I'm so sorry. I know you love your cat & want only the best for him; otherwise, you wouldn't have gone to the university, & you wouldn't have authorized $1500 in fees & expense. You might double check on the blood type info; Since my old vet used to keep an office cat who donated for her surgeries, I thought that any cat can donate to any other. Even with blood tests & everything else, I don't see how it all adds up to $2300, especially at a university. I thought the whole idea of using a university veterinary department was that you would get expert care for a lower fee, since the work is being done by students under the supervision of their professors. Here, I don't think you could spend $2300 on a cat (unless you had the thyroid irradiated; then you'd be looking at about $1500); blood work & such might run $300 if the condition were really obscure & baffling & every test under the sun had to be run. An amputation would probably be less than $300. I think I'd make a list of the items on my bill & ask my vet to list her charges for the same services. Don't ever be intimidated into not confronting the situation when you think you may have been over-charged. I wish you the best.

Old River Cabinets is a custom company like Geppetto is with pricing about the same. Old river does not have a book and is a pain to price on the fly because you have to know every little upcharge that is based in their computer system they only have. Geppetto on the other hand has a book with cabinets every 3" with countless modifcation charges that I can apply to any cabinet to make it what ever size I want as I stated in the original post of modifying depth width or height in any combination. If they do not have a cabinet I can start with I have to fax in what I want and wait for a quote back. 3" increments just gives you an easier way to arrive at an exact cost. I can stack them verticaly, I can join them horizontaly up to 8' long for a custom look when they are installed. I can change the doors add a drawer anything you can think of. I can custom color match the fireplace which we are doing. I can custom color match the door sample which has the perfect color wood she wants which she has looked for 2 years to find. She is very picky when it comes to color. Geppetto will make anything I can dream. They are custom just in a manner that is easier to price as a designer who is not a employee of theirs. My overhead excluding gas is $3,000 a month. This business is about competing with the prices of the next guy. Lowes and Home Depot who's cabinet companies they represent sell approx half of all the cabinets in the US are the largest competition. 50% markups on semi custom products are about what you have to do to compete on price but then you can not compete on being as established as as they are when you are self employed per say. A typical set of semi custom cabinets cost the dealer 4-6k so a mark up would be 2-3k per transaction. Now since most people want to go with the established to big to fail company they will only buy with you if you give them a deal they can not turn down. So you drop your margin to do it if it is possible. Or you have contractors that want to work with you where the end price to customer is close in price to Lowes and Home Depot but they want money the owner is not aware of which makes you cut your margin in half and share it with the contractor. So either way you slice it I sell cabinets for the average kitchen that are all plywood dove tail full overlay soft close full extension for 6k most of the time and make $1,200 if you are lucky! So a custom kitchen which takes about twice as much time to figure out as there are many more ways you can layout the kitchen so you do multiple layouts before you find the perfect one for the customer has 400% more profit in it then the semi custom prices of the big box stores. And according to multiple posts on here the competition in supposed "custom" is 50k and up! Where I would be a total price of half that! I was not trying to make this about me I was more agreeing with the title of the thread of sticker shock shock. I have other people who buy fix and sell condo's and town houses here in the dc area where the cabinets cost me 900 - 1200 and I mark it up the same 50% to stay competitive. That translates to 450 profit. But wait.... that customer comes from a granite company that wants money for referring the business. So when you give them a 15% discount the profit on those kitchens goes to less then 200 including in home delivery costs. The industry forces you to work on percent markups. You spend as much time on a small job like that as you do on a semi custom kitchen which pays 1,200 or a custom one which takes a little longer that I doubled the price like other companies do I would make 25-50k on one kitchen? And people want to say that is the way you stay in business because you have overhead? Sticker Shock Shock. I agree. I must be to practical. I just wanted to give some context to the prices and point out that the orignial poster was correct to be shocked in my opinion and state some facts as to why it is true. Antss is right that it does take money to sustain a showroom. But you do not have to rip off your customer to do it by doubling the price of custom cabinets. How much money do you need to make on one job to stay in business when you are talking about profits upwards of 35k per transaction?

Also - forgot to mention, take a look at the videos on BC Stone's site - quite informational. I know many folks here swear that you should be there when they template, you should be there when they lay it out on the slab and decide upon seams, etc. I must confess I didn't do any of that and an extremely pleased with the results. I asked our contractor about it and he had me talk to BC Stone directly. They said I was more than welcome to but explained their process. Templating is done with electronic / laser measurements - not luan like most use. Seams and layout - they would do cut outs if I wanted to drive the 2 hours to see it but they assured me if I told them if there were any parts of the slabs I wanted to feature / stay away from they would work around it and do a seam that wouldn't be noticeable. Well given that I chose them based on their reputation, I went with their judgement and decided to let the professionals do their thing. I am very glad I did. the one seam we have is hardly noticeable. When I first looked at the install, I walked past it twice before I said, oh, there is the seam. If I had laid it out, I would have done a worse job of locating the seam. And their templating was spot on. Everything fit like a glove. No gaps, flush to the wall (which weren't necessarily straight), tight fit. They had to do no on-site modifications / drilling / etc - everything was cut perfectly back at their facility So if you hire a professional and feel comofrtable with them, let them do their thing. No need to micromanage their work

cpartist, one half of the island is serving as an eat-in for my family with 5 counter stools around it, the other half is prep sink and prep area. Also, I don't want upper cabinets, so the island is a storage workhorse. Finally, we always end up with people congregating around the island so wanted as much as we could fit. We all have different priorities. I'm not questioning the length of the island. In fact I've heard longer than 9'. I'm questioning the width. And I'm not questioning the need to have storage on both sides. I think it's well worth having storage all around. However cabinets are 24" deep, so two cabinets back to back equal 48". Counter depth seating is normally 15". Even if you go up to 20" overhang, or even a 24" overhang, I still don't understand the need for a 7' wide island. With a 24" overhang which is way more than most people need, if you do cabinets back to back , that makes the work part of the island 48" wide (as mentioned above) and with the 24" overhang, that still only equals 6', not 7' wide. How do you intend to reach the middle of the island to wipe it down or clean it?