Custom Built Cabinet Makers in Adelaide

• Who builds them: custom built cabinet makers in Adelaide design, manufacture and fit custom made cabinets for your room, not units picked from a catalogue range.
• What they cover: kitchens, laundries, bathroom vanities, built-in storage and entertainment units, and bespoke joinery for irregular walls.
• How a job runs: site measure, signed drawings, written quote, manufacture, installation and a final adjustment. The seven stages are set out below.
• What to send: photos of each wall, rough dimensions, appliance models and a budget range.
• Price: quoted after the site measure, so see what drives the cost of custom cabinetry before you compare. No prices are published on this page, because the same room can cost very different amounts depending on board, door finish, hardware and who supplies the benchtop.

A complete brief lets Adelaide cabinet makers give you a firmer first response and a shorter site visit. Gather these before you ask:

1. Photos of every wall the cabinets will touch, taken straight on, with the ceiling and floor in frame.
2. Rough dimensions. Wall lengths and ceiling height are enough to start.
3. Appliance models. Fridge, oven, cooktop, dishwasher and rangehood sizes matter because cut-outs, benchtop openings and ventilation clearances differ between models.
4. Benchtop and splashback. The material you want, whether laminate, engineered stone or natural stone, and who is supplying and fitting it.
5. Plumbing and electrical changes, if any, such as moving a laundry trough or a cooktop, and who will carry them out.
6. Budget range and timing, including any date you need the room finished by.
7. Access. Stairs, lifts, parking and any narrow doorways between the street and the room.

Cabinet builders can often price a vanity or a single wall of storage from less information than a full kitchen needs, but photos and a budget range help on every job.

Most custom cabinetry follows the same production sequence, whatever the finish.

• Cutting. Sheet board, usually melamine-faced particleboard, is cut to the sizes on your approved drawings on a panel saw or CNC router.
• Edge banding. Exposed edges of the board are sealed with PVC or ABS edging so moisture cannot reach the core.
• Drilling and assembly. Holes for hinges, drawer runners and shelf pins are bored, then the carcass is assembled square, with the back panel fixed into a groove or rebate to hold the box true.
• Doors and drawer fronts. Custom made doors are cut from the board you chose, vacuum-pressed as thermolaminated doors, sprayed in two-pack polyurethane, or faced in veneer or laminate.
• Hardware and checking. Hinges and runners are fitted, and each cabinet is checked against the drawing before it leaves the workshop.

Polyurethane or veneer doors over a melamine carcass are a common way to put the budget where it shows. Not every Adelaide cabinet maker does every stage in its own workshop, and some buy in doors, stone or glass. That is a legitimate way to work, but ask each maker to say which stages are theirs, because a delay at a supplier becomes a delay on your job.

Fit is where custom built cabinets and joinery earn their cost. In an older Adelaide house that has been extended, for example in Burnside, one room can have walls that lean and a floor that falls toward a doorway, and the room next door can differ again. Cabinet makers deal with this in three ways:

• Scribing. A side panel or filler is cut on site to follow the wall, so there is no visible gap between cabinet and wall, and joinery against an uneven wall is scribed the same way.
• Levelling. Base cabinets stand on adjustable legs behind the kickboard, so the benchtop line stays level even when the floor is not.
• Shadow gaps and bulkheads. Tall cabinets stop short of an uneven ceiling with a deliberate gap, or finish under a bulkhead, instead of showing a crooked line.

Ask each cabinet maker how they handle your worst wall, whether it is in the kitchen, a laundry or a bathroom. A site measure that records the lean and the fall tells you whether the cabinets will be scribed, levelled or both.

Custom cabinetry sits in the middle of a renovation, so its timing depends on the trades either side. A typical kitchen or laundry sequence runs:

1. Demolition and removal of the old cabinets.
2. Plumbing and electrical rough-in, wall repairs and floor preparation.
3. Cabinet installation by the cabinet maker.
4. Benchtop templating, which for stone happens once the cabinets are fixed, followed by fabrication and fitting.
5. Splashback, final plumbing and electrical connections, and painting touch-ups, with panelling and other joinery finished at the same stage.

Because stone is templated from the installed cabinets, the benchtop is usually the longest wait in a kitchen. Ask your stone supplier for their lead time before you fix a date with the cabinet builders, and ask who will coordinate the trades. A builder or project manager can run this sequence. If you are managing it yourself, ask the maker to confirm what must be finished before they arrive.

• If you are renovating one room, ask custom cabinet makers for a site measure before you compare prices, and confirm who supplies the benchtop, because quotes built on a floor plan often change once the real walls are measured.
• If a builder or designer is managing your renovation, send the cabinet maker their plans and ask for them to be checked against the room at the site measure.
• If your walls, floor or ceiling are out of square, ask each cabinet maker to explain whether they will scribe, level or add fillers, and where the gaps will fall.
• If you want panelling or joinery that follows an irregular wall, ask for a scribed template and a drawing before you compare quotes.
• If you only need a vanity, a pantry or one wall of storage, tell the cabinet builders early, because small jobs can often be priced from photos and a few dimensions before a site visit.
• If you want the same finish across several rooms, quote the rooms together so doors, handles and board match, and ask for a staged schedule.
• If you wonder whether your suburb changes the job, read the cabinet makers Adelaide areas guide for how the north, south, west and Port Adelaide differ.
• If you are comparing rooms before you choose a maker, the home page shows each custom cabinet job side by side, with a short guide to every room.