Houston Cabinetry Market

In the Houston cabinetry market, one thing that tends to get misunderstood involves the terms stock, semi-custom and custom. Contrary to what many people think, these terms are not related to the quality of cabinets but rather, how they’re manufactured. Here are the basic definitions:

Stock – Stock kitchen cabinets are pre-manufactured in specific sizes, typically 3″ increments, with few if any options for “customization” other than some limited choices the manufacturer might offer. They are off-the-shelf products in a limited range of styles.

Semi-Custom – Semi custom made cabinets are like stock in that they’re also pre-manufactured but come with a wider array of options and sizes than pure stock cabinets. With semi-custom Houston cabinetry, you have some ability to pick and choose various details to tailor an otherwise pre-built stock cabinet. In other words, you have some ‘customization’ choices.

Custom – Custom quality cabinets are built to the customer’s specifications, with no limitation on size, style choices, wood grade or finish. They are truly made-to-order. They may be fancy or they may be plain but the difference is that they’re made to suit your specific design requirements, in whatever size, form, color and material you can get someone to produce for you.

And the old-fashioned the Texas way, which is having a hard time dying: An unskilled numskull will nail a clete (3/4″X2″ strip) to the wall where the shelves go. Then they will nail down the long lengths of 11.25″ depth shelving to the cletes. Then they nail a whole sheet of plywood to the shelves as the cabinet face. Now they cut out holes where doors will go. The doors are sometimes ordered from a cabinet door company and other times the on-site built builder will make doors with the plywood cutouts. With plywood you have ugly exposed endgrain showing the plys. Sometimes they sand it and paint over it and other times they iron on a veneer edge banding. When they are done they paint with a brush or spray them inside your house. It smells real good too. You can not stain plywood so they have to be painted. This whole process saves the homeowner a little but not much money but the crew of so-called Carpenters for custom made cabinets made bank for themselves.