Well, what's your woodworking ability and experience? If you've already got the tools and skills, it will almost definitely be worth your while to make the cabinets. If you're willing to embrace the learning curve and make mistakes and take much longer than a cabinet company, it could still be worth it.

A sheet of plywood runs about $45 at Lowe's, and you can get 4 cabinet sides out of a sheet. Drawer slides and hinges and hardware will vary widely by brand and features, so make sure you're comparing apples with apples. Light-load drawer slides will be about $8/pair while heavy duty Blumotion soft close slides could be $50/pair or more.

One compromise is to build the cabinet boxes yourself (basic woodworking equipment and skills should be sufficient to build a good-quality box) and purchase the doors and drawers from a company online. I don't have any specific recommendations, but search google and gardenweb for companies.

If you're not sure if you're up to the task, try building something boxy like a toybox or a window seat or bookshelves to see how you do.

"We are thinking for the same amount of money we could make cabinets that are much nicer. Has anybody priced the difference"

This is just about true for any type consumer good/product as long as you value your time at $0 an hour.

You can sew your own dress or shirt cheaper than you can buy one, fix your own car or truck for less than Mr. Goodwrench, you can even grow your own food for pennies. If you're this sort of person , check a book out of the library on cabinet making and go get busy.

No secrets here, the more value added to the item and people handling it before it gets to you increases the price. So, eliminating the middle men and processing and TAXES along the way will put money back in your pocket.

Having said that, and assuming you have the time and skill to do this you are going to need some equipment and plenty of space to work in. Have you got those ? A saw to process the sheetgoods into usable sized panels is going to cost $500 +/-, and you can figure another $500 - $1500 for the other tools and supplies just to get you ready to make some dust. Those are entry level to middle of the road equipment prices too. You'll also have finishing to contend with. Hand painting or staining doesn't give the factory finish most people are accustomed to, so keep that in mind too.

Still gun ho? Maybe you should just consider assembly? Order the carcass/ boxes from a box supplier and doors and panels from a supplier that specializes in that. Buy your hinges and drawers + drawer bodies form other specialty suppliers and assemble the stuff yourself. This will allow you to need less space and keep tool acquisition to a minimum.

We had most of the tools, but decided that due to the scope of our remodel that we'd be best served by using IKEA boxes and hardware and we had our fronts custom made in premium quarter sawn oak. I was very specific in the wood that I wanted for drawer/door fronts and it was very expensive to buy. We still have some finishing touches to do, but are thrilled with the results and our cost came in at under 5K. part of the reason we did this was not the building of the cabinets but the finishing, DH was adamant that to be perfect, he needed a dustless pure environment... which we do not have. (he has a large shop and we have a big yard but very difficult to secure the perfect finishing environment) I will admit that he does fall on the side of extreme caution and overkill... but we are delighted with our decision and the results.

Not to mention the two year learning curve to master the equipment and the two years to actually make and finish something you wouldn't mind actually hanging on the walls of your home. As Antss said, it only works out to be cheaper if you value your time at nothing aqnd actually like woodworking as a constant lifestyle.

It might be worth it if what you want is something unique that you cannot obtain with ready made cabinets, or if you just enjoy the process.

We wanted to keep and re-use our 80+ year old original gumwood cabinets, with a changed layout and new boxes/storage. We could never have afforded to pay someone to take this on, and frankly doubt anyone would. We're retired and this was a "hobby project" (but with a lot of sheer hard work and anxiety) for DH and me. We wanted something we didn't think we could get any other way so we had something of a mission to do this restoration that was the driving motivator.

It has taken a year. We are pleased but we also are living with a lot of little compromises, and it has been both fun and very tough. We saved a great deal of money by not gutting and buying new cabinets -- something that matters greatly but was not the primary objective in taking on the gumwood restoration.

My opinion is that it is probably not worth doing unless you have some reason other than financial.

Have you checked into ready-to-assemble cabinets online? Do a search for "RTA cabinets" and you'll find dozens of companies that will ship you all-wood cabinets in hundreds of different finishes and configurations. Then you'll only need to put the pieces together. It'll save you quite a bit off retail. We decided to do that because the price of the particleboard cabinets (installed) was going to be almost the same as the price of all-wood RTA ones. And we were getting the particleboard ones cheap ($4,500 for a 18 x 13 kitchen). We wanted wood to keep the option of refinishing/ repainting them years down the road. We haven't done this yet,so can't tell you how it turned out, but it seems pretty straightforward, and you can order a sample door or a single cabinet to check on quality and finish.

To answer some of your questions, we have the skills & tools required for this job. And as far as the time required, my husband left his job last August to go back to school and take his teaching degree. He is finnished in two weeks and will have all summer before he can start working again as a teacher. With his not having any income for the past year, we are at a point where any saved money is worth the extra effort. Hubby is a fantatic wood worker - he builds boats & paddles in his sparetime (white water kayaks, canoes, etc.), so I think he can handle some boxes. We would like buy the doors.

I would be interested in buying RTA boxes separate from the doors if I knew the quality was worth it...

Also - I get the impression from some of these posts that the poster was more interested in making fun of the inquiry then helping. I don't think that is meeting the intent & spirit of these forums.

Thank you to those who treated the question with respect.

There are a number of folks here who have made their own cabinets; hopefully someone will speak up with personal experience. We customized a set of recycled cabs to fit our space, which did require a lot of DIY cabinetry. It was great fun, albeit stressful if only because we paid as we went and it was a constant financial balancing act (nice lumber is pricy!).

If you already own the workshop, the fundamental skills and the woodworking tools, AND you have adequate time for the project, I think you stand every chance of achieving a unique and gorgeous kitchen space. There are some good books on kitchen cabinetry that are available at Amazon, libraries, etc, to aid in your quest.

When you're ready with your plan, you can post your kitchen layout here and the resident layout gurus will give you their genius input to tweak it into perfection.

What kind of wood and cabinet style are you considering?

I think the original question didn't include pertinent information. It should have been something like ''what about building your own cabinets, for someone who is a skilled woodworker, has the necessary tools/space, and has a summer free''. You might have gotten different answers, or answers you considered more useful.

A forum is not like normal conversation. If we were talking over coffee, you'd say ''how 'bout hubs making our cabs'', I'd say ''can he?'', you'd say ''sure he can handle some boxes, he makes wood kayaks and we have all the tools, plus he's got all summer free'', then I'd say ''sounds good, what specific questions do you have?''. It would be a 30 sec conversation. On the forum, because it takes several hours or a day to complete each back-and-forth, completeness and wording of the initial question is a lot more important, so as to get you answers that are helpful and were worth the responder's time.

So, now that we're there - what specific questions do you have, about hubby building the cabinets?

Thanks circuspeanut and johnliu, those were helpful posts. My specific questions are around the pricing of materials necessary to make cabinets. I'm wondering if anybody has found that when they get down to buying the plywood/finnish nails/glue/hinges/doors/drawer glides/paint/extra accessories, do you end up with a product that is:
1) more affordable then purchased cabinets that are comparable in quality

or

2) better quality cabinets then purcahsed ones that would be comparable in price

I know instinct would say yes, but we have done some DIY projects that in the end didn't save much after all the material was bought.

Well, if you have all the tools already, then you just need to price out the materials. It will certainly be considerably less than having someone else make them. This is very specialized labor and only a tiny segment of the population has the skill and experience to do it properly.

For materials, if your husband is already an experienced woodworker, he should know where to price them out - (hint - not at a big box store.) You really don'y need to guess - just go get the actual prices from a local lumber yard.

I can't offer any helpful advice as we are the least handy people in the world, but if you decide to go that route, I'd love to follow your progress! I wish I had that sort of skill.

Funny, I posted about my DH making our kitchen cabinets quite some time ago...got many of the same responses you did, htracey. I try to keep my questions short and too the point, so I don't include every detail of my husband's experience, his woodworking shop and tools, his spare time.

My husband enjoys woodworking. He does not have too much spare time, but his woodworking shop is attached to his office/warehouse, and he has a few of his employees making some cuts and doing some sanding. It has actually worked out nicely because he needs to make sure they keep their hours, plus they are learning an additional skill.

We were going to buy the doors, but after pricing them, we got discouraged! So, we are doing shaker style doors. The kitchen will be white, but we are leaving the inside of the boxes the natural wood color, just finished and coated. He is putting some of the cabinets, that will have glass doors. I am going to have all sorts of pullouts, a lazy susan in the corner cabinet, and island with a gas cooktop...we are doing the perimeter counters in butcherblock, probably from ikea. The island will be something different...maybe stainless steel, maybe a really busy granite...maybe even tile.

Anyway, I am very appreciative that my husband can do this kind of stuff. He is really amazing and takes pride in his work. I really want nice appliances so we are spending money on that. Of course, I need to find something at a scratch and dent sale...gonna post a question about appliances in a sec!

Anyway, good luck and I would also love to see your progress! If you have any questions for my DH, go ahead and ask and I will relay the questions to him! Although maybe you will want to see the finished kitchen before you take any advice from him, LOL! *WE* might be asking *YOU* some questions.

htracey- I will be making my own cabinets with my husband. I agree that a lot of what I've seen available for purchase, seems not as well made. I also agree that you could make much better quality cabinets using better materials and top of the line hardware for less out of pocket money.

We primarily make furniture for ourselves and for family. From raw materials and our own from scratch designs. We don't do woodworking for a living, but have been told many times that we could/should and maybe someday we will when we are tired of our chosen field.

Of course it will be work to get it done as pointed out by so many previous posters. In my experience if you want to accomplish something whether it be making furniture, earning money, growing a garden, sewing an article of clothing it all takes work and being inconvenienced at some point and I think you know that. But to me, IT IS worth my time to do it myself. My time is not worthless to me and neither are the pieces of furniture I see around my house built with my own 2 and hubs 2 hands! It is a great sense of accomplishment and pride.

I would encourage you to do the entire thing yourselves, doors, drawers, and all! Why just make the boxes? Your husband can make canoes for crying out loud!

I think you would get much better feedback on a woodworking forum for this type of thing. For example a forum such as the one on fine woodworking, where most members have actually made their own cabinets.

The woodworking forum here is also a good resource.

Here is a link that might be useful: Woodworking forum

As Billl said, it's really an exercise in pricing the materials. A cabinet shop, or factory, can obviously buy materials much more cheaply than you, but the cost of cabinets is mostly determined by the shop rate. Labor is part of that, but not all. Also, you need to figure in the time it will take. I'm a hobbyist, and I've discovered that the thinking and the doing are vastly different. Have him bang out a practice cabinet in cheap plywood first, with all the trimmings. It's not rocket science, AFTER you've done more than a few, but you would be surprised how hard accuracy and precision are to accomplish outside of your imagination. It seems my second effort at things are always better. I vote you build the boxes & buy the doors and drawers.

Two additional tips I can offer:

1. Bartering is not dead! As part of our DIY install, we asked a carpenter friend to teach us how to make shaker-style doors and panels, in return for buying him a new tool. I also fully resprung, retied and reupholstered his sofa in return for installing our cabinets.
In my experience, we DIY types often have a few specific and refined skills we can use for bartering with tradespeople who are skilled at the thing we need at the moment.

2. The tool we bought for our friend, and learned to adore while using it, was the Festool DOMINO joiner. It's not cheap, but I suspect it gave us vastly more professional results than we would have achieved using the cheaper Kreg joiner. Warmly recommend the investment if you'll be making paneled doors of any kind.

Keep us posted!

Here is a link that might be useful: Festool domino joiner

PS PS: (why do I keep hitting 'submit'?!) -- one more plus factor to consider in building your own boxes is that you have control over the type of material used -- in our case, we were able to source NorBord FreshPly plywood locally, which is a Canadian made low-formaldehyde plywood that doesn't outgas.

also factor in the emergency room costs of slicing your fingers with the equipment while building.... i say that a bit in jest but not totally... i recall other posters reporting head injuries etc while DIY'ing.

It sounds like your husband is more than capable of building a cabinet box of sound quality. The percentage of money off retail will vary with different cabinet companies. If you build your own, you can control the quality of materials a lot more. What could be a 25% upcharge with a cabinetmaker (MDF to all-plywood boxes, for example) might only be a 10% increase in raw material cost when you buy it yourself. You really just need to take the time to price the materials and shop around for the best prices.

"Just boxes" is a LOT harder than it looks, especially when you're used to dealing with curved structures and not furniture type building. Accuracy is very hard to achieve for every single piece without extensive experience creating long straight cuts. Even 1/32 off on a single 3' cut can lead to that box being out of square--and showing it. Out of square really shows up in a series of boxes attached to each other. And you don't make cabinet boxes out of plywood that you find at HD. You're talking cabinet grade baltic birch @ $80-90 a sheet. Good quality drawer slides can run you $50 each. And you need a clean room for finishing plus the HVLP and air compressor and dryer to run it. Good quality materials aren't cheap. So do plan on doing several practice runs with some less expensive materials than your final ones. I'm not trying to minimize your husband's woodworking experience, but I'm trying to tell you that most of what you say he's done isn't directly translatable to cabinet making. There's still going to be a learning curve, and the right materials aren't inexpensive for someone on a tight budget.

Have you considered just buying ready made lower cabinets and some open shelves until you can afford uppers? Ikea is another good option for someone on a budget. They have good quality hardware and interior fittings that would be really difficult to replicate DIY for the same price. If you don't care for any of their doors, you can always just install the boxes and buy custom doors and drawers elsewhere as budget allows.

bill, bob, and tracey - cabinet shops may or may not be able to buy materials cheaper than Joe Q Public. It all depends on the specs or what you are buying. If tracey wants to buy the same sheetgoods that the cabinet shop buys by the truckload -then she'll end up paying more. If tracey selects something that is out of the norm for the shop, then they'll both pay about the same because there'll be no volume discount. Tracey may even get a better price cause (s)he will likely shop around prices while the shop will just order it and pass on the cost plus markup.

Tracey - I think you are being a bit lazy. Why not take your specifications and go price material yourself??? The chances of someone around here having priced EXACTLY the same material you'll use for your cabinets is next to none. There would also be regional price differences that you could not account for either. Alder wood is pretty cheap and plentiful in the Pacific Northwest but pricey and rare in South Florida. Secondly, if you don't tell us the specific materials you are considering how would anyone weigh in. Big difference in pricing btw, baltic plywood live wire mentions and melamine covered MDF. Both can be "quality" materials.

If you have the woodworking skill and equipment-making cabinets can be immensely satisfying. It generally will take more time and cause more heartache than simply buying them, but there is something to be said for doing it yourself. It is also likely to save less $ than you expect due to economies of scale on materials.

I talk to people who make cabinets for a living and people who do it themselves on a daily basis. Skilled amateur woodworkers struggle with kitchens. Even professional furniture makers struggle with kitchen work. Making boxes isn't really that hard; making perfect boxes that fit every single time is harder than you might imagine. The thing that sets good cabinets apart is really the fit and finish. Fit and finish are what most amateur woodworkers struggle with.

Anyway, best of luck. and I hope it goes well.

To be clear: my first comment was absolutely serious. I know at least 2 couples whose marriage dissolved related directly due to intense DIY projects. The stressors in living WITHOUT a kitchen, coupled with the time taken away from other household/family responsibilities, financial constraints, and disagreements over how to do things crashed their marriage. As much as how GC's sometimes get maligned on this forum, I have known GC's who have been the arbitrators over renovations -- in one occasion, probably stopped a separation.

The bit about the alcohol, OK, that is a bit of a forum joke, as well as keeping it above the frig. Sometimes humor is involved in the forum. Apology given for disrespect felt.

First, peruse the Ikea site and see you can get a cabinet box for $30, a drawer for $30, etc. After you assemble the box, it's still a lot of detailed work to get it square and then to ensure that it stays square once it's in a row with others. You have to level the feet. And so on for hours and hours. It's not nothing.

--

I'm often in favor of DIY and even doing things that have never been done before. But, as the skeptics have pointed out, there are RTA boxes out there. and I think there is no gain in saving pennies by trying to match that. If you buy Ikea boxes, at least one of them will have to be cut (by you) to fit your space perfectly. If you make your own drawer fronts, that alone will be a sufficient challenge. My opinion. The main reason for my opinion is that if you needed to ask about this subject in the first place, then you are not yet at that level that would justify bypassing Ikea or other keyword:"RTA cabinets". I hope you accept this in the spirit it was given.

It isn't htracey who will build the cabs, it is her husband. Our O.P. herself may or may not know a whole lot about cabinet making, but in this thread she is trying to find out if it is a good idea to turn Mr. htracey loose on the cabinet project - or to tie him up, stuff him in the trunk, and drive him to IKEA.

Okay, htracey, you've heard various views. My suggestion:

- Find out how enthusiastic Mr. htracey is about this. It will take a couple hundred hours probably, basically chew up his whole summer, something is bound to go wrong and stress you out. Are you (both) game?
- Make a rough material list and go price it out. My guess is, for high quality cabinets you won't save all that much over self-assembled, self-installed, lowest-cost RTA options of mediocre quality. But what you end up with will (can) be better.
- Make a list of the additional tools and supplies needed. Does hubs have a good table saw, good fence, dado head, biscuit joiner, blah blah? Price it. Remember that money spent on tools only counts half, kind of like calories spent on chocolate.
- Decide just how OCD you and he are going to be about it all. Are you going to freak if a box is not perfectly square or a door doesn't hang perfectly? Sounds like he is capable of meeting those standards - but maybe by September 2012 . . . If the deadline is this September, you might have to be more relaxed. What's wrong with that? Nothing.

I hope you and he go for it. Sounds like you're the right people for it.

htracey,

Hopefully you aren't put off by the direction most of the comments have gone. For a ballpark answer, it's probaby a little cheaper in money, more expensive in stress, for comparable cabinets. You really need to work down a list like this first:

1. What materials for the box (ply, particle board, how thick)
2. Wood or paint on the outside?
3. Construction (framed, frameless)
4. Doors (frame in panel, slab)

These lead to decisions that DIY'ers may or may not be able to do at all, no matter the price. We decided to buy locally for the kitchen, but I'm building the specialized cabinets for the living and dining rooms. They would have been extremely expensive custom work. You may identify a couple of the most expensive items in the kitchen that don't necesarily have to match, that your husband could build. Especially if it's an 'unfitted' look you're going for. Maybe a pantry off by itself, or something. Hopefully this helps to bring light, not clouds!

I built my own cabinets.

3/4" maple from a local lumber yard, was roughly $60 a sheet, and I spent a total of about $1k

I ordered 3/4" solid maple doors and drawer fronts, plus all my drawer boxes rta 3/4" maple stock, with 1/4" bottoms from Walzcraft for about $2500. This was a total of 19 drawers, 22 drawer fronts, and 19 doors. Well worth it, in my opinion. They are beautiful and dead on my measurements.

Last Labor Day I started tearing out my kitchen, I put a second coat of stain on my drawer fronts yesterday. Kinda slow, but me and my wife both have full time jobs, plus two dogs and a 1 year old. I worked nights and weekends. If I had had 2-3 months of no job, I would have finished pretty easily.

I have done everything in stages, and not necessarily in the "right" order, but I did what worked for our time and our budget. I started building my cabinets the week before Thanksgiving, and two days before Christmas, was ready for the counters to be installed. At that point, I had built the boxes, stained and lacquered them, and gotten them installed.

I did not want to order doors and drawers until everything was installed, just in case I made a mistake somewhere. I ordered the doors/fronts/drawers in early March and they showed up 3 weeks later...at the same time as my new front doors, so I had to put the kitchen on hold and rip out the old marble tile in my foyer, lay the new black granite, and install my new front doors. Anyways, that is somewhat off track.

I also spent about $500 on drawer slides, hinges, screws, biscuits, cabinet legs, and other assorted items. I assembled and installed all my drawers a couple of weeks ago, and this past week I started staining the drawer fronts.

So there you go, $4k and 9 months. I got exactly what I wanted, and every cabinet is custom fit to my space.

Looking back, I learned a lot, and enjoy making things, but wish I had explored RTA cabinets a little more. There are just so many steps involved:

Measure, measure, measure, measure, over and over and over again
Cut plywood
Assemble boxes
Stain
Finish (lacquer in my case)
Install feet or base
Install cabinets
Measure and order doors/fronts/drawers
Order hardware
Assemble and install drawers
Finish fronts
Install fronts
Cut, stain, finish, hang end panels...

If you search on my username "TheBalls" you will find some threads that I have posted pics in.

From your additional comments above I see that you really do have what you need to get started if you answered the question , "Do you have the skill?" You know what you want to put into it better than anyone else. You know where to make the compromises better than anyone else. So you answered that important question, I think.

"Will it save money?" Yes! My father worked in the national guard by day and built a house for his family to live in by night with the help of another man that he hired. My parents were both so proud of the mansion he had built when he was finished. They could not have been more proud of it if it had been the taj mahol. They had both grown up very poor, and to the day of her death even with Alzheimer disease fighting her memory every step of the way, my mother acted like he was the best husband anyone ever had, her hero, because he was so smart that he built a glorious house for her to live in. It was nicer than anything either of them had ever lived in until that point.

If you are going to paint your cabinets you might want to consider moisture resistant MDF; certainly as it pertains to the doors. I did this for our bar in the basement and once the doors are painted you cannot tell the difference and the cost savings is huge; additionally, they are very Humidity and temperature neutral. They don't warp or flex. Very stable. Lastly, it is very easy to work with.

If this is your first time, I would consider making the boxes, but ordering the drawers, drawer fronts, and doors. Making nice, structurally sound doors and drawers that look nice and are perfectly square are orders of magnitude more difficult than throwing some boxes and frames together with a Kreg jig and some wood glue. You can still come out quite a bit ahead. I recently did this for a family member, in a 10x10 kitchen. I did not have time to build everything for them, but I whipped their boxes together in about 3 days and they ordered everything else and did the painting themselves. They came out about $2,000 cheaper than what they had planned on ordering. Barely worth it but not an insignificant amount of money.

Things you pretty much have to have if you want a very clean build:

- A good quality table saw with a new high quality 80 tooth blade and no runout.

-An expensive dado.

-A squaring jig, usually custom built.

-Kreg pocket hole jig or a biscuit/dowel cutter.

-A routing table and appropriate heads.

-A good quality dual-bevel sliding miter saw with a 10" blade or larger.

-If you want adjustable shelves you will need a drill press or a GOOD jig to make sure you can put perfect depth and matched holes in your cabinet sides.

-Big cabinet clamps.

If you have to buy much of the stuff in that list above, you'll spend the difference in tools really fast. Plus if you don't have much experience working with that stuff, lets just say you're probably going to burn up a lot of plywood with bad cuts.

Also remember: fingers don't grow back. Playing with power tools is a zero forgiveness situation.

Look at using hardwood flooring for material. A lot of places like lowes and local lumberyards woll clearance the hardwood flooring I did this to build my kitchen cabinets and made an entire set of upper and lower cabinets for a 12x13 kitchen for less than 1000. That was including hardware

A friend of mine, for his basement dude cave, bought low grade, off the shelf, unfinished oak cabinets. Not sure where he came up with this idea (pinterest maybe?), but he used SHOE POLISH to stain them. Yes! I said SHOE POLISH. I must admit, the bar turned out great.

It’s not that hard and the tools don’t cost that much you can get by with a skill saw a router and a few cheap odds and ends you don’t got to have a 500 dollar groove cutter when you can make a jig out of wood. Just YouTube cabinet building and it’s not too much to it

In my opinion, there is an equation here that is worth thinking about. Get a price for every option. ie: building cabinets/drawers/doors yourself, build cabinets yourself but buying the doors, or just pay for it all outright. The equation is... what do you make an hour and how do you value your time? lets say a project takes you 40 hours to complete. Now there are multiple layers here... do you have 40 hours to make this happen? Can you only spare a few hours a week? What kind of time frame are you looking at? Also, how much do you make an hour? This is important because if you make let’s say $40 an hour at work... meaning 40 hours translates to 1,600 dollars to you... then Add the price of material... is it worth your time (and the wait for completion) to do this yourself? If its not just about the money but also the satisfaction and experience, then it would be a personal decision that would be hard to monetize (even priceless).. However, if this is about saving money, then it might be worth your while to choose an option other than building it yourself if you don’t have the necessary skills and tools. In short, I would imagine someone who makes $15 an hour, and has the skills and tools to complete this task, then yea its totally worth your time to do it yourself. But I mean if you are making $100 dollars an hour, then most you most likely make enough money to justify paying for the job to be done for you. I personally love woodworking... however it’s hard to justify the “squeeze“ if paying for the cabinets costs me x... but in the amount of time it would take me to do it... I would make x+y At my normal job. Just try to value your time appropriately. I myself have the skills already, so I tend to look at DIY projects from this angle. If you are going for the satisfaction and the experience, then I sincerely say “go for it!” Just try to think about it from this angle before you make any real commitment.