Any Cabinet shop guys

[Rick Fisher]

Hey..

I am curious.. On a regular kitchen for a regular new home, how much of the cost is materials, and how much is labor ?

If a Kitchen is $15,000

How would the money get allocated ?

(1) Profit
(2) Installation
(3) Counter top
(4) Finishing
(5) Doors
(6) Drawers
(7) Labor
(8) Materials and hardware (for boxes)

I am really interested in the building of boxes.. Assuming a company buys its doors and drawers.. how much of the whole job is the cost of the boxes? and what is the cost of building the boxes .. is it 50% Labor and 50% materials ?

[Karl Brogger]

Hey..

I am curious.. On a regular kitchen for a regular new home, how much of the cost is materials, and how much is labor ?

If a Kitchen is $15,000

How would the money get allocated ?

(1) Profit
(2) Installation
(3) Counter top
(4) Finishing
(5) Doors
(6) Drawers
(7) Labor
(8) Materials and hardware (for boxes)

I am really interested in the building of boxes.. Assuming a company buys its doors and drawers.. how much of the whole job is the cost of the boxes? and what is the cost of building the boxes .. is it 50% Labor and 50% materials ?

I never actually break anything down like that. I've done it as kind of a hit & miss approach to my pricing. As a rough number I figure I've got about a 30% profit margin, BUT that is real flexible as some things are out of my hands that raise the cost of the job such as painted/distressed/burnished vs. just a natural finish. On the other hand things that take more time like raised panel/inset doors means more of the end bill is spent in my shop. A natural finish is costing me about 27%, (I hire out my finishing). I try to keep most of the basic materials in stock for box work & drawers as well, and I honestly haven't kept track of what gets used on each individual job. As I don't have room to stock material for doors and face frames, I order it per job.

Things to consider, what are the boxes going to be built out of? 5/8" Melamine (cheap), or 3/4" VC cherry (spendy)?
Are you going to use backs? What out of? Will you require nailers?

Starting out you can not keep track of the hours it takes. Sounds dumb right? I spent alot of time in the shop doing with out, (and I still do), certain pieces of equipment so some things just take longer.

There are far too many things that come into account to make just a generic breakdown of things. I've been underbid on jobs by as much as $7k on a $25k remodel. Cabinetry is not apples and apples.

It takes some time to fine tune pricing. Chances are that you are going to start out way to low. It also takes some time to dial in how you want to build things. I started off buying doors, building cheesy baltic birch drawers, with melamine interiors. Things have evolved that my only drawer option is dovetailed with undermount slides, and I do all birch plywood interiors. The reasoning that the margins are a hell of alot better with a higher end product, and there is much less competition. In the case of my demographic, there's only a few shops that doing things in a similar manner.

I probably haven't answered anything.

[Joe Jensen]

Rick, at least here is the states, there are companies who will custom make the box parts with a CNC and ship them to you knocked down. I've read that they they don't cost much more than the materials alone. Personally I enjoy making the doors, and not so much the boxes.

[Joe Chritz]

I always do all the labor on any projects I bid so I am not paying extra to other workers. Doesn't change to overall labor rate but it does put more in my pocket at the expense of slower overall return times.

Using a 15K bid as a ball park is tough because a 15K kitchen with ply sides and vertical laminate interiors will have twice or three times as much material as a 15K M2 melamine interior bid. Plus hardware like drawer runners can vary by a large margin.

For an example, a comparable box store bid on my personal kitchen (small in cabinet numbers) was just shy of 9K. I had just over 2.5K in materials. That is with better hinges (blum compact 33's) and mid road slides (Kv8400). Make those blumotion under mounts and you add another couple hundred, same if you add soft close on doors, etc. At my costs for hardwood, changing from flat sawn oak to cherry adds several hundred or more alone.

I always sit down with a sketch, a rough cut list and material list and price out everything. Then a wild guess (tempered through doing a couple) on time times labor rate and there is the estimate.

If you will be doing many and running a business you really need to keep detailed records of how long stuff takes you, materials involved, etc to develop a feel for it. I'm not sure it ever is really accurate, you win some, loose some.

Joe

[Harvey Melvin Richards]

Back when I had a full time shop I could guestimate that 1/3 was material and 2/3 was labor. Later on I was working for a large store fixture manufacturer. Their fixtures were less complex and more quick and dirty. They figured the opposite, 2/3 material and 1/3 labor.