Custom Cabinets

Most of our custom cabinet work falls into four categories. Kitchen cabinetry — full kitchens, islands, pantries, and refrigerator and range surrounds, usually as part of a kitchen remodel. Bath cabinetry — custom vanities, linen towers, and medicine cabinets matched to the tile and stone, usually as part of a bathroom remodel. Whole-house built-ins — mudroom benches, office walls, libraries, fireplace surrounds, wine rooms, laundry cabinetry, closet systems, and entertainment centers. Standalone cabinet projects — clients who already have the house they want but want the built-ins done right.

What’s included in a Knutson custom cabinet project

• In-home measuring and design — layout, elevation drawings, hardware selection, and 3D rendering so you see the finished piece before we build
• Material selection — walnut, white oak, cherry, maple, rift-sawn species, paint-grade, rift-cut veneers, and specialty panels
• Door and drawer style — inset, full overlay, Shaker, slab, beaded, and custom profiles; we can match an existing millwork style or design something new
• Shop fabrication — boxes, doors, drawers, and face frames built in our Twin Cities shop to the exact dimensions of your wall
• In-shop finishing — stain, paint, or glaze applied in a controlled spray booth, which produces a better finish than anything done on site
• Hardware — Blum or equivalent soft-close hinges and drawer slides, pulls and knobs selected to the space
• Interior details — tray dividers, spice pullouts, pot-and-pan drawers, cutlery inserts, trash pullouts, drawer outlet banks for bath vanities, integrated docking stations for offices
• On-site installation — our own carpenters installing on-site, scribed to walls, trimmed with matching moldings

Our custom cabinet process

1. In-home consultation — we measure the space, photograph it, and talk through how you want the cabinetry to function.
2. Design and material selection — typically four to eight weeks. Drawings, 3D rendering, door samples, stain samples, and hardware selection at our showroom.
3. Shop drawings and contract — final measurements, detailed elevations, and a signed fixed-price contract before fabrication starts.
4. Shop build — typically six to ten weeks for a full kitchen, two to four weeks for a vanity or smaller built-in.
5. Installation — our carpenters install on site, scribe to the walls, trim out the crown and base, and punch-list with you before leaving.

Why Twin Cities homeowners choose Knutson for cabinetry

The reason to buy custom cabinetry instead of production is fit. A custom kitchen uses every inch of wall you have, with cabinet widths drawn to your room. A custom vanity is the exact length of the wall it sits against, with the drawer bank on the correct side and the outlet right where you need it. A custom mudroom has bench depth, seat height, coat-hook spacing, and cubby sizes that match your actual family, not a catalog template. When you stand in a finished custom room, the feeling is that nothing is an inch off — because nothing is.

The second reason is finish. Cabinet finish is the single hardest part of a cabinet to get right, and the hardest part to fix later. Our spray booth, our finishing crew, and our process produce a finish that looks deeper and holds up better than anything applied in someone’s garage or in the field. This matters most on painted cabinets, where surface prep, sanding between coats, and controlled airflow separate a great finish from an okay one.

The third reason is single-source warranty. One company is responsible for measuring, designing, building, finishing, and installing the cabinets. If anything needs adjustment — a door realignment, a drawer re-shim, a touch-up — one team handles it.

Custom cabinet cost and timeline

Custom cabinet budgets depend on scope, species, finish complexity, and hardware. As a working guide: a single custom vanity or a home-office built-in runs $6,500 to $18,000. A mudroom bench with lockers and cabinets, an entertainment wall, or a fireplace surround with flanking cabinetry runs $12,000 to $32,000. A custom kitchen with an island, pantries, and all finish work lands in the $45,000 to $100,000+ range depending on wood, finish, and size. A whole-house cabinetry package — kitchen, bathrooms, mudroom, office, laundry, closets — is priced per project and typically starts at $120,000.

Design takes four to eight weeks. Shop fabrication is six to ten weeks for a full kitchen, two to four weeks for a smaller built-in. Installation is one to two weeks for most rooms, longer for full kitchens. What most often adds weeks: specialty wood species on long lead times (rift-sawn white oak, walnut slabs, figured species), custom paint colors that require additional sample rounds, and multi-finish projects that ask the shop to coordinate two or three different booths of work.

Our Twin Cities service area

Knutson delivers and installs custom cabinetry throughout the Twin Cities metro. Our city-level pages cover Minneapolis and Saint Paul. The bulk of our cabinetry work happens in those cities and in the western and southern suburbs: Edina, Eden Prairie, Minnetonka, Wayzata, Maple Grove, Plymouth, Bloomington, Eagan, Burnsville, and Lakeville.

Style direction follows the house. A 1920s bungalow in south Minneapolis typically gets inset Shaker cabinetry in painted poplar, with period-correct hardware and traditional crown. A Highland Park colonial or a Tudor in Kenwood usually carries flat-panel inset cabinetry in painted wood, sometimes with a contrasting island in natural walnut. A 1960s rambler in Edina or Bloomington often gets rift-sawn white oak cabinetry with slab doors and clean modern hardware. A 1990s two-story in Eden Prairie or Maple Grove typically goes transitional — painted perimeter, wood island, Shaker or simplified profile. Our designer will bring a direction to the first meeting based on the house.

Ready to design your custom cabinets?

Request a consultation and we will visit the room, measure the space, talk through how the cabinetry needs to work for your family, and walk you through material and finish options at our showroom. You will leave with a clear direction on species, finish, style, and what a realistic build budget looks like.