How many bathrooms?

Seems very low.

A fully specced bid is a firm offer and its acceptance generally creates a contract. Many people use the word allowance very liberally, but there are many ways to ensure that bids for allowance items are somewhat accurate, these can include itemized bids with bid price per cabinet box, per drawer, door, etc., or simply fully speccing the bid beforehand by designing and selecting the kitchen and bath cabinets.

16x20 with a large island? Yes, I think your allowance is too low.

Maybe if it were a smaller kitchen, with no uppers and no island, and if you were using pedestal sinks in all bathrooms (and no adjacent cabinetry) ... and if counter tops were not included in the price ... and you had no hardware ... but as it is, no, I don't see you sticking to that budget.

Better to be up front about the price now rather than to scramble later and figure out whether to add to the budget or cut something from your list.

"He asked us to use a custom cabinet place in our area which gave us a low ball bid."

But then it would not be allowance, unless you are not going by his "low ball bid"? And if not where did the "allowance" come from? Seems very low as well.

My counters are not included in that allowance. I have a separate allowance for those.

I am confused by the "allowances" in my contract. I have several allowances but then my builder states that my items will be provided by a certain company. In this situation, he states that I have a 19K allowance for my cabinets and they will be provided by a certain custom cabinet company. I met with this cabinet company who gave me a list of cabinets that were in his bid. I will need to spend quite a bit more to get what I want (the height, color). On the positive side, the cabinet bid has all of the cabinets that I need with a standard hardware that seems to be decent quality (plywood, dovetail construction).

What do I do from here? When talking to my builder about other "allowances" that require me to use a certain company, the communication is murky in which he keeps having me stick to the plan and simply pay extra for what I want.

I am already paying 600K for the construction costs and thought that I would have better options within that cost.

My experience with builders is that they often have a VERY low allowance structure that's based on the absolute lowest level cabinet (of a certain spec...) that you can buy - so that if you want anything that is good looking / stylish / modern / funky wood, etc - then you will easily overrun your budget. And then get charged a % change order fee for the overrun - on a customer house - that was under allowanced (new word) to begin with...

In my prior build, we reviewed the allowances and asked about the assumptions before the contract signing - esp knowing that we wanted higher end appliances and counters than were "customary" at the time. And we still ended up with more surprises and over runs that we expected.

This time - we're acting as our own GC and when we budgeted we used "real" numbers and think we're doing better on accuracy. (we're still blowing the budget - but that's a whole other story and based more on site conditions / dirt issues, etc than allowances.)

We have a very large kitchen with 2 large islands, 5 1/2 bathrooms, a 2 bench mudroom and a laundry/sewing room the size of a small bedroom. Our cabinet package is just under $36k. We are doing antiqued painting/rub through on the kitchen, others just stained. We had to make a few sacrifices for the cabinets, but they are well worth it. This was all decided prior to finalizing our overall build budget. I would have NEVER moved forward with an allowance for cabinets.

Allowances are usually bottom of the barrel items and pricing to get you to sign, then when you upgrade you pay for the upgrade, generally at a much higher cost and quite often builders charge a "change order" fee on top of this. Red flags would be raised quite high in my opinion if he is stating you have an allowance and then he already what products and from whom you are getting them. You can rest assured he knows what the pricing is as well and this will not work out in your favor in my personal opinion. This "contract" sounds VERY favorable to him....................

$175 per total SF? or Heated SF?

4 bedrooms house does not mean much if each room is too small.

I'm building a 2600 square foot 3 br, 2 1/2 bath house with cabinets surrounding my fireplace and cabinets in my laundry area. My cabinet included allowance was $35k with an additional added option of $15k for a total of $50k. My kitchen is 15'8" x 15.5". In my powder room and guest bathroom, I'm planning on finding some old furniture pieces I can paint and add in, so only the master will have to have cabinetry made.

So you are doing this all after the contract has been signed? Because the time to nail this down is before.

jn3344, yep. I am doing this AFTER the contract has been signed. Lesson learned. To be fair, every other bid was pretty similar. They didn't give me a number but a quality measure (custom silver maple cabinets with plywood, stained, standard hardware which is what I am getting with my current builder.)

houses14, that number is total sq ft (not heated). My home will be 3,500 sq ft. It is a 6 bedroom house with 4.5 baths (I am doing a pedestal sink in the 1/2 bath so no cabinet needed).

cpartist, that is an awesome allowance! :)

Is your house totally custom or is it from a builder's plan? Ours is totally custom.

cpartist, ours is totally custom as well.

From what my builder told me, what you have is very common. They lure you in with lowball pricing and then get you on the "upgraded" pricing. $19k for a 4br house with that large a kitchen is lowball. What you can do is maybe order vanities from overstock.com instead of from the builder.

This is definitely lowballing for a kitchen and house of that size. My kitchen will be about the same size as yours with fewer bathrooms and bedrooms and our allowance is 60k

Hopefully everything else is fully speced and priced and you do not have any other "allowances" that may be too low.

Fortunately you are not obligated to buy from the cabinet maker who lowballed the offer. If you really need to stay under that budget there are options available, or you can increase the budget with a different custom shop, or even stay with the current one. The choice though is yours.

Edit: to clarify it is very hard for a contract to bind you to a 3rd party especially when the amounts are unknown. There has to be some consideration or you simply have an agreement and not a contract. Requirement contracts are possible but they have to be evidenced with consideration.

It completely depends on what you're doing and market pricing for your region.

What was the low ball bid?

My quote for the material below was $16,000.
Somewhat no frills as I'm letting the layout, backsplash and counters do the talking.

Shaker door style
Solid maple painted finish for most, otherwise hand wiped espresso finish
Dovetail
Full extension soft close
Mostly standard cabinet sizes but some custom sizes

My kitchen is 16 x 15
8' island
36" uppers with no glass - crown molding
Master vanity is 7' long
Bath 2 has two 42" vanities and linen frame face
Utility has 9' of uppers and lowers
Mudroom has a 4 slot locker with cabinets at uppers and drawers at the lower

whass_5a, you are making me feel MUCH better. Here is my current offer from the custom cabinet maker that my builder wants me to use (that fits within the 19K allowance which is for cabinets only):

Basic style with Slab style doors (Shaker door style would be an upgrade)

Silver Maple painted only in kitchen (with stained island and all else stained)

Dovetail with standard drawer glides (full extension would be upgrade)

Plywood interiors

Soft close only in kitchen

My kitchen is 16X20

7.5' x 3.25' island

42" uppers with no glass - crown molding

Master vanity is almost 12 ft

Bath 2 has 8.25ft very basic, stained vanity

Bath 3 has 102 inch very basic, stained vanity

He did not price my 4th bathroom (!) so I am not sure what that will do to my budget

Mudroom has 126 inch bench with space for shoes underneath and beadboard with hooks

Laundry has 66 inch lower and two ~40 inch stained, basic uppers

We wanted to do painted in our master bath and have 9 foot cabinets in our kitchen (we have a 10 foot ceiling). upgrade from the standard hardware as well as a bigger crown. Plus the vanity in our 4th bathroom.

After meeting with the cabinet guy, I went to Home Depot to see how much a cheaper cabinet would be to replace the laundry cabinets in order to help pay for the upgrades to my kitchen. The Home Depot guy looked at me like I had lost my mind when I told him what my allowance was. He told me that he was pricing a kitchen that was my kitchen's size was 60K for cabinets alone. It made me feel panicked (hence, this post!)

It is good to hear other bid around the same cost!!!

What you listed above sounds about right for my market. I'm just outside of Milwaukee.

I redid a kitchen with raised solid maple congnac finish from home depot 6 years ago (they still had the exact same door and color when I was there last week). My kitchen was 12 x 10 and the material cost was $4K. Its super basic but cripes you can buy a nice lot for $60K.

whaas, prices have gone up quite a bit in the past 6 years. Six years ago we were in the depths of the recession.

I was a little sticker shocked but quite happy with selections at 34k for 4 baths, kitchen with big island and mud room with cabinets and cubbies. I thought a couple of the line item expenses were gouging. I can still refine those, but for a 3400 sqft house 30k seemed fair.

Hi cpartist, most certainly it was just a reference point. If I were to extrapolate to what I have today I'd estimate that kitchen above to cost $8K...likely less.

poolroomcomesfirst. do you mind sharing the specs for your cabinets for 34K?

Merilat masterpiece maple shaker cabinets in pebble grey with coconut glaze.

Only thing not pictured is the cubbie lockers in the Mudroom. Those were stupid expensive through merilat so we may look to do those after.

Here was the inspiration photo. It's this color cabinets (upper)

poolroomcomesfirst, those are so nice! Are those mirrored cabinets in the inspiration kitchen? Did you get those or windowed cabinets?

For your bathrooms, are they painted or stained?

I am not an expert and I hope I am wrong - but silver maple is soft. I wouldn't want it painted in an area of high use. Maybe I am wrong. I hope so. Good luck and I hope you enjoy the building process.

Silver maple is a softwood but its harder than poplar and alder.

Just as hard as Cherry.

I wouldn't worry about it unless you have wild children.

Our cabinet estimate is $34k. 3.5 baths, decent size kitchen, wet bar upstairs,