Getting lots of replies .

We are doing a bit of a remodel to our house. This includes turning a
room that wasn't a kitchen into a kitchen - so our old kitchen is in
service until the new one is complete.

I went to one of the high-end cabinet makers in town with plan in hand
- as created by SWMBO. This is a cherry shaker design. He didn't due
a detailed bid, but he guestimated about $12K - $14K for the cabs and
another $2k for installation. We also went to a couple of the custom
kitchen retailers that sold Dynasty and Omega and they came in about
$1K or $2K cheaper. I didn't price cabs at the borg, but I didn't see
anything there that I really wanted in my kitchen. I expect that they
would have come in a bit under $10K.

I costed out the materials using prefinished maple ply for the carcases
to lessen finishing requirements and using Waterlox for all the cherry
bits. My costing included the blum tandem full extension undermount
slides that run close to $30/pair and a few other pricey gadgets like a
$150 mixer stand thingy.

Anyway, my total cost came to about $4500. I probably cannot build
cabs as good as the custom guy would have (I've seen his work at a
friends house). But I know that my cabs will be better than anything I
can get at the borg and anything that I saw from Dynasty or Omega. I
figure that I will be saving about $8K - $10K which will go right to a
nice new Wolf range (to replace the Magic Chef that has been destroying
my food for the last 10 years) and granite countertops.

Building the cabs is not difficult, BUT it is a lot of work and is
taking me quite a bit of time - ymmv. In my case, I am building all of
the doors and drawers. This has certainly added a lot to the overall
time I have spent on the project. I think I have spent more time
prepping materials than I have actually building stuff.

I am building face frame cabinets using the methods described in Jim
Tolpin's _Building Traditional Kitchen Cabinets_

Have a go at it. But be prepared to spend all of your weekends and
evenings building cabinets for the next month or two or more...


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