Buying Kitchen Cabinets vs Making your own

Our Expert

Purchasing a kitchen full of cabinets can be expensive, especially those that are custom designed and constructed. However, to save money when building them yourself, it's important to watch your material costs and minimize waste. You can do this by carefully planning the construction process and shopping around to save costs on materials and hardware.

Building your own cabinets has other advantages in addition to reducing your costs. By building the cabinets yourself, you can customize the size, fit and design to suit your tastes and needs.

There are a number of methods used for constructing kitchen cabinets and the process is beyond the scope of this Q&A column. Building a kitchen full of cabinets is not difficult, but it is a large job. There are many doors and drawers even in a small kitchen and you'll need to construct the cabinets to fit appliances and the room itself. I suggest that you purchase a book on cabinet construction. A good book will provide illustrations and photos to generate ideas and get you started.

Amana sells many products for cabinetmaking including saw blades for sizing sheetstock, dovetail router bits for drawer construction and specialty bits for making doors. Once you've settled on a design we'll be glad to assist you with selecting the tools that you'll need.