used to generate stained finishes, there may be variations in color which are considered normal.” Its warranty adds that wood may vary in colour, texture and grain and that those variations are not defects.

That is the baseline for inspection. You are not looking for fifteen identical fronts; a stain on real wood cannot give you that, and you would not want a stain if it could. You are looking for the small number of things that are faults in the finish or the build, and separating them from the grain and tone differences that are simply what a stained front looks like.

It helps to know what this stain is. It is light, a grey-taupe that Fabuwood describes with soft pink undertones, laid over a solid-wood frame and a veneered MDF panel on every front. A light stain lets more of the wood show than a dark one does, so figure and small tone differences are more visible here than on a darker stain like Cobblestone.

This is how we read the photos customers send us. It is a guide, not a warranty ruling; when in doubt, send the picture and let us look.

Most false alarms come from looking the wrong way. Two habits make the inspection fair to the cabinets and to you.

• Use both kinds of light, for different jobs. Raking light, a window or a torch shining almost along the surface, is the best way to find finish flaws: runs, drips, dry spots and scratches all show up in it. It is also the worst way to judge colour, because it exaggerates every grain line and tone difference. Find flaws in raking light; judge colour in ordinary light.
• Judge colour from where you will stand. Line the banks up in the room, fronts facing the way they will face, and step back eight to ten feet. Tone differences that look obvious at arm’s length often disappear at kitchen distance, and the ones that remain are the ones worth discussing.
• Look in the kitchen, not the garage. This finish takes its cue from the light and colours around it. A front that looks off under a garage light can look right in the room, and the reverse.
• Open every drawer once. Pull each one out fully and let it close on the soft-close. You are checking that it runs smoothly and that the front sits evenly with its neighbours when shut.

Where you have more than one bank of the same width, you can choose which goes where, and it is worth doing before the installer starts. Line up the same-width banks and pick the pair whose fronts look most even for the most visible positions: the end of an island, either side of the range, the run facing the door you walk in by. Put a bank with livelier grain or a slightly different tone in a corner run or next to the refrigerator, where the eye sees it at an angle.

Different widths cannot swap, of course, but they can be arranged too. A kitchen plan often allows two positions for a 24″ or an 18″ bank; your designer will tell you which positions are fixed. Swapping individual fronts between boxes is an installer’s job and not something we recommend doing yourself.

If something on the table above is a defect, the fastest route to a fix is a clear report on the day. We need four things:

1. A photo of the whole bank, so we can see which front and where.
2. A close photo of the flaw, in raking light so it shows.
3. The label from the carton, with the cabinet code on it.
4. A note of whether the cabinet has been installed.

If the box is damaged but the fronts are fine, a carcass-only replacement from the table at the top of this page keeps your original fronts; ask what ships with a drawer-base carcass before ordering. The pre-assembled buying guide covers the rest of delivery day, and you can reach us on (609) 900-3358. We’re builders who sell cabinets, so we would rather see a photo on day one than a problem after the counter is down.

For two deep drawers, the two-drawer page; for four shallow ones, the four-drawer page. Door boxes with a single drawer are on the single-door page. The finish is on the collection page, and a $35.00 door sample is the best way to know what to expect from the grain before anything arrives. Contractors ordering several kitchens can use the Captivating Pro program for trade pricing.