How Much My DIY Kitchen Cabinets Cost

When I renovated the kitchen in my 1914 home, the cabinets weren’t salvageable. Not only were they not original to the home, but they had also been infested with roaches for decades. Why? Because the cabinets were poorly constructed and the kitchen itself had gaps between the floors and walls. In other words, the roaches had a happy little highway into the house and straight to the cabinets for a buffet.

So I knew that I would need to either build the cabinets from scratch or buy completely new ones. I’m big on DIY and saving money, so I decided to learn how to build them myself! Not only that, I wanted custom cabinetry with lots of built-in organization and walnut drawers and pullouts with dovetail joints. In other words, super fussy and fancy. So let’s get into the costs for my DIY high-end cabinets…

Plywood for cabinet bases: $1,370

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I built all of my cabinet bases out of 3/4″ plywood. If you were to buy pre-made cabinets from IKEA or the box store, they’re often constructed with a wood composite material like MDF. These materials are not nearly as durable or hardy in the long term, especially if you ever have any water leak issues, so plywood is the superior choice. But it’s also more expensive.

If you had a cabinet maker build your cabinets, they may use a fancy 3/4″ birch plywood. It has a very smooth and beautiful surface and is perfect for a cabinet with shelves. But because I planned to add pullouts and drawers to every cabinet, I didn’t need the insides to be the smoothest, prettiest plywood you’ve ever seen… because you wouldn’t see them!

So instead, I chose a sanded plywood, which is still sturdy and even in appearance but isn’t as smooth and pristine. It’s also over 20% cheaper than birch plywood, so it saved me about $300.

This amount also includes the 1/2″ sanded plywood that I used as the backs of my cabinet bases.

Other lumber: $780

Unless you’re building frameless cabinets, you will need lumber for face frames, and it’s recommended to use a hardwood that can take a beating. I know some people who use oak, which is expensive, so to save money I used poplar instead. Poplar is softer than oak but harder than pine, and the tradeoff on price was worth it to me here. Plus it hurts my heart to paint over a pretty wood like oak. Poplar… not so much. So I don’t feel as bad!

I also used poplar for the slab drawer fronts and shaker cabinet doors. This amount also includes the cost for the shiplap paneling I used on the island and the 1/4″ sanded plywood I used for the shaker doors.

Walnut plywood for drawers and pullouts: $1,360

If you’re happy with lots of shelving in your base cabinets, then this wouldn’t be a line item for you. But I became attached to the idea of high-end custom cabinetry where every cabinet has drawers and pullouts so that you don’t find yourself kneeling on the floor, scrabbling at the back of a shelf (been there).

You could still do drawers and pullouts but probably cut this price by at least 1/3 by using birch plywood. But walnut is my favorite wood species and I knew its purplish tones would complement my purply-red kitchen perfectly, so I felt it was worth it to pay extra. I used 1/2″ walnut for the drawer sides and backs, 1/4″ walnut for the bottoms, and poplar boards for the fronts.

I also bought and used a dovetail jig to create the beautiful joinery on all of my drawers and pullouts, but I’m not going to count any of my tools in these totals because I owned many of them before and I don’t consider my tools to be one-off expenses unless they’re single-use.

This total also includes the price of five rolls of 3/4″ walnut edge banding to cover the exposed plywood edges and 2 quarts of dead flat topcoat for a super-matte finish.

Solid walnut for pullouts: $50

For the bonus pullouts that reveal themselves when you open a big drawer, like in my spice cabinet, I wanted the full front to be true solid walnut. I only have five of these pullouts throughout the kitchen, so I was able to make all of the fronts from one 6-ft piece of walnut.

Undermount drawer slides: $598

When you open an IKEA cabinet drawer, what do you see? Typically, the drawer slide hardware will be on the sides of the drawer. Very obvious, and not very aesthetically pleasing.

High-end custom cabinetry will almost always use undermount drawer slides, which means that the hardware is hidden under the drawer. This requires a few extra steps when building your drawer, and… you guessed it… they’re more expensive than normal drawer slides!

The gold standard maker for cabinet hardware—including drawers slides—is Blum. But they’re also expensive, and in my experience the instructions are often written for professionals and not DIYers.

Instead, I used these slides that I found on Amazon. BUT be warned: these slides weren’t perfect! Some worked fine, and some were defective. If you plan to go this route, I suggest buying multiple boxes, using the ones that work, and packing up the rest in the other boxes to return. Also, the instructions inside have some incorrect statements about spacing and cutout placement for the slides, so just know that there will be a learning curve to start.

That said, I could buy six pairs of these drawer slides for less than the price of TWO pairs of Blum slides. Can you imagine if I’d spent $1,800 on drawer slides instead?? Insane. I’ll happily deal with some hiccups to save $1,200.

Door hinges: $45

Because my cabinets are mostly drawers and pullouts, I didn’t have that many doors with hinges. Just the cabinet above the fridge, the corner cabinet, and the mixer cabinet.

This total includes those six hinges, the lid stay on the cabinet above the fridge, and some angle restrictor clips that I added on to the corner cabinet hinges to prevent the door from hitting the adjacent cabinets.

Primer and paint: $436

I used my favorite BIN primer throughout the project because it sticks to everything, dries quickly, and prevents tannin bleed, which is when tannins from the knots in your plywood or wood start to stain through your paint job. This was important to me because I painted the interior of all of my cabinets with a light color: Sherwin-Williams Accessible Beige, which I had left over from another room project.

For outside paint, I used Benjamin Moore Advance, which is a very durable alkyd enamel that is great for cabinetry but is also on the more expensive side. And if you followed along during my kitchen renovation, you’ll know that I first painted my cabinets with one color (Benjamin Moore El Cajon Clay), and then decided they weren’t purple enough so I mixed my own custom color (1 part El Cajon Clay to 1 part Benjamin Moore Caponata). Because of that, I ended up buying two more gallons. I also used one gallon of Advance in Benjamin Moore Black Panther on the island.

Blind corner cabinet insert: $564

Because I saved so much money building these cabinets myself, I felt justified in splurging on some highly useful additions to the kitchen that I couldn’t DIY. That includes my blind corner cabinet insert, which adds almost an entire extra cabinet’s worth of storage to the corner.

It does have a couple of downsides: its price and it’s a bit of a pain to install. To save money, I bought mine “Used – Like New” and saved about $80 off the full listing price. Did it come with a random extra part that I didn’t know what to do with? Yep! But I made it work nonetheless.

Stand mixer lift: $161

If you’re a baker, this stand mixer lift is arguably even more useful than the corner insert—and much less expensive!

But just know that if you buy this option, you will need to build the platform yourself. This was ideal for me because I wanted to make mine out of the walnut plywood I used throughout my kitchen, but if you don’t want to DIY, you can pay more for the version with a pre-made platform.

PS: I also bought this insert “Used – Like New” and saved about $70.

Hardware: $89

To build these cabinets, I used a TON of pocket holes. So I purchased a big bucket of 1-1/4″ pocket hole screws and made my way down to the bottom. I also used 1-1/2″ screws to fasten the backs of the cabinet bases and 3″ screws to secure the cabinets to the studs.

I was very fortunate to partner with Rejuvenation on my kitchen (this blog post is not sponsored—I just love them), and they provided all of my unlacquered brass pulls and knobs. So for that reason, I won’t include them in my costs.

Total cost of DIY high-end custom cabinetry: $5,453

Estimated professional-built cost: $15,000–$30,000

Were these cabinets super inexpensive to make? Nope! But I still saved a TON compared to hiring a professional cabinet maker. Plus, it was fun for me to challenge myself and learn these new skills. I started this project an anxious ball of nerves and ended it with the kitchen of my dreams and SO much more confidence in my DIY skills!

Now, are my cabinets as perfect as a professional might make? Probably not. But they’re perfect enough for me, and that’s all that matters!

PS: If you want to learn how to use power tools and gain the skills to one day build your own cabinets, check out my course DIY Renovation for Beginners.