That labor install price does sound high. why dont you get other bids? I like to use yelp because you can read customer reviews.

@mojavemaria I’ll be getting quotes from two others soon, hopefilly they arent quite so high.

That's an insane labor price for just replacing what is there. We paid our neighbor (handyman and had experience hanging cabinets, doing trim, crown) $2,500 total and we had about 26 cabinets with crown and light rail, side panels etc. My husband helped him and they got it done in a day.

Talk to neighbors and friends in your area see if they know anyone that installs cabinets. It's totally something you can DIY too if you're handy, we had 100 other DIY projects going on during our reno so we just wanted someone to come in and do it in one day.

That seems high. I’m in an expensive area and my completely custom walnut cabinets were around $25,000 installed in a 190 square foot kitchen. Counters will be around $11,000.

Does labor include demo of current kitchen and and tile installation? If so, $18k doesn't seem crazy.

I'm in a higher cost of living area, and our kitchen is 11x13, roughly. We are choosing inset cabinetry (maple box construction) with plenty of bells and whistles including some fabulous inserts and crown molding, and we're looking at close to $30k for the cabinets alone, with another $3500 for installation. Inset cabinetry is on the higher end for cost and the installation cost is higher too. The counters are soapstone, and will be almost $12k (includes installation).

We tore out our existing cabinets and hauled them off to the landfill (they were too old/gross to donate - 50+ year old simple plywood). I'm sure that saved us thousands. Of course, we had to deal with pulling them out and putting them in our truck and driving to the dump. Paying someone to do that costs money.

All of our choices were within budget, with a 15% buffer for cost overruns/surprises. I spent a lot of time looking at the various choices for everything from flooring, light fixtures, cabinet hardware and appliances. Once I'd settled on what I wanted, I looked at the overall cost and wasn't at all shocked to see it exceeded $70k for a small kitchen. And that's with doing a good deal of the work ourselves.

You're doing the right thing by looking around at the various options. You'll get a better sense of whether it's too much for the quality that you want after looking at several options. You may have just found a more expensive cabinet shop, or you may just be unaware of how much things are costing right now. It costs more to have a contractor do every little step of the process. If you're handing the project over to a general contractor, you're going to pay a premium (that absolves you of many headaches).

I spent my lunch hour today driving to a lab to drop off some samples to be tested for asbestos, as I can't dump certain material in my town without a test, even if it's a small amount (we're just removing the drywall that formed a small wall where the wall ovens were). If I had a contractor, I wouldn't even be aware of that step, it'd be built in to the contract and I'd be charged accordingly. I guess my point is that there may be a lot of items that are baked in like that, and you're paying for someone to deal with the details.

(we won't install inset cabinetry ourselves. It's not in our skillset).

National average for everything is 80K these days, for a middle of the road quality redo. You're getting off cheap. https://www.remodeling.hw.net/cost-vs-value/2021/

@mcarroll16 Yes it does include demo/removal and installation of the tile.

@User $80k in my area would probably be unheard of. Perhaps if I had a $1M+ home but the average around here is actually around $250k.

I wouldn't be as shocked at the price if we were making major structural or layout changes, or new flooring, gourmet appliances, etc. But I feel justified knowing that several here think that price is high based on the info I've provided. I've got two other companies identified for quotes, and will also price them out for purchasing (and maybe installing) cabinets ourselves.

We just paid $27,300 for our kitchen cabinets (quarter sawn white oak). Local custom cabinet maker. The kitchen is 19’ by 13’ and has a 3.5’ x 9’ island. (So, pretty big) install was $4,000 but that included bathroom, laundry, mudroom and desk install also. Quartz counters were $6,900 We are not in HCOL.

@User you offered zero advice by posting that, how did you think that was helpful?

Here is an estimate of the median cost for a kitchen remodel, depending on size. It would probably vary a lot depending on size and location, even inside a state,

https://www.houzz.com/hznb/photos/big-takeaways-from-the-2022-u-s-kitchen-trends-study-phvw-vp~182248120

Some people have apparently customers with deep pockets, because they never find a price to high.

As others have said, I would ask for several costs.

Take a look at IKEA cabinets. They are well built, and well priced. You could DIY the installation to save even more, if you so choose.

That price doesn't seem outside the norm to me especially when you consider how much more expensive everything is right now because of supply change problems and labor shortages. It includes everything but the appliances. I'm not sure how you can do cheaper outside of DIY. If you can DIY some it, that's awesome but that price doesn't seem off to me.

Price out Lowes, online RTAs, Ikea, etc. just to get some ideas on price for cabinets only. We priced out 8 places before choosing where to get our cabinets and 4 of them did a free layout for us when we gave them measurements.

Those complaining of an "insane labor price" should try running a construction business these days. I had to start a guy with no experience whatsoever at 50K a year. He's coming along, but I had to give him a 20% raise in less than 2 months to keep from losing my investment in him. Good employees aren't stupid; they know they're holding all the cards right now. I'm not going to make less money next year; my customers are going to pay them. Consider yourself lucky you got a proposal. Good luck getting two more.

I did a kitchen renovation last year but it was a smaller kitchen - urban rowhouse galley kitchen approximately 15 x 8. Not in an expensive city but not a cheap place, probably average for the US.

I ordered 10 RTA cabinet units from Conestoga (a competitor to Scherr, excellent quality, at least I'm happy with it). Cost was 7k, so average it to $700 per unit inclusive of the drawer pulls and hinges. Your quote is $1k per unit, but it comes assembled. It was easy for me to assemble the cabinets as long as I was steady and careful and assembled all the units in one weekend. I did not have previous DIY experience and Conestoga provides excellent tutorial videos. As your cabinets are assembled, I'd say the prices are fair.

I ordered two countertops: a wood butcher block type countertop for a long peninsula, which was $2k. The rest of the countertops were Corian, which cost about $1300, including installation. Corian is old-fashioned these days but it's extremely durable and I went with Corian because the supplier could install them with a one-week turnaround while the quartz people all wanted at least a month. Altogether it was about 24 square feet of countertops. Your 10k quote seems high. Go to Home Depot or Lowes and get quotes for your needed sqft for basic quartz or granite or whatever and odds are it'll be at least half cheaper.

I ended up installing my own cabinets because my contractor who'd done the initial demo and gut walked out of the job due to labor scarcity - half his crew jumped for other crews due to the labor shortage. I bit the bullet and installed my cabinets. It's doable, it was work, but doable. Plumbers installed the new plumbing for the sink and dishwasher and fridge and also installed the gas stove. Electricians did the necessary electrical work. Between the plumbing and electricity, it was about $5k. Your labor quote seems quite high.

I spent about 25k altogether on my kitchen including the gut, cabinets, appliances (Bosch and Fisher Paykel), flooring, and nice hardware. And ended up with a lovely kitchen. Your kitchen is a bit bigger. I think you'd find it difficult to keep it to 20k, which is probably possible but would likely be the cheapest of everything. I also do think you can probably keep it to 30-35k if you did a lot of the work yourself, went with durable RTA and paid someone to install and outsourced countertops to Lowes/Hope Depot and have certified plumbers install the appliances.

Talk to as many people and shop around widely. It's easy to let the costs creep as everything adds up.