The false front is 5 7/8″ tall. The rails are 3″ wide, but your countertop installer can, and almost always does, cut into those cross rails to make room for the sink.

This is common and expected. The cross rails are only there to keep the cabinet square until the countertop is installed. Once the countertop is in place, the rails can be cut into as much as needed because they do not provide vertical support. The countertop will provide more than enough horizontal support once installed.

You can certainly miter-cut those corners if you want and if you have the ability to make a clean cut on site. That said, this can be risky. I personally would not trust most on-site table saws for this type of cut, as they can be a bit shaky and are known to produce less-than-perfect results. It also creates a more damage-sensitive corner, since you now have two very sharp edges meeting in what could be a high-traffic area. As long as you cover the base area with solid wood base molding, you should be good to go.

Unusual delivery charges to hard-to-access areas are rare, but those are costs we cannot cover. In the past, we have shipped pallets to islands and other unusual delivery locations within U.S. territories, where customers tried to use the free shipping policy to cover extremely expensive specialty delivery. Basically, they wanted us to hire someone with a boat to deliver the pallets directly to their door.

We have to set reasonable limits. In the past, some of these requests have even resulted in threats of negative reviews for “poor customer service,” even though the delivery request itself was unusual and outside the scope of standard freight service.

That is why our terms explain that odd or specialty charges are not covered. For example, in areas like Manhattan, local rules may require special crews, street coordination, traffic control, or specialized delivery trucks just to unload pallets. Those types of extraordinary costs are simply not something we can absorb under a free shipping policy.

In those situations, the customer can usually ship to an alternate address and then move the individual cabinets in smaller groups to the final destination. We rarely see this issue today because our freight carriers, FedEx Freight and R+L Freight, are very good at handling deliveries. However, the terms need to remain in place just in case an unusual delivery situation comes up.

What does the area look like to the left of the oven? Is there a window there? This is a tight area, but custom-sized cabinets will help you gain back as much storage space as possible.

There are not a ton of options here, but:

You could move the dishwasher to the right side of the sink, then install a three-drawer base where the dishwasher was originally. This would give you better access to pots and pan storage. The dishwasher should be a fairly simple switch since the drain and wall outlet are likely already in the sink opening anyway.

I don’t see any practical way to move the oven forward. It would likely create a void space behind the oven that would cause more issues than it solves, and it would reduce the usable square footage in this already tight space. Having the range step back is fine and works well, in my opinion.

Personally, I would keep the microwave hood. A new hood vent would help with ventilation, but then you would need to install the removed microwave somewhere else, likely on top of a countertop, which would reduce already valuable counter space.

Another option would be to go with an 18″ wide dishwasher and gain back some space for cabinets and storage. That, or delete the dishwasher altogether, but this is America and we love our dishwashers. Myself included.

I was just in Manhattan last weekend. Love NYC!