Kitchens, Part 2

He usually measures the cabinets by the running foot. If you have 30 feet of cabinets then you have 30 feet of cabinets. If you have cabinets below the counter and also above the counter then you have 60 feet of cabinets (30 feet above and 30 feet below). If you have a cabinet that is floor to ceiling (or whatever) then that cabinet is counted as double. That is all fair.

Some evil companies price their products by the number of doors. These people will also charge extra for new drawer slides and new drawers. This makes it very difficult on the salesman and the resulting quotation is prone to more mistakes and brings only slightly more profit to the company.

The average kitchen cabinet refacing job is about $400 a foot. If you have 30 feet of cabinets then you are looking at $12,000 for newly refaced cabinets as the “LIST” price.

The actual materials cost is about $60 a foot. The cabinet refacing should really cost you a little over $1,800 for materials. That’s for plastic coated doors. Real wood doors are about 50% more -- for a total of maybe $2,700 for materials.

There are brand new cabinets to consider too. As with cars and even haircuts, the retail price of the cabinets is part of the sales pitch. A high price separates you from the “little people.” Just as Bill Clinton paid $400 for a haircut, so can you. There are all sorts of good cabinet makers around that can do impressive work at modest cost to you. The difference will be that you won’t be able to say you have maybe Poggenpohl cabinets. If you wear Prada, are 50, and still wear a size 2 then Poggenpohl is the answer. Don't worry, if Poggenpohl is too pedestrian for you then there are Clive Christian, and Downsview, and Snaidero, and SieMatic. I mean, you need a 1,000 sq ft. kitchen, don't you?

If you want new countertops then he has to measure them as well. The counter top measurements can be done in inches or in feet. If you have an “L” in a counter top then he has to measure the counter top twice and overlap the corner where the corner of the “L” is. That is fair.

Before new counter tops can be installed the old ones must be removed. The standard charge is over $25 a square foot for removal. The average counter is almost two feet deep and so you can add $50 a running foot to remove the old counter tops.

The average 30 feet of counter is thus an additional $1,500 in removal charge. A spunky 60 year old woman might do this job by herself on a saturday and that works out to about $200 an hour. Wear gloves and thick safety glasses.