Custom millwork and cabinetry
We cut cabinetry for the room it goes in, from the drawings we made of that room. Rift oak, fluted bases, unlacquered brass.
Cabinetry is the longest lead item in the second half of a renovation, and it is also the surface you will touch every day for twenty years. That combination is why it decides your finish date more than anything else you choose.
Most firms subcontract it, which means the date belongs to a shop you have no contract with and the site waits in their queue. Ours is in our own building. That matters for one practical reason: a field dimension that has moved gets caught by the people who drew it, before it becomes expensive plywood.
The scope
- KitchensFull kitchens including islands, tall units, panelled appliances and the integration with stone and appliances.
- Wall units and built-insLibraries, media walls, window seats and the shelving that has to hold something specific.
- Vanities and bathroom joinerySized to the plumbing rough-in as it was measured on site.
- Closets and dressing roomsFitted to what goes in them.
- Panelling, trim and doorsWall panelling, casing profiles and the details that carry a language through a house.
- FurnitureDrawn and built alongside the millwork when nothing off the shelf fits the room.
The sequence
- Design and millwork drawings
- 3 to 5 weeks
- Field dimensions after framing
- 1 week
- Shop drawings and approval
- 2 to 3 weeks
- Fabrication
- 10 to 16 weeks from approval
- Installation
- 1 to 3 weeks
- Stone template, fabrication and install
- 2 to 3 weeks after cabinets are set
Stone is the item people do not plan for. It cannot be templated until the cabinets are installed. Then it is fabricated, then installed. That is two to three weeks in the middle of your kitchen with the counters away being made. Other trades can work around it and we plan for that, but the order cannot be changed.
What it costs, and what moves it
Custom cabinetry is typically one of the two largest line items in a whole-home renovation, alongside the mechanical work. It is also the easiest line to test: in a house with walls that are not square, the fit is the whole job and fillers are where stock shows. In a 2015 subdivision build with square rooms and standard ceiling heights, the case is much thinner.
The costs that move a millwork number are the ones people do not price at the start: panelled appliances, integrated lighting, specialty veneers with a matched grain, and any change made after shop drawings are approved. A change after approval can mean material that is already cut.
What to ask, whoever you hire
Take this list to us and to everyone else you are considering. The answers are more useful than the portfolios.
- Is the shop yours, and can I walk it? What machinery is in it?
- Are the field dimensions taken before or after the drywall goes on?
- What happens if an appliance spec changes after shop drawings are approved?
- What is the lead time from my approval, and what is the penalty if it slips?
- What is the finish, who applies it, and where is it applied?
- What is the warranty on doors and drawer fronts, and does it cover seasonal movement?
Projects
Questions we get on this
- How long does custom cabinetry take?
- Ten to sixteen weeks from approved shop drawings to delivery. The clock starts the day you approve them, so any time spent deciding on a door profile is added to your finish date.
- Is custom cabinetry worth it against stock?
- Often not. In a newer build with square rooms and standard ceiling heights, a good stock kitchen with two custom pieces around it is usually the better spend, and the money saved is better put into the things that cannot be changed later. Older houses are where custom earns the difference. We build our own millwork, so treat that as an interest declared.
- When is the stone templated?
- After the cabinets are installed, never before. The dead time it creates is described above. What matters when you are comparing quotes is that a firm promising to compress it is probably planning to template off the drawings, which is how counters arrive that do not fit.
Further reading
- Kitchen island sizing, and the clearances nobody tells youMost island problems are clearance problems. Here are the real numbers for work aisles, seating overhang and appliance swing, and why the island on your drawing is probably too long for the room.
- Porcelain, quartz or marble. Choosing a countertop you will not regret.Three materials, three different deals. Here is how each one behaves in a kitchen that actually gets used, and how to tell which one you can live with for ten years.
- What a kitchen renovation actually costs in the GTAWhere the money goes in a kitchen, why two quotes for the same room can be forty thousand dollars apart, and the five decisions that move the number more than anything else you will choose.
The rest of the work
- RenovationOne contract covers the drawings, the permits, the construction and the cabinetry, for a kitchen, a main floor or the whole house.
- Custom homesA house drawn from the lot up and built by the people who drew it. One contract from the first sketch to the day the keys work.
- Interior designWe draw rooms to be lived in for twenty years. We choose and name every surface before a wall moves, and we document it well enough that nobody on site has to guess.
- AdditionsAdding to a house you already like, rather than buying one you like less. The hardest half of this job happens before anything is built.