Galaxy Horizon Specialty Base Cabinets

On this site the specialty label covers the two microwave bays: a 24″ and a 30″ base, both 34½″ high, with an open bay above storage. Four more unusual bases in this finish sit under the plain base cabinets listing and are worth knowing about for a second room: GH BOC30 at $598.00, listed as a 30″ base oven cabinet (confirm with us what it is built to take before it goes on a quote); GH FD18 at $559.00, an 18″ file drawer base; GH KD30 at $172.25, a 30″ knee drawer; and GH BSS3 at $2,021.50, a base with accessories installed, whose listing gives neither its width nor its contents. Ask about any of them before planning around one.

The listing does not publish the bay’s clear opening either. Before ordering, send us the make and model of the microwave, and we will check it against the bay and the maker’s required clearances, including any trim kit the appliance needs to be built in.

Here are three common second kitchens as base runs, at the displayed prices on the review date. Each assumes a single run against one wall. Wall cabinets, the countertop, the sink and the appliances are extra, and the widths are a starting point to adjust to your room.

For the kitchenette, three wall cabinets over the same 72″ — GH W2430 at $364.00, GH W3030 at $383.50 and GH W1830 at $273.00, all 30″ high — add $1,020.50, taking the cabinets to $2,798.90. A run that ends in open floor rather than against a wall needs a GH SK BASE end skin at $62.40 on each exposed end. Wall cabinets in this stain are under wall cabinets, and sink bases under sink base cabinets. If the second room has wall space after all, a microwave wall cabinet is the alternative to a bay.

The cabinets are the easy part of a second kitchen. A basement, a spare bedroom or an old office has no kitchen services, so these are the questions to settle before anything is ordered. This is general planning advice, and your electrician, plumber and local building department have the final word.

• Power for the microwave. Many microwaves call for their own circuit in the maker’s installation guide. Read that guide first, then place the outlet where the guide says, usually in the bay or in the cabinet beside it, never behind the appliance where it cannot be reached.
• Water in and out. A kitchenette sink needs a supply and a drain, and in a basement the drain may be below the sewer line and need a pump. Price the plumbing before falling for the sink.
• Ventilation for the appliance. A microwave built into a base needs the airflow its maker specifies; that is what a trim kit provides. Do not box one into a bay without it.
• Rules for a second kitchen. Some towns treat a full kitchen in a basement or guest suite as a second dwelling unit, with its own requirements. Ask the building department what counts before you draw a range in.
• Floors. A basement slab is often out of level and can be damp. Shim the run level and keep anything that minds damp off the floor of the cabinets.

Most second kitchens are lit by bulbs alone, and that changes how this stain reads more than it would a flat paint. Fabuwood’s own copy calls it a grey stain with soft pink undertones in one place and misty grey with silvery undertones in another. A homeowner who has it says it looks cold on a cloudy day and warm in sun. In a room with no daylight, the bulbs decide which of those you get. Warm lamps pull it towards taupe, and cool, bright ones pull it towards grey.

So test it where it will live. Take the $35.00 door sample down to the basement or into the guest room and look at it under the bulbs that will actually be fitted, switched on at night. If the room is not finished yet, choose the bulbs first and the cabinets second. Our grey cabinets guide covers undertones, and the sample guide has the full at-home check.

A second kitchen is often ordered long after the first. With a stain, that raises the matching question directly. Fabuwood’s spec book treats colour variation in stained finishes as normal, and its warranty says new cabinets may not match existing ones. If the second kitchen is in another room, on another floor, that barely matters. Nobody sees the two side by side, and a small difference in tone is invisible across a staircase.

Where the two will be seen together, say a coffee station in the dining room that looks straight into the kitchen, there are two sound choices. Order it with the kitchen, so it shares the batch. Or make it deliberately different rather than nearly the same. Fabuwood itself shows this finish as a two-tone with Galaxy Frost and with Galaxy Cobblestone, and a coffee station in one of those reads as a planned piece of furniture, not an attempt at a match. What does not work is ordering the same stain years later for a spot in full view of the original and hoping.

Send the free design service the room size, where the water and power are (or are not), and the microwave model, and a designer will lay out the run and the bay. You get a reply within one business day and a full design with a quote within 24 to 48 hours. Contractors fitting out basements and guest suites for clients can buy through Captivating Pro, one trade program with trade pricing and no tiers. We’re builders who sell cabinets, so the trade questions in the list above are ones we can talk through on (609) 900-3358. The whole finish is on the collection page.