Casa Blanca: Colorado Off-Grid House Build, Ep. 39: DIY Kitchen Cabinets on a Tight Budget

Welcome back folks. Here you can see a healthy start on some kitchen cabinets. These are temporary, so I'm making them with materials I normally wouldn't recommend for a kitchen (budget-grade big-box-store sande-ply instead of cabinet-grade birch plywood and MDF face frames). But since they're custom, they're also still going to end up looking amazing because they're going to perfectly fit/fill the space. When I say "on a budget" I mean it. This entire "set" will include: Two upper 24" corners Two upper 38"s One upper 30" (above the stove/microwave) Two lower 38"s Two lower 24"s One sink base Possibly a pantry/side cabinet on the left wall, TBD Add all that up at $200-$350 per cabinet for the cheapest big-box-store off the shelf offerings and you're looking at $3000+. My build required 7 sheets of 1/2" plywood, 4 sheets of 1/4" plywood, 2 sheets of 3/4" plywood, two 2x4's (sink support), and one sheet of 3/4" MDF. All told that's $660 based on my local prices. Call it $700 when you throw in glue, brad nails, and screws (not very many). That's a huge savings. Before you ask, we don't have doors/drawers, and yes, that's part of the cost of a big-box-store off the shelf unit. But the doors/drawer fronts are the thing people see, not the cabinet frame. When we're ready, that's a cost effective upgrade to either make those myself or buy them premade (premade cabinet doors and drawer boxes are much much cheaper to buy than entire cabinets), add hinges/slides, and probably $1000 later we'll have a completely custom kitchen still for half the price of big-box-store "builder grade" units.