Road Trip

Cabinets are expensive. I have clearly been spoiled having someone who can build anything all these years. So when it came time to select cabinets for our laundry room, I couldn't stomach spending $450 on the "low end" cabinets that had stapled drawers. A collegue of mine told me about this place in Arthur, Illinois that is a huge cabinet factory outlet. Arthur is about an hour and a half from Terre Haute so Matt and I thought it would be worth it to check it out! As we are getting closer, we start to notice lots of road signs like this one.

I have always been intrigued by the Amish lifestyle since I was in the 6th grade; when we got lost in Northern Indiana leaving one of my AAU basketball games. A few wrong turns led us to the middle of nowhere in the pitch black. So anyway,  as we approached Arthur, horse and buggies appeared on the roads as well as the trail they left behind them. The closer we get to town, the more mesmerized I become by all the buggies buzzing around and the horse and buggy parking in every business lot. The Subway had a rail to tie up the horses on! Matt immediately decided that we are going to find an awesome Amish place for lunch!

Back to cabinets...we arrive at the place and wow, it was not what we expected. They had TONS of cabinets. Full kitchens sold as sets, pieces to configure any layout, vanities and then... the clearance room. Naturally, this is where I wanted to start. This clearance room was huge! Cabinets stacked at least 3 high - bases on the right, uppers on the left, at least 10 aisles there were also about 4 aisles in another part that were included in the clearance. There was absolutely NO organization to this. After looking down each row to get a feel of what was available, we were feeling overwhelmed and not sure what to do to find things that matched to give us a complete set. Each cabinet had a sticker that indicated the cabinet style and finish color. I decided that we needed to start writing down this information of ones we liked and how big they were so we could start to find a matching set. After too many hours (I think we were at this place for a total of 4 1/2) we found cabinets we liked as well as a vanity for the hall bath! Here are our gems!