Unless you have a "secret" cache of free wood and hardware, it would
be impossible to duplicate a plant build cabinet and come close to
their cost.

The finishing is the real killer in my opinion.

I think most of the average woodworkers can build a nice wall cabinet
with basic tools.

The doors present another problem.

A nice raised panel door while not difficult to build requires
some very accurate machined materials. These materials are not
easy to come by and not easy to produce in large numbers.

My kitchen is a fairly modest affair and it contains 53 raised
panel doors of various sizes. I could not imagine building 53
doors in a reasonable amount of time or where I would put them
when I was finished. Most pro's farm that step out completely.

That brings up another point, where do you put an entire seperate
kitchen in your shop ?

This has been beat to death on this list many times, but at the
end of the day it comes down to "I want to do this" compared to
"this makes no sense at all".

I have all the tools and a 1500 sqft shop.

I will be buying premium cabinets and doing the install
myself.





Chuck wrote:

I have one big question though. I'm not sure if it's cost effective to
build my own cabinets or to go out and buy some decent quality ready
made ones. As far as tools go I would have to buy a big router to
handle panel raising and either build or buy a "real" router table (I
am now using the Porter Cable entry level "table" with a PC 691).
Then, there is the cost of materials. My wife wants cherry and I know
it's not cheap. The cost of hardware is obscene and all the other wood
for drawers, shelves and carcasses will add up to a small fortune.