Custom & DIY Drawers and Cabinets - What They Cost!

I guess we will talk about the original kitchen cabinets first. We KEPT all the cabinets and drawers in the 'U' shape. There was nothing wrong with the actual cabinets or drawers and this saved us a lot of money! The drawer fronts on all the drawers and the cabinet doors were tossed out.

Here's the BEFORE.

My grandpa and I then made drawer fronts. We used the original drawer fronts for sizing. I believe we made 13 of them and they ended up costing around $125. They were pretty easy to make since I'm a simple girl. I wanted just a rectangle with no border or anything.

The cabinet doors were another story. There was really nothing wrong with the cabinet doors other than I didn't like the inset, raised panel AND the hinges were all on the outside. After lots and lots of looking (locally and online), we came to the realization that we weren't going to get the look we wanted without replacing the cabinet doors. The hidden hinge hardware was not meant to be mounted on a door with a raised inside panel. We were going to try to make them work but we weren't having much success. So, we went back and forth on whether to make the doors or have them custom made. After talking it over with my Grandpa (who helped me DIY the woodworking part of the kitchen), we decided to have them made.

We ended up paying $505 for all the cabinets (including holes drilled for all the hinges and the hinges themselves)! The price ended up being just under $23 a door. When you figure in the time to drill the hinge holes and the price of the hinges, I feel like we got a steal. If you don't know, the hidden hinges are $5.99 for two hinges. So, we would have needed 42 hinges to hang the cabinets. The hinges themselves would have come to around $130.

Just to lay all the cabinet door details out - the price included the unfinished door, the hinge holes drilled and the hinges. The door price would go up if you wanted a fancier door face. I wanted the simplest thing they had and I ended up with the cheapest price because I was planning to paint them. If you wanted, say an oak cabinet door, then that would have been a little more expensive.

Ok, so that get's all the drawer fronts and cabinet fronts taken care of. Let's chat about the wall that we completely took out in our kitchen and the cost/details of rebuilding it.

Originally, we had this:

My grandpa and I built the fridge enclosure, the pantry and the two cabinets that flank the stove. I think the total cost of these units, once we finished, was around $475. There's quite a bit of wood there and the pantry has lots of shelves.

've kinda spread out the price breakdown throughout this post, so I'll tally it all below.

DIY Drawer Fronts - $125

Custom Cabinet Doors and Hinges - $505

DIY Pantry, Fridge Enclosure with wine rack, and cabinets that flank the oven - $475*

*Includes things like screws, nails, wood glue, etc.

Total - $1105

We feel great with what we DIY'd versus what we paid to have done. I think we spent our money really well here. Would you have done something different?