My house is under construction, should I wait to order kitchen cabinets?

Q. I'm hoping you can settle a question that has come up between bidding contractors. Two have told me that you don't order cabinets until the framing is done.
This will add a six-week delay to the project. The contractors told me they'll fill that time with other things. A third contractor has said no decent cabinet place should be able to order the cabinets off the (architect's) plans. What has your experience been? Do people order their cabinets off the architect's drawing or wait for the framing to be done?

A. I hope your contractor was specific about why kitchen companies don't use base plans for ordering cabinets. Having been the in-house architect for a kitchen distributor, I've seen cabinet companies use the architect's plan, adding specific detail, material notes and model numbers before sending off to be fabricated. Specific cabinetry in your plans is based on design meetings and the needs you expressed. Just to tell you that "no decent cabinet place should be able to order the cabinets off the plans" (the architect drew up) is misleading, because it gives the false impression that the plans cannot be followed. The statement was made without recognizing that further down the road, when any one of hundreds of companies is narrowed down to the one you choose, that company will use its own model numbers, note format, details and dimensions to send the cabinets into the shop for fabrication. You'd be wasting money to have cabinets detailed generically by the architect, only to be redrawn by the company you finally select, months later.
Your plans can be used by the manufacturer's drawing staff to dimension, note and assign model numbers for such additional interior items as hinge and drawer hardware type, exterior and interior finish, joining type (glued, screwed, dovetailed or a combination of those techniques), racks and inserts. The manufacturer's showroom representative will usually redraw the plan at one-half-inch-per-foot scale. Beware of the "guru of kitchen design" who will try changing your ideas without necessarily knowing the critical location of columns and beams, windows, or what is related above or below the kitchen.