Kitchen Remodel Cost: Construction
One thing that we haven’t contemplated in our cost estimates is the removal of walls or significant structural changes to the area. At a minimum removing a wall can easily add $10,000-$20,000 or more to your project, including labor costs. As soon as you’re looking to remove a wall you must understand if it is a load bearing wall, if so you’ll need structural engineering plans and beams which means several thousand in additional costs on top of the base construction cost.
What influences the Average Cost of Cabinetry?
Cabinetry is going to be the most expensive line item in a kitchen remodel bar none, but what makes the difference between a $45,000 cabinetry package and the $85,000 package. It all boils down to time and cost, the more expensive the component and the longer or more complicated it is to make the higher the cost will be.
Cabinetry is a product where you get what you pay for. Other products you pay for brand more than the actual components (think of perfume, handbags, clothing). What separates a men’s dress shirt that costs $15 at TJ Maxx and $400 at Bloomindales is often just the fancy designer label that you’ve never heard of.
Kitchen Remodel Cost: Cabinetry Components
- Door Style: Generally speaking the more ornate or complicated a door to construct the more expensive it is to make. Looks can be deceiving however, some doors that look simple are actually incredibly difficult to make and carry a price tag commensurate with that difficulty.
- Wood Species: Standard wood species like maple or cherry have an appropriate cost but as you get into more expensive wood species like black walnut or quarter sawn red oak the price can ratchet up rather quickly.
- Finish: You generally select either a stain or a paint, but there are additional options like glazes, different distressing techniques or weathering methods that can add to the cost. Some finish techniques also just cost more. Some manufacturers only have a 3 step finish process where others have a 12 step process and you can probably guess which results in a higher quality and a higher price tag.
- Cabinet Style (frameless, framed, inset): Inset cabinetry is very difficult to execute well, there is very little room for error as the human eye can easily see when reveals (the spacing between elements in a cabinet) don’t line up, even if it is off by as little as a millimeter.
- Manufacturer’s quality control. This is something that most people don’t think about, but lets take Black Walnut as an example. The heart wood of walnut is that rich brown that you’re probably thinking about, but there is also a sap wood that is very yellow. Walnut is an extremely expensive wood, double the price of cherry, so a manufacturer can use the sap wood or throw it away, and the more sap wood they throw away the higher the costs.
How Does Design Impact the Cost of a Kitchen Remodel?
With any major purchase the natural tendency is to want to get multiple quotes and comparison shop. No one wants to feel like they’ve been ripped off or have paid too much, so we scour the web for a value report that can help you understand the quote, perhaps look at a remodeling magazine for insight or compare the kitchen remodeling projects of others to your overall cost to know if you’re getting a good deal.
The trouble is there is no easy way to compare kitchen remodel costs accurately. Because creating a new kitchen is very much a creative endeavor for the professional designer and everyone comes at it with a slightly different take, it can be extremely difficult to compare two kitchen designs.
This process is very much like comparing the cost of a new car and two dealerships. You have to make sure the options are the same to do an accurate comparison and the same is true of cabinetry.
The number of cabinets makes a huge difference in the overall cost. The more cabinets the higher the cost, so to fill a 36 inch space you could use one 36″ cabinet or two 18″ cabinets. Even though the 36″ cabinet is bigger, the price of 2 smaller cabinets will be higher.
Different manufacturers also have different pricing and while you can generally compare prices across manufacturers they must be in the a similar quality band – you can’t fairly compare the cost of a Chevy to the cost of a BMW they very different types of car. The same is true for cabinets but the difficulty is that no one knows any cabinet brands or what their relative level of quality is. Where as everyone knows BMW is a luxury car and a Chevy isn’t.
The type of cabinet is another consideration in the kitchen remodel cost. Standard full height cabinets with doors have a lower cost than a base cabinet with all drawers. On the 2 door base cabinet you’ve got 4 hinges and two doors. The drawer base cabinet has several drawer faces, drawer boxes, glides and the labor to install all of those drawers so they’re perfectly aligned and level which adds up to higher sometimes unexpected costs for the homeowner.
There can also be very small changes that you wouldn’t necessarily see like using particle board instead of plywood or using a 5/8″ plywood instead of the more robust and expensive 3/4″ plywood for the construction of the cabinet box. The total price can be drastically different by upwards of 20% or more even though the scope of the project is exactly the same.
For items like the kitchen’s size, hardwood floors or a kitchen sink it is relatively easy to compare pricing since there is a standard offering and there are often defined model and part numbers and pricing levels are publically available.
