Uncle Bob
Well-known member
From time to time we’ll see some commentary or inquiry about metal cabinet systems for garages. It’s time for me to put my oar in the water on this subject.
Like so many other things in life we have lots of choices to reach a desired outcome. When it comes to garage cabinets and benches it runs the gamut from a few simple pieces of lumber tacked together, to elaborate and, as a result, expensive solutions from professional suppliers. In between those two extremes are a ton of alternatives.
In my last garage I was able to re-purpose some kitchen cabinets that came out of the house when we did a complete kitchen remodel before moving in. I even made the bench tops out of scrap pieces of hardwood flooring left over from the floor I installed there. All in all, a recyclers delight, as well as being very cost effective. While not ideal (not sure such a thing exists anyway) they made for some very useful storage and work space.
We recently made a major move to Central Texas and purchased a house that had a completely bare to the walls garage. Except for a bicycle lift assembly there wasn’t a thing attached, not even any holes where something had been removed. The previous owner obviously lacked the garage rat gene. I had seen several different brands and configurations of garage cabinets over the years and thought they’d be a good choice for this garage. In a vacation home we had a few years ago I’d gotten some composition board/melamine cabinets and hadn’t been happy with those, so I zeroed in on metal cabinets. After seven decades of kicking around this globe I’ve probably tried/owned/evaluated just about all the alternatives, and decided to spoil myself to some degree on this project and buy new.
After doing some research here and around the www I became attracted to the NewAge line of products. Often the matter of choice is reduced to price, but in the real world it seems to work better if we have a number of elements to the value equation. Price is certainly an important criterion, but not the only one. For my situation I wanted the best service product at the best price for features offered. The combination of delivery time, size, features, expected durability, and how much of that stuff for what price drove my choice.
I ended up selecting the Pro Series 3.0 cabinets. I chose the 14 piece package that included 4 lockers, 4 overhead cabinets, 2 “tool box” lower cabinets, and 2 two door lower cabinets with roll out shelf. Details to follow. I also ordered 5 overhead cabinets in the Pro 2.0 stainless steel series primarily because they had a heck of a good discount on them at the time (clearance pricing?) and I needed additional upper cabinets. Again, more detail on this choice to follow as well.
During the research phase I was struck by the number of people who didn’t, by my standards, spend enough effort on the evaluation process. Their commentary appeared to focus almost entirely on “….I got this, for so much money…..” without consideration or at least commentary on the details of what the product offered quality wise. Case in point would be one guy saying he bought such and so model for X price, and someone would reply that they bought “….the same thing….” For some much lower price. After a little back and forth it was determined that the lower price package was a lower grade model or equivalent. The basic message is that not all products that might appear to be equivalent are.
There were two primary reasons I chose the Pro 3.0 package. NewAge offers a number of different models within approximately three different levels of features. There are variations in color and finish, as well as smooth steel and diamond plate (at least for the door and drawer fronts). The major difference to me was in the thickness of metal used, and overall size of the cabinets. The lower priced lines, Bold and Premium, use a 24 gauge metal and have shorter height locker cabinets. The Premium Plus and Diamond Plus are a 20 gauge metal, which equates to a “mid-grade” in their offerings. And then the Pro series which is their highest priced offering and comes in 18 gauge metal. Now metal measured in gauge dimensions may confuse some folks as to significance of the measurement. The best way to put that into perspective is to point out that 18 gauge is TWICE as thick as 24 gauge, with 20 being roughly halfway between. Stated another way, between the difference in thickness, and the larger cabinet size (thus more material as well), it’s pretty easy to understand the price differential between the two/three models. Another difference with the Pro series is the upper cabinet doors open side to side, as opposed to the lower models that have a door that opens upward on pneumatic struts. My personal choice is the more conventional side to side, though there’s nothing wrong with the lift up style if it suits your tastes. I wanted the 18 gauge for strength and durability. I’ve owned some shelves in the past of 24 gauge and they were really unsatisfactory except for the lightest of storage needs.
NewAge and many of their retailers (Sears, Home Depot, approved specialty suppliers, and so on) will have various of their products on sale nearly all the time. The kicker is, they rotate what they offer on sale approximately each month or two. The good news is, if you can be patient, the choices you prefer most likely will be on sale if you’re willing to wait. The bad news is if you want specific products and want to get your project completed on your schedule, you may not be in sync with their sale schedule. I was mostly fortunate with my choices and their more favorable pricing schedule. I knew I wanted the Pro 3.0 for it’s features, and I knew I needed quite a few pieces to get the kind of storage/work configuration that fit my tastes. I checked most of the retailers as well as the company site with some regularity once I knew what our home purchase would require. Given the machinations of the home buying process and the time involved in a fairly long distance move I had some time to work with, though in the bigger scheme of things not really all that much. Fortunately they had a 14 piece set (as described earlier) that fit my configuration/needs to a T, and if I could live with the Platinum/White color combination it was a bargain. The Pro only comes in three color combos, red or dark grey doors on a black shell being the other two choices. Quite frankly I would have preferred the blue, but that wasn’t an option in any case. As it turns out, the Platinum and White fits my garage color scheme nicely so was a good choice. The bonus was that in this color it was $1000 less than the red or black with the same configuration. I have no idea why it was that much less (and no, that’s not a typo), perhaps they were overstocked in that color and just wanted to incent movement. Whatever the reason, it was a great deal in my eyes. BTW, I looked a couple days ago and they no longer offer that deal…….must have sold out of inventory.
The Pro 3.0 comes with soft close, Euro style hinges on the doors, and soft close drawer slides. I mentioned earlier I also bought 5 of the Pro 2.0 stainless overhead cabinets. In reality only the doors are stainless, the shells are black powder coated steel. The doors have piano hinges rather than the soft close, but otherwise function the same as the 3.0. However they have a feature that I think is better than the 3.0…………….they’re 28” tall rather than 22”……………..that extra 6” is good space to have. The plus, at the time, was that the 2.0 were $100 off on each cabinet. Currently that deal is no longer offered either.
(continued due to size limits)
Like so many other things in life we have lots of choices to reach a desired outcome. When it comes to garage cabinets and benches it runs the gamut from a few simple pieces of lumber tacked together, to elaborate and, as a result, expensive solutions from professional suppliers. In between those two extremes are a ton of alternatives.
In my last garage I was able to re-purpose some kitchen cabinets that came out of the house when we did a complete kitchen remodel before moving in. I even made the bench tops out of scrap pieces of hardwood flooring left over from the floor I installed there. All in all, a recyclers delight, as well as being very cost effective. While not ideal (not sure such a thing exists anyway) they made for some very useful storage and work space.
We recently made a major move to Central Texas and purchased a house that had a completely bare to the walls garage. Except for a bicycle lift assembly there wasn’t a thing attached, not even any holes where something had been removed. The previous owner obviously lacked the garage rat gene. I had seen several different brands and configurations of garage cabinets over the years and thought they’d be a good choice for this garage. In a vacation home we had a few years ago I’d gotten some composition board/melamine cabinets and hadn’t been happy with those, so I zeroed in on metal cabinets. After seven decades of kicking around this globe I’ve probably tried/owned/evaluated just about all the alternatives, and decided to spoil myself to some degree on this project and buy new.
After doing some research here and around the www I became attracted to the NewAge line of products. Often the matter of choice is reduced to price, but in the real world it seems to work better if we have a number of elements to the value equation. Price is certainly an important criterion, but not the only one. For my situation I wanted the best service product at the best price for features offered. The combination of delivery time, size, features, expected durability, and how much of that stuff for what price drove my choice.
I ended up selecting the Pro Series 3.0 cabinets. I chose the 14 piece package that included 4 lockers, 4 overhead cabinets, 2 “tool box” lower cabinets, and 2 two door lower cabinets with roll out shelf. Details to follow. I also ordered 5 overhead cabinets in the Pro 2.0 stainless steel series primarily because they had a heck of a good discount on them at the time (clearance pricing?) and I needed additional upper cabinets. Again, more detail on this choice to follow as well.
During the research phase I was struck by the number of people who didn’t, by my standards, spend enough effort on the evaluation process. Their commentary appeared to focus almost entirely on “….I got this, for so much money…..” without consideration or at least commentary on the details of what the product offered quality wise. Case in point would be one guy saying he bought such and so model for X price, and someone would reply that they bought “….the same thing….” For some much lower price. After a little back and forth it was determined that the lower price package was a lower grade model or equivalent. The basic message is that not all products that might appear to be equivalent are.
There were two primary reasons I chose the Pro 3.0 package. NewAge offers a number of different models within approximately three different levels of features. There are variations in color and finish, as well as smooth steel and diamond plate (at least for the door and drawer fronts). The major difference to me was in the thickness of metal used, and overall size of the cabinets. The lower priced lines, Bold and Premium, use a 24 gauge metal and have shorter height locker cabinets. The Premium Plus and Diamond Plus are a 20 gauge metal, which equates to a “mid-grade” in their offerings. And then the Pro series which is their highest priced offering and comes in 18 gauge metal. Now metal measured in gauge dimensions may confuse some folks as to significance of the measurement. The best way to put that into perspective is to point out that 18 gauge is TWICE as thick as 24 gauge, with 20 being roughly halfway between. Stated another way, between the difference in thickness, and the larger cabinet size (thus more material as well), it’s pretty easy to understand the price differential between the two/three models. Another difference with the Pro series is the upper cabinet doors open side to side, as opposed to the lower models that have a door that opens upward on pneumatic struts. My personal choice is the more conventional side to side, though there’s nothing wrong with the lift up style if it suits your tastes. I wanted the 18 gauge for strength and durability. I’ve owned some shelves in the past of 24 gauge and they were really unsatisfactory except for the lightest of storage needs.
NewAge and many of their retailers (Sears, Home Depot, approved specialty suppliers, and so on) will have various of their products on sale nearly all the time. The kicker is, they rotate what they offer on sale approximately each month or two. The good news is, if you can be patient, the choices you prefer most likely will be on sale if you’re willing to wait. The bad news is if you want specific products and want to get your project completed on your schedule, you may not be in sync with their sale schedule. I was mostly fortunate with my choices and their more favorable pricing schedule. I knew I wanted the Pro 3.0 for it’s features, and I knew I needed quite a few pieces to get the kind of storage/work configuration that fit my tastes. I checked most of the retailers as well as the company site with some regularity once I knew what our home purchase would require. Given the machinations of the home buying process and the time involved in a fairly long distance move I had some time to work with, though in the bigger scheme of things not really all that much. Fortunately they had a 14 piece set (as described earlier) that fit my configuration/needs to a T, and if I could live with the Platinum/White color combination it was a bargain. The Pro only comes in three color combos, red or dark grey doors on a black shell being the other two choices. Quite frankly I would have preferred the blue, but that wasn’t an option in any case. As it turns out, the Platinum and White fits my garage color scheme nicely so was a good choice. The bonus was that in this color it was $1000 less than the red or black with the same configuration. I have no idea why it was that much less (and no, that’s not a typo), perhaps they were overstocked in that color and just wanted to incent movement. Whatever the reason, it was a great deal in my eyes. BTW, I looked a couple days ago and they no longer offer that deal…….must have sold out of inventory.
The Pro 3.0 comes with soft close, Euro style hinges on the doors, and soft close drawer slides. I mentioned earlier I also bought 5 of the Pro 2.0 stainless overhead cabinets. In reality only the doors are stainless, the shells are black powder coated steel. The doors have piano hinges rather than the soft close, but otherwise function the same as the 3.0. However they have a feature that I think is better than the 3.0…………….they’re 28” tall rather than 22”……………..that extra 6” is good space to have. The plus, at the time, was that the 2.0 were $100 off on each cabinet. Currently that deal is no longer offered either.
(continued due to size limits)
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). No ill effects from that process either. Apparently the marketplace appreciated the comparative heavy duty nature of the 18g product enough that NewAge brought out a second line in that material and with similar pricing for those who wanted a different look. As noted in this article I expected the thin, stainless bench tops to gain dents in use over time...……...they haven't "disappointed" on that prediction either