One of the important things to note in RTA Cabinet reviews is that craftsmanship is particular to each cabinet, which is why it is completely possible for three cabinets that are similar won’t have the same quality. So when comparing the Antique Shaker, the Arctic White Shaker, and the White Shaker Cabinets, their conditions will vary.

So in the interest of helping the consumer find out which Shaker Cabinet is the best, let’s pretend to be the stepmothers and figure out which cabinet is Cinderella and which cabinets are her ugly stepsisters.

 

Door and Finish

Door and Frame

All of these have doors and frames are made from HDF (High-Density Fiberboard), which is composite wood and while more affordable, is susceptible to damage with excessive moisture.

When comparing the three different Shaker Cabinets from Kitchen Cabinet Depot, what gave the advantage to the White Shaker Cabinet over the Antique Shaker and the Arctic White Shaker had to do with the packaging. Good packaging keeps the door and frame well-wrapped and free from damage.

The White Shaker’s door and frame were wrapped with more care than the rest of the panels of the cabinet since they are the first face impression of the cabinet that people see.

Antique Shaker: 3/5

Arctic White Shaker: 3/5

White Shaker: 4/5

Advantage: White Shaker

 

Door Finish

The thick consistent paint of the Kitchen Cabinet Depot Shaker Cabinets was a positive feature of all of these cabinets. There were no visible wood grains and the paint is evenly applied to these doors. The only reason the Arctic White Shaker has the advantage over the Antique Shaker and the White Shaker came down to small details: The other cabinets had a couple of slight imperfections while the application of the finish on the Arctic White Shaker was flawless.

Antique Shaker: 4/5

Arctic White Shaker: 5/5

White Shaker: 4/5

Advantage: Arctic White Shaker

 

Cabinet Box and Interior

The interior of the cabinet box for all of these Kitchen Cabinet Depot Shaker Cabinets is natural wood grain, laminated with a UV coat. With a natural interior, there is a possible variance of the tint or brightness of the natural wood rather than a consistent color.

When touching the UV coat, you can tell there is an overlay of another surface material, but you can still feel a slightly coarse texture so it doesn’t feel smooth to the touch.

Of all of these, the preference goes to the White Shaker cabinet because the interiors of the box were more consistent in shade and tint than the other two.

Antique Shaker: 2/5

Arctic White Shaker: 3/5

White Shaker: 3/5

Advantage: White Shaker

 

Box and Storage

Cabinet Box

These Kitchen Cabinet Depot Shakers have what is expected in most RTA Cabinets; the standard in many cabinet boxes is a ½ inch thick plywood on the sides of the structure. Each of these Shaker Cabinets has a full back panel so they are not skimping on quality.

While all these cabinets are no different from the regular standard quality, the Antique Shaker edges out the Arctic White Shaker and the White Shaker because the panels of that cabinet were consistent a little thicker than the other cabinets; the White Shaker, when physically measured, was actually less than ½ inch although close to it.

Antique Shaker: 3.5/5

Arctic White Shaker: 3/5

White Shaker: 2.5/5

Advantage: Antique Shaker

 

Drawer Box

When comparing the Shaker Cabinet drawers, right away, the Arctic White Shaker is far behind the Antique Shaker and the White Shaker.

There were many things going against the Arctic White Shaker: an ugly dovetail joint with chipped wood, gaps and full of splinters, and the inconsistent color of the drawer panels compared to the rest of the natural panels in the cabinet box put this far below the other two shaker cabinets.

The Antique Shaker and the White Shaker had good dovetails, thick drawer panels and both drawers are able to fully extend from the cabinet without falling out. But the advantage goes to the Antique Shaker because the dovetail joint was so easy to assemble that the pieces locked together smoothly. It was oddly satisfying, an experience I don’t get anywhere while building, so it gets my highest marks.

Antique Shaker: 5/5

Arctic White Shaker: 1/5

White Shaker: 4/5

Advantage: Antique Shaker

 

Storage

All across the board, these Kitchen Depot Cabinets do not seem the most efficient in storing your everyday household items and because the function is an important part of the cabinet, I tend to grade this more critically than most other categories.

As sturdy as the drawers are for these cabinets, the Antique Shaker and White Shaker drawers tend to be shallower than I expected at 2 ½ inches. This drawer will be only large enough to store your flatware, but not much else due to the small opening of the frame.

On the other hand, the advantage goes to the Arctic White Shaker, because for all of the demerits mentioned in its structure, the drawer is 3 inches deep and can store more things, even with that ½ inch difference.

Antique Shaker: 2/5

Arctic White Shaker: 3/5

White Shaker: 3/5

Advantage: Arctic White Shaker

 

Hardware

Hinges

Of the three Kitchen Cabinet Depot cabinets, the Arctic White shaker is automatically at a disadvantage because it does not have a soft close mechanism so it is considered a basic model. The Antique Shaker and the White Shaker both have the soft close dampening hinges, however, the White Shaker has the advantage due to an unexpected shortcoming of the Antique Shaker door hinge: it makes a loud click as it closes, which defeats the purposes of a soft-close door hinge.

Antique Shaker: 3/5

Arctic White Shaker: 2/5

White Shaker: 4/5

Advantage: White Shaker

 

Drawer Slides

Just like before, the Arctic White shaker is at a disadvantage because it does not have a soft-close dampening mechanism for the drawer even though the Arctic White shaker cabinet drawer has an undermount so that the sliding is smooth.

The Antique Shaker and White Shaker are also mounted beneath the drawer to give it a gliding feeling whenever you close the drawer and the soft close mechanisms activate about two inches from the frame. However, there is friction rather than an easy glide if you close the drawer from full extension in both of these drawers; it’s more pronounced in the White Shaker so the advantage goes to the Antique Shaker.

Antique Shaker: 4/5

Arctic White Shaker: 2/5

White Shaker: 3.5/5

Advantage: Antique Shaker

 

Connecting Parts

While necessary fasteners like the screws and plates were provided in all of these cabinets, there seemed to be issues with most of these cabinets. The worst culprit is the Antique Shaker, where three of the screwheads broke off during assembly. While there were extra screws provided in the package, the fact there were extra screws made me worry I assumed that this might be an expected problem.

Another complication with these drawers is that the instructions don’t specify which screws or fasteners go to which section of the cabinet. This was especially bad with the White Shaker were some of these fasteners were similar in appearance so I needed to spend time classifying my screws so I did not “screw it up.”

The advantage goes to the Arctic White Shaker which had a few excess fasteners and they were less confusing to deal with during assembly.

Antique Shaker: 2/5

Arctic White Shaker: 3/5

White Shaker: 3/5

Advantage: Arctic White Shaker

 

Assembly and Support

Packaging

It is odd how very different in quality the Arctic White Shaker is from the Antique Shaker or the White Shaker in quality and much of it can be foretold in the packaging. The inconsistent packing in the Arctic White spoke to the lack of quality that was inside: Loose pieces and one of the larger panels arrived with a large gash, bad enough for someone to rightfully ask for a replacement.

Meanwhile, the Antique Shaker and the White Shaker were much better packaged with bubble wrap and styrofoam. Mechanisms like the drawer slides and hinges were packaged in their own boxes. Advantage goes to the White Shaker because they wrapped the finished door and frame carefully in its own package, knowing that the condition of their appearance is important.

Antique Shaker: 4/5

Arctic White Shaker: 1.5/5

White Shaker: 4.5/5

Advantage: White Shaker

 

Ease of Assembly

When doing these reviews, all similar cabinets could be assembled the same way, but I build the cabinet according to the instructions provided since that is how the customer would experience the assembly. In every single Kitchen Cabinet Depot Shaker cabinet, the instructions were a single page and tiny exploded diagrams. These are very minimal instructions, almost expecting the builder to already have some familiarity in building these base cabinets.

The other important part of the assembly process is making sure that the pieces fit as they are supposed to. While there were issues in assembly with the Antique Shaker with the broken screwheads mentioned earlier and for the Arctic White, a lack of indicator holes where to screw panels to each other, the White Shaker fared the best of these during assembly, with the indicators showing how to put these panels together, even with the lack of good instructions.

Antique Shaker: 2/5

Arctic White Shaker: 3/5

White Shaker: 4/5

Advantage: White Shaker

 

Conclusion

When looking at the three samples of these Kitchen Cabinet Depot shaker cabinets, even though these were the same style of cabinet, there was not much quality consistency among these. The Antique Shaker’s main asset was a better-quality cabinet box structure with better gliding drawers. The Arctic White Shaker underperformed compared to the other two but excelled in the appearance of the door finish, better storage space and better fasteners.

Of the three Shaker cabinets, the White Shaker edged out the other two cabinets, principally due to its better packaging, ease of assembly and higher marks on the overall appearance and finish of the cabinet, largely kept intact by the better packaging. It goes to show that a considerable amount of quality is predetermined by how well prepared these ready to assemble cabinets are in their shipped state.

Want more in-depth details of these Kitchen Cabinet Depot Shaker cabinets? Check out my reviews on the White Shaker, the Antique Shaker and the Arctic White Shaker here at RTA Cabinet Reviews!