Do custom cabinets really cost this much?

[Ronak Shah]

I'd check a cabinet outlet for doors - The one in Portland, OR has pallets of Maple, Cherry & Hickory doors for $3 each (!!!!) I almost considered buying some for the raw wood strips. For example, ripping 2 2" x .75" x 60" pieces off the door for just $3.

[SwingKing]

gugie, funny you should mention matching stain colors with KitchenMaid. I'm close to pulling the trigger on materials for a built-in cabinet/bookshelf combo, and I had considered buying the cabinets from HD but thought it would be too difficult to match the color and finish.

Did you just get and use the matching stain from them and finish with poly? From the catalog it looks like they apply something (a glaze?) to even out the wood color/texture and then apply stain and finish. Sounded complicated and I wasn't sure I could match it for the upper bookshelf units.

-- Ken

[kmk]

Ronak Shah: Can you post the outlet name here? thanks

[gabedad]

you may want to look on craigslist for cabinets - people are always selling them.


www.craigslist.org

[gabedad]

go to the right hand side to find your local area

[jondurst]

I'm just in the process of starting my kitchen remodel and have shopped around quite a bit. We ended up going with custom cabinets since after a long search we found that for what we wanted, the box cabinets from Home Depot and several other vendors actually cost more by the time you figured any of the upgrades to get them near the quality of a custom. The other folks are right though, the cheapest and most rewarding in my opinion would be to build them yourself. I would have liked to but time and shop constraints shut that one down. Good luck in your search but definitely check with a cabinet maker before assuming that they're more expensive, and make sure your're comparing apples to apples.

[jAngiel]

www.kitchenyourway.com seems to have pretty decent prices. My BIL is pretty impressed, but he plans on driving down and picking them up so no shipping costs involved.

[Russianwolf]

Also avoid stained cherry, as it ages it gets too dark since the cherry darkens naturally.

Next door neighbor is in the kitchen business. Said he did a cherry kitchen a couple years ago that the woman loved. She came back for more cabinets a bit later and he came and installed them to her horror. The color "didn't match". he said "call me in six months". She called back later to say she couldn't tell which ones were which anymore.

[JimD]

The door is pretty simple to make but you will need a horizontal panel raising bit to do the curved part. That means you need either a variable speed router or a separate speed control. A mid-sized router will make these doors. I have used my PC 690 but currently have a bit bigger motor Ryobi 500 in my router table. I can't tell the profile of the panel raising bit or the cope and stick around the panel from the picture but MLCS has a wide selection. I like the stacked sets. I use a sled with the bottom of 1/2 inch baltic birch and only have to make a small height adjustment between the cope (for the ends of the horizontal pieces and done on the sled) and the stick (the inside edge of all the pieces and the full length of the vertical members).

Cherry is the most expensive wood at my supplier right now - about $7 per board foot (I am not counting the figured stuff which is more regardless of the species). A 2 foot by 4 foot door would include 8 board feet of cherry or about $60 in materials (you will have some waste). If you made the rest of the cabinet in solid wood, it would be maybe another $90. Cherry plywood would be less but I don't know how much less. Even with solid wood, you would have about $150 in one cabinet in just the wood. Not cheap but not $1000 either. The difference will get you a router that can take 1/2 inch shank bits, the plywood to make a nice router table, and everything else you need with money to spare.

I made a complete kitchen in our Pennsylvania house. The carsases were red oak plywood from the big box stores and the doors were solid oak from a local supplier (I made the doors, I bought the wood). Shelves were solid wood - a cheap import from the big box stores I haven't seen recently - looked a lot like luan. The drawers were solid maple or beech (I used both). I saved a bunch of money, had fun, and LOML liked the result. I also made a kitchenette for the basement in our current house and the bathroom cabinets for the basement. The boxes are melamine particle board and I made glass and raised panel doors of softwood (to keep it inexpensive). The doors have a pickled finish. We like the looks and it was really cheap. I may end up replacing the kitchen cabinets but not real soon. They are functional but I know I could do better.

Kitchen cabinets are easier than nice furniture. Doors are the hardest but also I find them the most fun. One thing you can do when you make the doors yourself is finish the panels before glueup (I also do the inside of the frame except for the joints). That keeps you from having an unfinished edge of a panel show up in the winter when the humidity is lowest. You might want to practice on a shop cabinet door out of softwood but it is not very difficult with a good table saw (like the BT3100) and a router table (really does not need to be much more than a decent mid-sized router in a sink cutout with some legs and a board for a fence).

One of my hardwood supplies sells everything planned and the other one sells all the 4x4 planned. For cabinet doors, you need the 4x4 (about 13/16 planned thickness). It's nice to be able to run the boards through your own planner to make sure they are all the same thickness and it will save you some sanding to be able to do this but you don't have to have a planner. If you don't have a planner, you will have to sand the joints a bit more with a random orbit sander to get the joints flush. Not a big deal.

Jim

[lateott]

I made a complete kitchen in our Pennsylvania house.
Jim

Jim, if you are still reading this thread I would love to learn more about your project. About how big was your kitchen in dimensions or square feet? How long did it take to make everything? Were you working on it full time, or evenings and weekends to work around a day job?

As we contemplate a home addition that includes a kitchen remodel I am looking for places that I can do work and thereby save $$$. I work full time and I feel like I could take on a project of this scope, but LOML is not entirely confident of that...

It sounds like most of the time required and most of the dollars saved (by do-it-yourself) would be on the doors and drawers vs. the carcasses.

[havighurst]

gugie, funny you should mention matching stain colors with KitchenMaid. I'm close to pulling the trigger on materials for a built-in cabinet/bookshelf combo, and I had considered buying the cabinets from HD but thought it would be too difficult to match the color and finish.

Did you just get and use the matching stain from them and finish with poly? From the catalog it looks like they apply something (a glaze?) to even out the wood color/texture and then apply stain and finish. Sounded complicated and I wasn't sure I could match it for the upper bookshelf units.

-- Ken

I had to match some stain and I went to my local Sherwin Williams store and they spent a lot of time on it and got it right. You may want to check with them or another high end paint store about matching stain.