Custom runs $500 to $1,200 per linear foot, semi-custom $150 to $700 and stock $100 to $400. In an old house your walls usually pick for you. A fixed-width box and a hundred-year-old opening rarely meet.
Most people bring this to Custom Cabinets Lynn as a money question. In a newer house it is one. In the housing around here it turns into a measuring question, and that moves the answer further than the price bands do.
Stock cabinets come in fixed widths, three inches apart. Your kitchen was not built in three-inch steps. So on a wall that has been moving for a century, the boxes never add up to your opening.
What is left over gets closed with a filler strip. That is a gap with a board over it, and you look at it from the doorway for as long as you own the house.
Semi-custom gives you catalog boxes with real choices of door, finish and interior, plus some room on depth and height. KraftMaid is the line you have probably been quoted on already. Fabuwood is what a rental refit tends to get priced on here. Both are honest products, and on a straight wall they are the sensible buy.
Custom means we draw your cabinets to the opening at whatever width it turns out to be, so nothing needs filling. That is most of the price gap, along with what your box is made of and how your door is built.
The scribing line makes this concrete. Fitting a run into a pre-1940 opening properly adds $450 to $1,600, and we show it on its own whichever route you pick. It is a fact about your walls, not about the boxes you chose. Our cabinet cost guide prints all three bands together, and plywood against particleboard covers what is inside them.
Related questions
Can I mix them in one kitchen?
Yes, and here it is often the best value. Put stock or semi-custom boxes down your long straight wall. Use custom where the run meets a leaning corner or an odd width. You get a kitchen that fits without paying $500 to $1,200 a foot for all of it.
Is semi-custom built to a lower standard?
Not always, and you can check instead of guessing. Ask two things: what the box is made of, and how much weight one shelf is rated to carry. Any line worth your money has an answer to both. A vague answer is your answer.
How much of the price gap is the doors?
A large part of it, which is why refacing exists at all. Swapping the doors and drawer fronts across your kitchen runs $2,200 to $6,600. That buys you the visible half of a custom look on the boxes you already own.