Making tradeoffs in our kitchen cabinetry budget
Little Farm kitchen cabinetry
OMG, cabinetry. Our Little Farm required quite a bit of it (which is a luxury, of course). Yet it can be so very expensive. Throw in a lot of unknown factors, and rising costs during a pandemic. It was super difficult to work within our budget. But we learned a few things along the way, and made some good tradeoffs. Maybe the lessons we learned will be helpful to you if you’re considering new cabinets for your home.
Is this allowance reasonable?
One of the challenges is that our contract to purchase the house included a single allowance amount for all cabinetry. The lack of specificity was concerning from the start.
Before agreeing to our contract, we wanted to find out if the allowance was remotely reasonable. Could we actually outfit our house with all the cabinetry we would need, at a level of quality we would like, for this dollar amount?
TL;DR — no.
I started in on some research. How much does kitchen cabinetry cost? My naive self, having never done this before, thought I could find some kind of reliable range per linear foot. I did find some numbers to work with. I sat down with the plans and measured out what we would need. I made some assumptions about the type of materials we could afford.
I created an estimate that included ballpark numbers for kitchen cabinetry, pantry cabinetry, countertops, and hardware (drawer and door pulls).
We thought it would be tight, but possible to work within our total allowance, or maybe an overage of less than 10%. So we agreed to the allowance number in the contract and moved forward, only to learn as the project progressed that I was very wrong. We simply couldn’t get the level of quality we wanted within our budget. We ended up going over by about 30%, even with some tradeoffs.
Honestly, there would have been no way to get our builder to move the allowance number in the current seller’s market. We tightened up the scope description, but the number wasn’t going to change. In addition, beware that the cost of seemingly everything in home construction is rising right now. So even with due diligence, overages are more than likely.
Fortunately, we were able to make the increased budget work in the end. But if you aren’t afforded such flexibility, I’d recommend getting an airtight agreement in place before embarking on such a project.
We splurged on custom kitchen cabinets
Our builder had provided kitchen plans from a local, custom cabinet shop. We wanted a few adjustments, but the plans were beautiful from the start. We met with the cabinetmakers at their shop, made our selections of materials, style and finish, and waited for a quote.
Yikes! The quote ended up being 100% of our allowance budget, with installation. The entire budget would be spent on kitchen cabinetry alone — before countertops, hardware, and pantry.
We started to explore lower-cost options.
We made an appointment at Lowe’s to get a quote for a very similar buildout using their Diamond line, which is a higher-end, semi-custom option. With available discounts, the price for the kitchen cabinets would be about 60% of the custom quote, before installation.
We did the same with Cliq Studios, which is an online cabinet vendor. I got a beautifully rendered layout and a detailed quote. Cliq Studios would be about 56% of the custom quote, before installation.
The Lowe’s Diamond samples (which we saw at the store) and the Cliq Studios samples (which they shipped to us) seemed to be about the same quality. They were very nice.
The custom cabinetry, though, was stunningly beautiful. The lacquered finish would be perfectly color-matched to our trim (Benjamin Moore Super White), rather than a generic, stock white option. It would be incredibly smooth. Since every cabinet would be cut to order, there would be no gaps or odd spaces to fill. The box construction and joinery would be immaculate. Just total perfection… except for the price.
We talked to our builder about installation of Cliq Studios cabinetry. He wasn’t particularly cooperative in giving an exact quote on installation. But we think it would have put us around 80% of the custom quote for cabinets plus installation.
At the end of the day, this would have gotten us within striking distance of our total budget. The potential savings were meaningful. But so was the quality gap. For our particular financial situation, and the importance we place on our kitchen, we decided to go with the custom kitchen cabinetry. It was a huge and difficult decision.
We traded off on the pantry
To price out the pantry, the custom cabinet vendor was our first stop. We asked for an estimate to build two walls of simple cabinetry and shelving that matched the finish of our kitchen cabinets. The quote they provided was about 40% of our total allowance. It was a non-starter.
I went down the road of looking at ready-to-assemble (RTA) cabinets, IKEA cabinets, and whatever stock solutions I could find. At the end of the day, I didn’t want to put lower quality pantry cabinets in a similar style (white shaker) to the main kitchen. I knew the quality gap would be too visible.
I decided to pursue an entirely different look for the pantry. Stainless steel restaurant shelving was a perfect solution in terms of form and function for our modern farmhouse. At webrestaurantstore.com, I found what I needed to build two walls of the pantry:
Two 18x36” shelving units
One 18'‘x60” work table
A two-tiered 12x48” pot rack
The price for this setup was just over 4% of our total allowance. That’s one tenth of what custom cabinets would have cost. Total winner, and we absolutely love the look we created.
Little Farm pantry
We price-shopped the rest
With these big decisions made, we were down to countertops and hardware. We found the particular quartz material we wanted and got a couple of quotes. We were able to save a bit there. Our countertops ended up being about 24% of our allowance budget, installed.
We also did did some shopping for the hardware. Once you find the style you want, there are many, many websites that offer the same lines of drawer and door pulls. Price shopping can help create few dollars in savings. But door hardware is not the main driver of the cost. It was under 2% of the budget.
All in, 30% over
In total, we ended up spending about 130% of our original allowance:
100% on custom kitchen cabinetry
4% on the pantry (versus 40% with custom cabinetry)
24% on countertops
<2% on hardware
As with everything in home construction, tradeoffs are necessary and entirely personal. We could have finished our kitchen and pantry for the amount in our original allowance. It would have been a very nice end product. In our particular situation, we were able to upgrade to a higher level of quality for the kitchen cabinets, and make a tradeoff on the pantry that we love — all with major gratitude that we could make this choice.
