What to Check Before You Buy Black Vinyl Windows
October 9, 2026
TLC Elite carries three cabinet lines. Vision covers builder grade work, Faircrest steps up with more range, and JSI has the largest catalog and the most options. Cabinets get ordered for each project rather than kept on the shelf, and lead time usually runs about two to three weeks.
Most people shop cabinets the same way. Look at door style photos, pick a color, compare prices.
That works right up until the kitchen is finished.
The thing that decides how you feel about your cabinets in five years is not the door style. It is which line they came from, and whether that line suited the job. A rental turnover and a kitchen you plan to keep should not buy the same cabinet.
Here is how the three lines differ, and what else goes into a cabinet order.
Door styles repeat across brands. A white shaker door looks close to the same whether it cost a little or a lot.
What changes between lines is everything behind the door. How many sizes and configurations exist. How many finishes. How much the line can bend when the kitchen has an odd corner or a run that does not land on a standard box.
That last part is where projects get stuck. A line with fewer options works fine in a simple kitchen. Drop it into a room with angles and it starts costing you filler strips and compromises.
Picture a wall that measures 94 inches. Standard boxes come in fixed widths. A line with plenty of sizes gets you close and hides the difference. A line with fewer sizes leaves you with a four inch gap to fill, and that filler sits right where everyone looks.
None of that shows up in a photo. It shows up on install day.
So the useful question is not which door do I like. It is how much room does this kitchen need me to have.
TLC Elite carries three cabinets lines, and they sort out roughly by how many options each one gives you.
Vision is builder grade. Fewer styles, fewer configurations, built to do the job without extras.
That is not a knock. Plenty of kitchens do not need extras, and this is the line TLC Elite has carried the longest. Most of the door styles shown on our cabinets page come from it.
Best for: rentals, flips, spec homes, simple layouts, and budgets that have to hold.
Faircrest is a step up, and it has range inside the line. There is a lower end and a higher end. The higher end is not custom, but it gives you more to work with than builder grade does.
Best for: homeowners who want more door and finish options without moving to the largest catalog, and contractors who want one line that can cover different price points across jobs.
JSI has the biggest catalog of the three. It runs closer to custom without being custom cabinetry, which means more sizes, more finishes, and more ability to solve an awkward layout.
Best for: kitchens with layout problems, homeowners set on a particular look, and projects where the kitchen is the centerpiece of the house.
Samples of all three sit at the Dawsonville showroom. Ten minutes with them side by side settles the question faster than a website will.
No. Cabinets get ordered for each project.
That catches some people off guard, so plan around it. Lead time usually runs about two to three weeks. It can shift with the line and how busy the season is, so confirm it when you order rather than working from a number you heard once.
Two to three weeks is not long in remodel terms. It is long enough to stall a kitchen if nobody accounted for it. Make the cabinet decision early, before demo rather than after.
Getting them to the job is flexible. TLC Elite can deliver, or the cabinet company can ship straight to the site. Contractors running several houses at once tend to prefer the direct route, since it keeps a kitchen’s worth of boxes from passing through a shop twice. Say which one you want when the order goes in.
Both are available, and this is a real decision rather than a formality.
Flat packed costs less and moves through faster. The boxes arrive unassembled and somebody puts them together.
Assembled costs more. The cabinet company builds them at the factory and they show up ready to set.
Most people choose assembled, and the reason is time. Building a full kitchen’s worth of boxes is slower and fussier than it sounds, and mistakes are hard to undo once glue is involved.
One builder decided to save the money and do it himself. It cost him more than a week and a lot of frustration, and he has not gone that route since.
That is not an argument against flat packed. If you have the time, the space, and the patience, the savings are real. Just be honest about which of those three you actually have.
Worth sorting out before you plan the rest of the kitchen.
Accessories come through the cabinet companies. Pull out trash bins, Lazy Susans, drawer organizers, and similar pieces can ride along on the same order.
Cabinet hardware does not. Knobs and pulls are on you.
Countertops are not part of this either. TLC Elite does not supply them.
That leaves a clean line. Cabinets and the pieces that go inside them come from the same building materials counter. The surface on top and the metal on the front come from somewhere else. Plan those separately so they are not the reason the kitchen sits unfinished.
TLC Elite can design a kitchen layout. There is a fee for it.
Here is what that covers. Someone goes out and measures the space. Those measurements go into design software that produces a rendering of the finished kitchen. It takes real time, sometimes most of a day.
If you already know what you want and have your own measurements, you do not need this. Plenty of contractors walk in with a plan and place the order.
If you are standing in an empty room with no idea how the cabinets should fall, the layout is worth paying for. Ordering the wrong boxes costs considerably more than the design does.
Bring measurements if you have them. Photos of the room help. A rough budget helps more than people expect, because it points to which line to look at first.
Then come see the samples. Vision, Faircrest, and JSI sit next to each other at the Dawsonville showroom, and seeing them together does more than an afternoon of scrolling.
While you are there, it is worth asking about the rest of the room. Flooring and trim get ordered from the same place, and a kitchen goes together better when those decisions happen together.
No. Cabinets are ordered for each project rather than kept on the shelf. Lead time usually runs about two to three weeks, though that can shift with the line and the season. It is worth confirming at the time you order.
Three. Vision is builder grade with fewer styles and configurations. Faircrest steps up and has range inside the line. JSI has the largest catalog and the most options, closer to custom without being custom cabinetry. Samples of all three are at the Dawsonville showroom.
Both are available. Flat packed costs less and ships faster, but someone has to build the boxes. Assembled cabinets arrive from the factory ready to set. Most people choose assembled because putting together a full kitchen takes longer than it sounds.
