You can have that argument about lots of products out there! All cars are the same right? No difference between a Kia and a Mercedes? Some people see no difference and won't pay more, since they both get you from point A to point B, but others will pay more for nicer finishes, faster engine, newer tech/safety features, etc.

You need to look at not only the product, but how the KD and installer are able to work with the product. Do they know how to maximize the limitations of a semi-custom line to give you the best results?

If you go with a local cabinet maker, are they just building boxes and buying pre-made doors? Or building all the parts? How are the cabinets painted/stained? What type of drawer extension hardware? What types of cabinet design, frameless, framed, inset,etc?

In my previous kitchen I used Wood-Mode cabinets. I interviewed 4 local cabinets shops that sold that custom cabinet line. One shop was the clear winner based on their showroom displays, both in design and execution. I ruled out one of the shops immediately after visiting their showroom, as they managed to make a pricey cabinet line look cheap with their bad design choices.

There are people out there that can make an Ikea kitchen look amazing and people that can make a custom cabinet line look like crap. You need to find the right mix of product, design and installation that will give you the quality you want at the right price point.

In our kitchen, we have had some issues with the old cabinets. One door cracked, the trash pull-out failed, etc. The local cabinet maker just popped by and fixed it, no charge. We were not even the original customer

@User for Wolf, i priced out the cabinets on kabinetking and got ~14k so im guessing the other 8-10k is hardware, delivery, installation costs etc by the kitchen store. I say assume because I haven’t gotten the detailed breakdown yet.

@blueskysunnyday this is a very big perk I had not even thought of! thank you

@chispa Good points, thank you. I don't think I would regret paying more for better quality local cabinets, but I do worry we'd regret going for cheaper if or when we started having issues with wolf cabinets. We tend to go mid-line for everything in our lives.. we don't splurge on a Mercedes but we don't go for the cheapest Kia either. If we were moving in 5 years we'd for sure go with the cheaper cabinets, but since we're staying here for the foreseeable future then maybe it makes sense to spend the extra $15k. Otherwise I worry we'd amplify the negative and pick apart the cheaper cabinets every time something didn't look right or went wrong.

We went with the local cabinet maker and the quality is fantastic. Our last kitchen had semi custom factory cabinets ordered through a kitchen designer and I was disappointed. The difference was worth the extra amount to me.

I jusr read reviews on Wolf I would not go there for sure. I think a good independant KD woudl be helpful for you to make the best choice for your style and design. IMO drawers cost more than cupboards but are worth the money. You nned to decide how much a well done kitchen is worth to you I choose to spend my money on a appliances and have done Ikea cabinets for myself and 80% of my design clients who basically feel the same way I do about kitchen function.

I iniw nothing about Wolf but I did have a local place do fully custom cabinets and they are beautiful

And fully custom is truly custom as I designed the doors, chose the exact wood stain and every aspect was fully custom so it utilized every square inch with no fillers and all of the interiors were exactly to my specifications including the color if the interior.

There is no comparison because the cost was actually lower than comparable semi custom even if I could have achieved the same results si it wasn’t apples to apples.

And yes, he has come back to fix a few minor glitches and I am having him do some more rollouts for my tall pantry and bathroom vanity. He also did the vanities in my bathrooms, a complete wall of desk and storage for my home office/den and a custom room divider that holds what I affectionately call my stripper pole television because the television rotates so it can be watched from either side 😂😂 His brother did my dining room table from a picture of a vintage French Art Deco table I fell in love with

@Helen fully custom does have it's benefits for sure, and better utilizing the space is one I would be very happy about!

The cost for us is not necessarily lower than the other quote we got for stock Wolf cabinets, but I guess I am not comparing apples to apples because the wolf is not the same quality as custom, so of course the price would be different.

@Marie Yes of course I could have gotten less expensive kitchen cabinets if I had gone with a semi-custom cabinet line like Kraftmaid but they wouldn't have been as aesthetic or functional as my fully custom ones.

My point was that much of the "savings" for semi custom cabinets versus custom is gone if one opts for many of the upgrades - even the standard upgrades.

People hear custom and their immediate thought is that they are prohibitively expensive and at a much higher point than standard middle level cabinets like Kraftmaid. Obviously fully custom cabinets by brands like Small Bones or Crown Point will be more expensive but local cabinet companies provide an affordable quality option.

Of course the issue is quality - because just because something is custom doesn't mean that the quality will be good as there are no doubt terrible people offering "custom" cabinetry. I don't think I would have opted for fully custom cabinets unless I was sure about the quality and integrity of the local custom cabinet shop. In my case, I was working with a trusted designer who vouched for his work and I was able to visit several homes where his cabinets had been installed as well. Of course any major build or remodel requires a leap of faith but for me it worked out really well as I got cabinets of high quality with exactly the aesthetics and functionality that I wanted.

@Helen All good points, thank you! That is where I am, trying to decide if sacrificing a little (or a lot??) of quality is worth the savings. Or if I would even end up saving much going with Wolf and doing upgrades. The aesthetics is a big deal for me too, I want it to look like I put effort and love into my house and not that I just slapped up the cheapest product I could find. Of course I don't want to blow my budget out of the water either!

Good design is not about how much you spent but how wisely you spent what you had .

@Marie It appears that Wolf is a low quality brand - even your quote of $23,000 is less than what your research shows*normal* quallty cabinets for your kitchen would be. The low quality of Wolf also appears to be the experience of other houzzers who have posted on this thread.

What would be the cost for your cabinets from a well reviewed semi-custom line like Kraftmaid, Omega or the equivalent. I would think that would be more an indication of what the actual savings would be for a respectable mid-level cabinet versus your custom option.

Obviously no one can offer advice in terms of how much someone *can* spend since that is based on your financial position. Looking back at my remodel which was a total gut remodel of my condo, I didn't have a budget per se as I was using my savings which were more than adquate for anything that I wanted. Looking back I don't regret any of the more expensive stuff like my finishes, faucets, marble, most expensive Toto washlet, hand fired tiles etc.

I actually do regret not getting some more expensive stuff that I could have afforded but just psychologically didn't think I should spend money on like a more expensive hardwood floor with a herringbone pattern versus what I got and perhaps a Subzero refrigerator.

Obviously there is a level at which I just said no - the De Gournay wallpaper which would have been $20,000 for a powder room and an accent wall was a bridge too far 🤣 so I sourced a company that did less expensive hand painted silk wallpaper which got me 90% there.

My story is like Helen's - our kitchen remodel was with a local custom cabinet maker. Our kitchen is not huge, so we had to maximize the space, and being able to specify things like the usable height of drawers and super susan shelves assured that our stuff would fit where we wanted it. The cabinet boxes and door/drawer fronts were built on site, together we developed the stain color we wanted, and they were finished in a clean room.

The installer had been with the company for 26 years, and was a master craftsman. One of the drawer fronts didn't look good to him, so he called the shop for a replacement - I didn't even see it before it want back. He showed me how to adjust the door hinges, in case I needed to make seasonal adjustments. When one set of drawers was the wrong size, it was corrected quickly and cheerfully.

A good custom shop will happily give you references - check them out! As others have said, custom doesn't always mean better, but I think a good custom shop is worth the extra cost.

I am in the SF Bay Area, and will be getting local custom frameless with non-finished-wood fronts. Still ironing out details. I have much enjoyed the process of working with and even getting bids for the custom ones. I found one Euro import that was competitive (two if you want to count Form), and only one national brand (shiloh eclipse) that was in the price to value ballpark. I'm going to do a longer post with pricing so people can see. EDIT - ABC, thanks - I miscommunicated. I'm doing TFL; I meant that it was not finished wood (which is most cabinets). No way would I ever finish wood myself, too much work.

@Shayna Osborne Thank you this is really helpful!

We did fully custom cabinets in our last kitchen in the Bay Area and are doing them again here in Oregon. The ability to get exactly the cabinets you want where you want them makes for a way better use of the available space than any of the other possible solutions. In this kitchen, I’m having one wall of cabinets built 3” lower than normal for rolling out/kneading dough. That same wall has a cabinet with a pop up for the ice cream machine.

Thanks everyone. I think I’m 98% sure I’ll go with the local cabinet builder even though it’s going to be more of an investment.