Kitchen Cabinet Cost per Lineal Foot?

[Martin Wasner]

Most of the stuff I do these days is off the wall, and around here at least finding installers that can follow instructions as to how and what order things are supposed to be assembled is a problem. I end up with a lot of hours in these projects, and it is not worth the stress of counting on someone else.

One thing I am extremely jealous of is that you have capable finishers around that can take that off the table. I would love that, especially as I no longer have a booth. But no dice. Hate finish.

I am fortunate that I have been introduced to the people I have been. Both installers and finishers. The installers are used to my product, so they know what's going on. The two different guys that do my finishing may or may not be blowing smoke up my tailpipe, but they both say they like dealing with my cabinets the most. I hate finishing, and I haven't done it in so long it'd be a complete disaster if I started doing it myself. They are really good, both at initial finishing, and following through with touch ups and repairs for the inevitable ding on site.

I am trying to sort out adding onto my building already so one of my finishers would be leasing space from me. He'd be separate, but RIGHT there. It'd make my life so much better not having to load to go there, unloading there, loading there, unloading here, staging, and then loading again to go to the job. Not a big deal with a couple of cabinets, but when the enclosed trailer is stressing your Tetris skills and is loaded nose to tail, wall to wall, and floor to ceiling. It's a giant PIA. Where I'd add on for him isn't ideal, but flopping a cabinet onto a cart and rolling it 80' to the other end of the building is way cooler than popping the door when it's -30ºF outside. Plus things always get dinged in transport, without fail.

My relationship to one of my finisher's actually got me my best account. One of my installers, (who wasn't at the time we used to work together at a shop), got me another really good account.

It has been interesting watching you and your business grow over the years. You have done well my friend!

Larry

Stop it Larry, you're making me blush. And thank you.

[Larry Edgerton]

I just got approval on a project last night you would like.

Its a cabinet job, but I have to build the house as well, sort of. The house was designed by an architect for a steel fabrication company to utilize steel and set on a 12'x12' pod. It is was absolutely the ugliest thing you ever saw with the stupidest interior layout I have ever run across. It looked like a large version of one of those temp trailers you see on a sleazy car lot.

The owner has fabricated steel assemblies for me on various projects and called me in to see what I could make of it. So I thought about it for a while and did some drawings. It involved a lot of curves which are hard to visualize so I made a model yesterday and met with the owner. He had an idea that he wanted to make a statement about his company, a fairly large one that makes ships for the Department of the Interior and a lot of industrial scrubbers that get shipped all over the world. But it got all screwed up and he had given up on it. The house is sitting inside a building.

So... I scrapped everything besides the steel structure basically and turned it into some thing out of the ordinary. Curves inside and out, curved roofs all around, and the coolest thing, it is now going to be a tree fort. A 60' long tree fort with a catwalk out from the bluff it will be set on with a crane. So when you walk out of the house on to the deck/catwalk that goes all the way around the house you will be up in the trees, front side forty feet off of the ground. Curved cabinets of course, might as well make it a challange.

I will post a pic of the model later today.

[Bradley Gray]

Congrats, Larry - Look forward to pics

[Jim Becker]

Larry, that sounds like an interesting project. Yesterday, I read an article about a company in India that historically has built more traditional structures for apartments to support the huge demand for housing for folks (many of them singles) who are entering the professional/technical workforce. They recently started to utilize "double wide" short shipping containers as the base for creating ~200 sq ft residences and substantially reduced the build time over traditional structures. If I can find that article again, I'll post a link. The photos of the interior are pretty interesting to see...you'd never know it was a "container". One thing that was even more interesting was how the space could function as living space as well as business/startup space with the bed flipping up and becoming a white board and certain table surfaces transforming into workstations/desks.

[Julie Moriarty]

Sadly, if you build them yourself, with less than production equipment, and pay yourself and your shop a mere $5 an hour, you'll be in for far more than the cost of home center cabs. It may be fun, and rewarding, but even with $5 an hour in labor it'll cost a fortune.

It's just weighing the fun vs the time away from your family and the fact that it will take perhaps 10x as long. Not to mention but picking all the things you'll wish were different or better.

That depends... I have priced the box store cabinets and compared them to the cost of building cabinets myself. DIY for me is far cheaper and the quality of the materials is better. One time I priced my labor and IIRC it was over $25/hr. against the box store price, which had MDF in it.

Right now I'm building a highly customized kitchen island. The "design team" can't make up their mind so it's taking forever. As for material costs, it's about $1300 and labor is through the roof. But if I had it made by a custom shop, the cost would probably be prohibitive.

Of course if you factor in tools, you'd have to make a lot of cabinets and put in a lot of hours before breaking even.

In the end, a love for woodworking and the satisfaction gained from it can make DIY cabinets seem extremely cheap.