I did pay Home Depot for it because they give you the drawings and measurements. Other places wanted $1500 for the drawings.

This is a "qualifier" by Home Depot. They figure if you don't have a hundred bucks, you aren't serious. They are correct. I have a minimum charge that does the same thing and I mention it in our first conversation. Saves me from the tire-kickers.

Hmm, long ago we walked in and talked to Home Depot asking to get some idea of prices and the cabinet person encouraged us to sit down and do a plan right then based on our measurements. If we wanted to proceed with ordering cabinets, we could either do so off our measurements or pay for them to come and measure to confirm. We walked out with a plan and prices. This was about 13 years ago though so practices may have changed. Or they may vary by store?

edited to add: we did not use Home Depot. We were young and broke and ended up diy painting the existing cabinets (and diying new floor, new countertop, new lighting) because that's all we could afford at the time.

Lowe's charged us $75 to come out and measure, but then credited us with the $75 when we used Lowe's for the remodel.

$99 is a bargain for the measurements and plans. If you buy from HD (or Lowe's) it's credited back to you.

My daughter used Home Depot for her kitchen and it's absolutely gorgeous and was a lot cheaper than most other places......

We did our own measurements. The design process took us several weeks as we wanted to be sure everything was just right, including our measurements. When we were ready to order, we had to sign a paper which essentially said that the measurements were our own and any screw-ups were also our own. It all came out perfectly.

If the client measures incorrectly....those cabinets aren't going to fit. Seems like a good idea for the store to measure for anything custom. Our store used to do the same with drapes. I miss nice, well made drapes. They really cut down on those echo-y rooms :)

When we did the kitchen in our previous home in 2004, the KD at HD would give us preliminary estimates of the price of cabinets based on our own drawings/measurements but would not give us the actual drawings or specific costs of different cabinet lines/styles until we paid the $99 (or thereabouts, don't recall exactly) for them to come out and measure. At that time, she finalized the plan and gave us the pricing details. However, we were not able to take the actual drawings and list of specific cabinets until we ordered the cabinets. The fee was credited back to us against the total price.

We did two kitchens with cabinets from HD. If we wanted HD to install them we had to pay for them to come out to measure but if we were having someone on our own install them or install them ourselves I could give HD the measurements and not need HD to come out to measure. The amount you pay is credited back to you if you buy the cabinets. They gave us all the information and pricing to take home before we ordered the cabinets.