When do the cabinets go in during a kitchen remodel?
Late, after the dusty work and before the finishes. The working order is demo, any wall or window change, plumbing and electrical rough-in, drywall and primer, then cabinets, then the countertop template, then backsplash and trim. Cabinets land in a room that is already square, dry, wired and painted, because everything that comes after them is fitted to them.
That position in the sequence is what makes the cabinet date the pin. Cabinets are also the only item on the list with a long lead time attached, six to ten weeks in the shop from a signed estimate, so the cabinet installation date gets set months before anyone swings a hammer. Every other trade is scheduled off it: the drywall finisher ahead of it, the countertop fabricator after it, the plumber twice, once on either side.
Kitchen cabinet installation itself, the day the shop shows up with the boxes, sits on the custom kitchen cabinets page, along with the shop’s steps from measure to countertop template. This guide covers everything around those days.
If a kitchen is not changing shape, most of this calendar disappears. Cabinet refacing and refinishing keeps the boxes and the layout, so there is no rough-in, no drywall, and usually no countertop work. The trade-off is that you keep the kitchen you have, in better clothes. For a new set of boxes, the calendar below is the real one.
What has to be decided before the shop starts cutting?
Model numbers, not categories. Before a cabinetmaker orders lumber, the drawing has to carry the exact range, the exact hood or over-range microwave, the sink and the faucet, whether the doors are overlay or inset, and the hardware. A drawing signed off is a cut list, and the parts list under it does not change quietly.
The reason is dimensional. A slide-in range and a freestanding range of the same nominal width need different filler at the counter. A farmhouse sink turns a standard base into a purpose-built box with a cut-down front. A chimney hood sets the width of the upper run above the range and whether cabinets flank it at all. Change one of those after sign-off and the shop is re-cutting a box, not adjusting a number.
The decisions that are due before the shop starts, in the order they usually get made:
- Layout and the appliance plan, model numbers written on the drawing
- Sink and faucet, including undermount, drop-in or apron front
- Hood or microwave, which sets the upper cabinets over the range
- Door style, overlay or inset, which changes every reveal in the room
- Species and finish, paint grade or stain grade
- Hardware, since pulls and knobs decide the drilling
- Interior fittings: the trash pull-out, the spice drawer, tray dividers
- Toe kick height, and whether the flooring runs under the cabinets
- Anything electrical living inside a cabinet, an island outlet or a charging drawer
Cabinetry at $450 - $1,000 per linear foot installed is priced off that drawing. What moves that number is its own subject. On the calendar, a late decision gets paid for in weeks.
Floor before cabinets, or cabinets before floor?
Usually floor first, cabinets on top of it, toe kick hiding the edge. Running the floor wall to wall leaves no seam at the cabinet line and no trapped subfloor if the kitchen is ever redone. The exception is an expensive floor in a small room, where stopping at the cabinet line saves real material. Hardwood sanded and finished in place goes first either way.
In Owensboro the question is rarely academic, because of what turns up at demo. A brick ranch in Wesleyan Heights or Hillcrest built in the sixties or seventies often has the original hardwood running under the cabinets, or two layers of sheet vinyl stacked on top of each other, or both in sequence. Nobody knows which until the old boxes come out. That discovery changes the floor decision and sometimes the height of the finished floor, which changes the toe kick and the dishwasher opening.
So open a corner early. Pull the toe kick off an old base cabinet or lift a vent register before the shop finalizes heights. A finished floor that ends up higher than planned is a question on drawing day and an expensive surprise on install day.
Which rough-in moves are worth deciding at the measure?
The ones that live inside a wall. Moving a sink to a different wall, adding the circuit a new range or induction cooktop runs on, running under-cabinet lighting, putting a receptacle in the island, and changing where the hood vents all happen while the wall is open. Once drywall closes, every one of them turns into cutting, patching and repainting.
That is why a good site measure has more than a cabinetmaker in it. The same visit should settle where the plumbing and the electrical are going, because the drawing has to show the sink base where the water will actually be. An island is the clearest case, since the power, and sometimes a drain and a vent, have to reach the middle of the room while the floor is still open.
Older Owensboro houses add a wrinkle a new build off Highway 54 does not have. A soffit above the uppers may hide a duct, a vent stack, or nothing at all, and the answer decides whether the cabinets can run to the ceiling. Get it opened before the shop draws elevations. None of that work is a cabinet shop’s trade, and none of it is priced on this site. For the calendar, what matters is that all of it is quick while the wall is open and slow once it is closed.
Why is there a gap between the cabinets and the countertop?
Because a countertop is measured off the cabinets that are actually installed, not off a drawing. The fabricator templates after the bases are set and level, and the stone or quartz top arrives a week or two later. That gap is normal, it is in every custom kitchen schedule, and planning around it is easier than resenting it.
A week or two with base cabinets and no counter is livable if you set it up on purpose. A sheet of plywood cut to the run gives you a working surface and protects the box tops, and the coffee maker moves to a folding table in the dining room. The plumber’s second trip, the one that connects the sink and the dishwasher, comes after the top is set, so the kitchen is not wet again until then.
One scheduling item people miss: call the fabricator before the cabinets go in rather than waiting for template day. Their calendar fills further out than the cutting itself takes.
What still has to happen after the cabinets are in?
More than most homeowners expect. After the boxes are hung and the doors are on: paint cut-in where the cabinets meet the wall, backsplash once the countertop is set, filler and scribe pieces, toe kick and crown, the plumber’s return trip for the sink and dishwasher, appliance delivery and hookup, and hardware if it was left until the end.
Backsplash is the one that gets scheduled twice. It cannot start until the countertop is in, and a tile setter booked for the original cabinet week will have moved on by then. The painter is the same story, since the last hour in the kitchen is the cut line above the uppers and around the crown, and that hour only exists once the crown is up.
Doors and drawers get a visit of their own. Cabinets settle into a house and hinges want a final adjustment, and in a river valley kitchen that runs July humid and February furnace dry the doors move again once the furnace comes on. Ask while the estimate is being written whether the shop comes back to tune them.
How long does a custom kitchen take, front to back?
Using this site’s published timeline: the measure and shop drawings take the first week or two, the build and finish take most of six to ten weeks from the signed estimate, install is one to three days, and the countertop lands a week or two after the bases are set. March and April run longer, because everyone in Daviess County wants the kitchen finished before summer.
The trade work fits inside those weeks rather than adding to them, and that is the part people miss. Demo, wall changes, rough-in, drywall and primer all happen while the cabinets are being built. A homeowner who waits for the shop to finish before calling the electrician has added weeks for no reason.
Kitchen size moves the shop weeks far more than the days on site. A 16-foot galley in a brick ranch sits at the short end of the six to ten weeks and a 26-foot U with an island and a pantry wall at the long end, and both are one to three days on site.
What throws the calendar off?
Two things, over and over. An appliance changed after the drawings were signed, and a wall that turns out not to be plumb on install day. Neither one is a catastrophe. Both cost time, and both are easier to absorb when you already know they are the usual suspects.
The appliance change is the more common one and the more avoidable. A range on backorder gets swapped for a model with a different width, or a hood arrives in a size nobody checked, and the cabinet cut to the old number has to be rebuilt. That is shop time on a shop with the next kitchen already scheduled, so the delay is rarely a single day. Lock the model numbers with the retailer before the drawings are signed.
The out-of-plumb wall turns up on the Griffith Avenue streets and around Old Owensboro, where plaster over lath wanders across a long run. Cabinets get scribed and shimmed to that wall on site, which a good estimate already allows for, but it turns a one-day install into two and pushes templating by the same amount. The shop-rate guide covers how that time gets billed.
Three dates carry the whole calendar: the day the drawings get signed, the install week the shop gives you, and the templating day. Put those on the wall, and at the measure ask what the shop needs from you and by when, so the appliance numbers and the floor decision are not the thing holding your kitchen up.