Cabinetry and Your Home

The cabinets you choose for your new home or remodel project will have an immense effect on the overall cost of your construction project. Whether your choice of custom built cabinets or out of the box ready to install. The true cost of your cabinets come from the type of materials used to produce them, custom cabinets are usually made from a higher quality material as compared to your box cabinets.

The type of materials used is strictly customer preference and the type of finish you want. A painted finish can use a lower grade material to produce where a stained finish requires a much higher quality material. This is your first consideration, the next is do you want all the bells and whistles as in soft drawer slides, dovetail drawers, solid wood doors, drawer fronts and trim details. The type of finish you require is also a major factor in the cost of new cabinets, i.e. glaze, painted or stain and standard or distressed. The fancier you get the more they cost. This list can go on and on, but you get the jest of what I’m saying, the more options the longer they take to produce and the higher the cost.

When choosing the type of cabinets you want take into consideration that not all cabinets are created equal, a custom cabinet shop will come out to your new home or remodel project and take exact measurements and then give you a drawing of what the cabinets will look like, most box type cabinets are already manufactured to specific dimensions. These dimensions almost always require you to install filler pieces, these are used to cover cracks between the cabinets and the walls, and custom built cabinets are usually cut to fit.

We will now move on to what type of construction prefers, you have basically two types European, and face frame. The face frame type of construction will show wood between the drawers and doors, the standard is 1 ½” although if using a custom cabinet shop you may actually specify this dimension such as 2”-2 ½”. The European type of construction will not show any space between the drawers and doors and in most cases the doors and drawers will be recessed. This is strictly a customer preference although the European style is usually less expensive.

  As mentioned earlier the doors and drawers play a major role in the cost of cabinets, a standard shaker door or raised panel door are the most popular right and are also the most cost effective. You can upgrade the cabinet doors to include glass or a variety of custom trim details, this is where the cost escalates. There are literally hundreds of variations for your doors and drawer fronts. The type of cabinet drawers you choose are going to be either the standard type or a dovetail drawer, many new home owner are choosing the dovetail drawers because of the more sturdy construction method in how they are put together. If you are not sure what a dovetail drawer below you will see an example.  We will also show examples of european style cabinets and face frame cabinets.

This is an example of a dovetail  drawer

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This is an example of European also known as frameless cabinets. Note there are no spaces between the doors or drawers.

   This is an example of a faceframe cabinet.

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The next factor in the cost of your cabinetry will be the type of hardware you desire, again as with everything else you can spend as little or as much as you want to. There are way to many variations on the different types of hardware to even try to go into them so I am going to take the easy way you and just give a link to a company that specializes in them. You can find suggestions  and samples for cabinet hardware.

I hope you have found this information helpful and have a new understanding in selecting cabinetry in your new home.