Todd Fatheree wrote:

We're sometime this year going to embark on a major addition to our home.
Part of that will include a completely new kitchen. For other items I've
built, mainly furniture, I've never looked at it as much as saving money
(which I'm sure I haven't) as I have at getting something exactly like I
want and the satisfaction of building something myself. However, I have
this sneaking suspicion that there's a lot of markup in kitchen cabinets and
that perhaps there is not only the opportunity to make something the way I
want, but also to save some bucks. So, I'm wondering if anyone who has
built kitchen cabinets ever broke down the cost to buy vs. the cost to make
(assuming, of course, that your own time has no value ;-). SWMBO isn't
exactly on board with my little project, but if I can same some money on
cabinets, I might be able to trade her for a fancy schmancy fridge. I've
built cabinets for the shop in exactly the same way I would build base and
upper kitchen cabinets, so I'm confident I could make them.

todd

When we built a couple years ago, I thought about building the kitchen
cabinets. I looked at prices from mail order outfits, including those
that supplied melamine or ply boxes and you add the fronts. As far a
price goes, I could save a bit just based on the wood and hardware costs
(the prefab boxes were probably a wash if you don't mind melamine). The
major difference was time. If I build them, it's going to take a fair
amount of time (I'm basically lazy). Plus I had a bunch of built ins
for books and electronics and the shop cabinets that I needed. We took
a vote and it was 2-zip to go with some Orange Borg cabinets. They
proved to be quite satisfactory (self installed) and LOML could unpack
all the cooking stuff the day we moved in. :-)

my opinion only,
jo4hn