(GUEST POST) What It's Really Like Ordering Inset Cabinets Online

By Ashley Goldman of The Gold Hive

Ashley Goldman is the writer and designer behind The Gold Hive, a home renovation and design blog rooted in her century-old California home. She's been chronicling slow, intentional renovations (and the occasional ambitious friend project!) for over a decade. This was her first project with iCabinetry and she has since returned for a second where she used cabinets to convert a garage into a living room, home office, and laundry space. Follow along at @thegoldhive or at thegoldhive.com.

I'm very picky about cabinets. It's an occupational hazard when you spend your time restoring old houses and thinking about what makes a kitchen feel like it was always meant to be there. And when it comes to kitchens specifically, I keep coming back to inset.

Inset cabinetry is the construction style where doors and drawer fronts sit inside the cabinet frame rather than on top of it. The door sits flush with the face of the box, making it look more like a piece of furniture. It's the older, more traditional method, and it instantly elevates new kitchens. With inset, the tolerances are tighter and there’s a precision to the fabrication to make it work.

The challenge has always been access. For a long time, if you wanted inset construction, you’d have to work with custom cabinet shops, lengthy timelines, and higher price tags.

Luckily, that's changed!

The Kitchen

My friends Caroline and Alex had a narrow galley kitchen. At 8 feet wide, it had been doing its best for years but coming up short. Storage was scattered and there were dead zones where space wasn’t usable. A door to the garage interrupted the kitchen's most functional wall. And there was no path to the backyard except through the garage. Yard access is critical for this Southern California household that likes to dine al fresco! The kitchen felt disconnected from the way they like to live.

The footprint wasn't changing. So the project became about doing as much as possible inside it: relocating the sink, removing the garage door and opening a new one to the backyard, reconfiguring the cabinet runs on both walls, and finally adding a dishwasher.

In the small space, we knew cabinets would be a main design element - so we leaned into giving them their own personality. Caroline had a very specific vision of cooking in "a farm cottage in the Italian countryside.” So, we wanted cabinets with a unique door style, old-world construction, and a soft cottage hue.

Why iCabinetry

iCabinetry is one of the few companies offering true inset cabinets that can be ordered online and arrive pre-assembled. That combination is truly rarer than it sounds.

Most online cabinet companies work in the overlay world, with doors that sit on top of the frame. It’s more forgiving to manufacture and ship. Inset requires tighter tolerances, and historically that's meant a local custom maker. However, iCabinetry sits in the middle: factory-grade inset construction, ordered direct, without a showroom markup or a months-long wait.

The cabinets showed up a mere nine weeks after we placed the order! Boxes were assembled and factory-painted, the doors were already hung and adjusted, and soft-close drawers were already installed. The contractor practically just set them in position and fastened them to the wall! It was the fastest kitchen install with the most bespoke look!

For Caroline and Alex's kitchen, we went with the Lafayette Inset line painted in Crystal Fog. iCabinetry mailed us physical finish samples on painted maple (not just paint chips!) to help us pick a color. We had over 60 paint and stain options which was enough to find exactly the right thing, yet not so many that we gave up and picked beige. The Lafayette door style has a pretty recessed panel detail that gives a nod to Caroline’s countryside vision, while still being modern.

The Designer Is Your Best Friend

Cabinet layout planning gets complicated fast. Filler widths, appliance clearances, upper cabinet proportions, corner solutions, and interior hardware placements are critically important but tricky to lay out. I love planning kitchens and yet I spiral trying to keep up with the math and the clearances.

iCabinetry includes a dedicated designer in the process, and ours handled all of it. I mean all of it. We sent a basic doodle of the room dimensions along with Caroline's wishlist and the designer ran with it. She came back with a tailored plan and 3D renderings, plus she stayed in the loop through every revision. Because we were designing a kitchen around cabinets, we had several back and forth revisions as we nailed down the door/sink/appliance placement. Having someone who could turn around updated configurations quickly was so valuable!

Throughout the design, she kept an eye out for smart places to have the storage work even harder. She specified deep drawers for pots and pans, a spice pull-out positioned right next to the range, and a narrow vertical cabinet for cutting boards and baking sheets. While the kitchen didn't get bigger, it definitely got better at being a kitchen.

What It Looks Like When Installed

The drawers are solid wood with dovetail joinery and undermount soft-close hardware. They feel as nice to open as they are to look at. When the doors close, they nest right into the cabinet frame with precision and ease.

Everything fits, like actually fits! Even the fridge and oven can both open at the same time without conflicting (which sounds minor until you've lived otherwise!) And did I mention they got a dishwasher, too?!

Inset cabinets are a non-negotiable for me in historic houses — the flush doors, the precision fit, the way they read as original rather than added. In newer construction they're a genuine upgrade. Either way, I'm so pleased that Caroline and Alex get to have the prettiest cabinets on the block. And we got here through an online order, a mailed finish sample, and a designer who never once made us feel like we were bothering her. Win, win, win.

Start Your Own Project

If you're planning a kitchen renovation and want inset construction, iCabinetry's Lafayette Inset line is where I'd start. Pre-assembled, designer included, true inset joinery.

Have you considered using kitchen cabinets in utilitarian spaces? I used the Value Semi Custom and iStyle Semi Custom Plus lines on a garage conversion for another friend and it turned out beautifully! You can read about that project here.)

The free design consultation is included and worth doing early, before you've locked in a layout. Mention code GOLD60 for 35% off your cabinets in 2026. The code is good July 1 through Sep 30 and then again December 1 through December 30.

More projects at thegoldhive.com and on Instagram at @thegoldhive.

All photos by Ashley Goldman / The Gold Hive.

(GUEST POST) How We Fit a Living Room, Laundry Room, Office, and Storage Zone Into One Two-Car Garage

By Ashley Goldman of The Gold Hive

Ashley Goldman is the writer and designer behind The Gold Hive, a home renovation and design blog rooted in her century-old California home. She's been chronicling slow, intentional renovations (and the occasional ambitious friend project!) for over a decade. This is her second project with iCabinetry; her first was a kitchen makeover using the Lafayette Inset line where the flush-set doors and precision joinery of inset construction gave a modest kitchen a decidedly custom feel. Follow along at @thegoldhive on Instagram or at thegoldhive.com.

When my friends Martha and Danny described what they wanted from their garage, my first instinct was to ask if they were planning to add on. But, that wasn’t in the cards. Within the existing footprint, they wanted a proper laundry setup, a dedicated home office, storage that could handle bikes and bulk paper goods and gym equipment, a living room for neighborhood movie nights, and a craft corner for their kids.

While I wasn’t sure it was possible at first, we managed to tuck all of it (and more!) into a standard two-car garage in a California neighborhood.

What made it all possible? Creativity and a lot of cabinetry.

The Space

Martha's garage is a pretty standard size for our area, but we didn’t want it to be a standard garage anymore. The first step was looking at the floor plan and asking: how can we fit (most) everything that’s in here, AND more?

The answer was adding walls, which seems counterintuitive, but one 7.5 foot wall gave us 15 feet of cabinetry storage! Two new walls in the upper-right corner created an enclosed 10' × 7.5' room. It’s just big enough for a laundry zone and a home office to share.

On the opposite side of the wall is a bookcase and a run of lower cabinets under the new window. Lining the walls with cabinets gave them oodles of storage, plus the L-shape of cabinetry defined a proper living room space.

The iCabinetry Sweet Spot

I've worked with the full range: stock cabinets from the home improvement warehouse, flat-pack from the big-box stores, and fully custom from cabinet makers. We needed something that could be customized without being overly involved and costly, arrive ready to install on a tight timeline, and we wanted help from an expert.

iCabinetry operates in the space between semi-custom and custom. Their Value Semi Custom line offers 20 door styles and 60 finish options — enough range to use two different finishes across the same project without them fighting each other. Their iStyle Semi Custom Plus steps it up to 50 door styles and 150 finish options, and their fully custom lines go further still, with configurations that run into the thousands of combinations.

For this project, Martha chose the Value Semi Custom line in two finishes: Retreat (a calm grey/green painted finish) for the laundry room and gear storage, and Maple for the bookcase wall in the living room. Different moods, same line, and the included designer helped make sure the proportions and sizing worked across all of it.

That designer piece matters more than folks may expect. I genuinely enjoy planing cabinet layouts. But the math on filler pieces, toe kicks, proportioning open shelving against closed storage across a non-standard space? Oof. Having a one-on-one designer included in the process meant we moved faster and with more confidence than we would have otherwise.

Cabinets arrive pre-assembled, with doors and drawers already installed and adjusted. The contractor moved through installation significantly faster than he would have with flat-pack, and a confident DIYer could absolutely follow their installation guides with great results.

Zone by Zone: How the Cabinetry Made It Work

The Laundry Room + Home Office

The two new walls created a 10.5' × 7.5' room that splits its time between laundry and work. A pocket door at the entrance gives Danny the ability to close off the room for calls — or just to fold laundry without an audience.

Inside, cabinets at the sink hold detergent, cleaning supplies, and everything else that used to live in plain sight. The stacked washer and dryer sit in their own alcove. On the office side, a run of soft-close drawers and base cabinets runs the wall length, with a drink fridge tucked at the end. A new window above the desk looks out to the garden, and somehow this itty bitty 10' × 7.5' room feels genuinely pleasant to be in.

The Gear Storage Wall

The left wall of the garage became a dedicated gear storage zone. Three 36" wide cabinets in the Retreat finish replaced a previous arrangement of open wire shelving and plastic bins. At 84" tall and 24” deep, they max out the vertical run and hold an enormous amount: bulk paper goods, cat food, seasonal décor, camping gear, and overflow house things.

Martha intentionally kept the interiors simple with adjustable shelving throughout so the storage can shift as the family's needs change. Flexibility in utility spaces is a must!

What didn't fit in a cabinet? Tool chests, the EV charger, a ceiling-mounted bike rack, rolling outdoor toys, and oversized suitcases that live on top. We planned for that. The cabinets are the structure, and everything else orbits around them.

The Living Room Bookcase Wall

This is the zone that surprises people most in the finished space. A standard garage wall became an L-shaped built-in bookcase and formed the foundation of a living room. Sometimes I forget we’re in a garage when I’m here! This bonus living space does the heavy lifting during neighborhood hangouts, movie nights, and outside playtime.

We brought iCabinetry a loose concept: “can this wall feel like custom built-ins?” Their designer came back with a precise plan: cabinet sizes, shelf proportions, filler placement, all of it. The bookcase portion is 7.5' wide; the adjacent window wall is 13'. The lower cabinets wrap around the corner for additional toy and board game storage. Open shelving above holds books and sentimental objects. The whole assembly in Maple finish has a warmth that makes it feel more like a living space than a garage.

The Kids' Craft Corner

Just outside the new room's pocket door, a small section of wall got a practical treatment: magnetic paint beneath a coat of white, so kids can hang their work with magnets. An adjustable IKEA drawing table and a rolling cart give the kids their own zone within reach of the laundry room — which means Danny can switch a load and admire art time in the same move.

What This Project Actually Demonstrates

A garage conversion hinges on how intentionally the space is zoned. And in a constrained footprint, cabinetry is what turns a storage wall into a storage room, turns a corner into a laundry room, turns a blank wall into a living room anchor.

The iCabinetry process worked well for this project for a few specific reasons:

• The included designer. We weren't starting from scratch every time we needed to adjust a dimension or reconfigure a run. Having someone who could take a vague idea and translate it into a precise order removed a real burden from the process.

• Pre-assembly. Cabinets arrived with doors and drawers already installed, hinges already adjusted. The contractor's installation time reflected it.

• Finish range within a single line. Using Retreat and Maple from the same Value Semi Custom line meant Martha could have differentiated zones without introducing a second vendor or worrying about construction quality mismatches.

• Sizing flexibility. This is not a standard kitchen layout. The semi-custom line accommodated that without the lead time or cost of going fully custom. And who says kitchen cabinets are limited to only a kitchen?

Ready to Start Your Own Project?

The best first step is talking to one of iCabinetry's designers — it's included, and it's genuinely useful even at the early idea stage. You can request a free design consultation here, or browse the Value Semi Custom line to get a feel for what's possible. If you're ready to go deeper, the iStyle Semi Custom Plus and iEuro Custom lines offer even more range.my friend Caroline’s kitchen project

And if your project is a kitchen — or anywhere you want that flush, furniture-like quality where the doors sit inside the frame rather than on top of it, their Lafayette Inset line is worth a look. That's the line I used on my friend Caroline’s kitchen project and it gives an elevated and classic feel to the space.

When you reach out to your iCabinetry designer, mention code GOLD60 for 35% off your cabinets in 2026. The code is good July 1 through Sep 30 and then again December 1 through December 30.

If you want to follow along on more projects like this one I share everything at thegoldhive.com and on Instagram at @thegoldhive.

All photos by Ashley Goldman / The Gold Hive.