Custom Cabinets Lynn allows for the lead rules in your Chelsea kitchen, and not for out-of-square colonial framing. Your stock went up after 1908, which is still seventy years before the 1978 paint cutoff.
So we seal the room and wet-sand rather than dry-sand anything painted before then. That shows on your quote as a lead-safe setup line at $350 to $1,200, where you can see it.
Most of what we do in your two and three family stock is turnaround work. A build runs 4 to 12 weeks, and a vacancy that long costs you more than the gap between the two jobs.
You are on Chelsea Creek and the tidal Mystic River rather than on open water. So the hardware spec that rules a kitchen out on Nahant does not rule yours. What moves wood in a Suffolk County kitchen is the heating season. Indoor air drops under 20% in February and climbs back into the sixties by August.
We leave your door panels loose in their frames and finish all six faces before we put them together. A panel with room to move gets through that swing without splitting. A panel glued into its frame has nowhere to go and cracks in February. One finished on the front alone shows a raw line at the edges when it shrinks.
Where you own several units we write one door, one hinge and one finish across the whole building. A damaged front in your unit 4 is then a stock item rather than a custom order. Repeating a spec beats any discount we could give you on a single kitchen. The second and third refits stop being quotes and start being orders.
Chelsea at a glance
Refacing holds your layout at $5,000 to $13,000, and a front swap does much of the same at $180 to $330 a door. Neither one moves a pipe or a wire, so the turnaround never waits on a filing.
Spraying what you already own runs $2,000 to $6,500. On a tight handover we pick a Sherwin-Williams enamel that recoats in 4 hours instead of 16.
Where the boxes have gone we fit Fabuwood or KraftMaid at $150 to $700 a linear foot instead of building to your opening. Stock cabinets at $100 to $400 a foot come in fixed three-inch widths, and your room, laid out after 1908, usually takes them without a filler.
- Coastal exposure
- Tidal creek and industrial waterfront, not open coast
- Housing era
- Post-1908, rebuilt after the fire that took half the city
- What changes the job
- Lead rules still apply, colonial framing largely does not
- Sets your permit rules
- City of Chelsea building department, under 780 CMR
What cabinets cost in Chelsea
We took on a two-family off Bellingham Square where both kitchens had the same layout. One tenant was moving out in eleven days. We sprayed the boxes in place and swapped the doors and fronts at $180 to $330 a door. We put the lead-safe setup on the quote at $350 to $1,200, in the open. Six months later the second unit took the same order, which is the whole reason for writing one spec per building.
| What the job is | Typical range | Unit |
|---|---|---|
| Fully custom cabinetry, built to the openingDrawn to your kitchen rather than assembled from catalog sizes. Any width, any height, any depth, and no filler strips standing in for a wall that is not straight. | $500 – $1,200 | per linear foot, installed |
| High-end custom: inset doors, specialty species, hand-applied finishInset doors sit inside the frame rather than over it, which means every reveal has to be even and every one is visible. That is where the hours go. | $1,200 – $2,500 | per linear foot, installed |
| Semi-custom cabinetryCatalog boxes with real choices on door style, finish and some sizes. The middle of the market and the honest answer for most Lynn kitchens. | $150 – $700 | per linear foot, installed |
| Stock cabinetryFixed sizes off a shelf, usually in three-inch increments. Cheapest per foot, and the version most likely to need filler strips against a pre-1940 wall. | $100 – $400 | per linear foot, installed |
| Fully custom 10x10 kitchenThe standard comparison kitchen the industry prices against, roughly 20 linear feet of cabinetry. Use it to sanity-check a quote, not to price your own room. | $10,000 – $26,500 | installed |
| Stock or semi-custom 10x10 kitchenThe same comparison kitchen in catalog boxes. The gap against the custom line above is the whole decision in one number. | $3,000 – $11,000 | installed |
| Building and installation labor alone, on custom workRuns 25% to 40% of the total on a custom job. Worth knowing, because a quote where labor is far under that is either using catalog boxes or leaving something out. | $200 – $300 | per linear foot |
| Installing cabinets you already haveHanging, leveling, scribing, joining and setting the doors on boxes bought elsewhere. The spread is mostly about how true the walls and floor are. | $4,500 – $15,000 | per kitchen |
| A published North Shore figure for the same job, Salem MAOne live, published, local number for a full cabinet installation. Carried because it is the only one in this table that came from this side of the state, and because it sits above the top of the national custom range. | $28,564 | as quoted |
| Scribing and leveling a run into a pre-1940 openingPlaster over lath, a floor that has settled, and no corner at a true 90 degrees. Scribing the end panels and stiles to the real wall instead of filling the gap. On a 1946 kitchen this is normal work, not an extra. | $450 – $1,600 | added to the job |
Want yours measured properly?
We come out, measure the opening at three heights and check how far off square your walls sit, then put a written number on it before anything is ordered.
Questions we get from Chelsea
Do the lead rules apply if my building went up after the fire?
Yes, and it is the line most quotes leave off. Sand more than 6 square feet of painted surface in one room and the state lead-safe rules apply, 454 CMR 22.00. One wall of original doors gets there in about ten minutes. Your setup and cleanup cost $350 to $1,200, which means two quotes that differ by about that much are not the same work.
How fast can a rental kitchen here actually be turned around?
Days rather than weeks on the fast work. Doors and drawer boxes are made to order in 1 to 2 weeks, against 4 to 12 for a kitchen built to your opening. We tell you which queue you are in at the estimate. Fresh paint also wants 3 to 5 days before a shelf takes weight, so a unit handed back on day two picks up marks that never come out.
Is refacing worth it in a rental unit?
In a rental this is the strongest case we can make for it. Refacing at $5,000 to $13,000 holds every dimension where it is, which means no plumbing move and no wiring move. What kills it is a sink cabinet that has already rotted through under the trap. We replace one of those at $400 to $1,400, whatever happens to the doors above it.