Custom Cabinets Lynn puts your Marblehead kitchen together in the room it goes into. We have yet to find an Old Town stair that will turn a finished base cabinet.
The lanes past Old Burial Hill will not take a truck near your door, and your casings are narrower than anything built to a standard width. So the parts get cut and finished in the shop, and we put the boxes together upstairs.
That adds a day or two to the fit, and we settle it before a wall is measured. Salt off Massachusetts Bay reaches your hinges through an open window, worst of all out on the Neck.
Parts have to be joined and leveled in place, which is slower, steadier work than setting finished boxes on a rail. We stage them wall by wall, because your kitchen can only lose one side at a time. Your sink and your range stay in service through most of the fit.
We order your hinges, runners and screws in the rust-resistant finish anywhere with this much water around, and it is not an upgrade line. Solid brass and bronze go darker rather than wearing back to bare metal. An Emtek pull outlives a plated one on the same door.
For period work we set your doors inside the frame rather than over it. Every gap around every door is then on show, and none of them can sit a millimeter out. A door hung over the frame forgives about twice as much.
Marblehead at a glance
Cabinets drawn to your opening run $500 to $1,200 a linear foot. Doors set inside the frame with a hand-applied finish move that to $1,200 to $2,500, and building in the room is already inside both figures.
Where you would rather keep the old kitchen, restoration starts with stripping and refinishing at $1,500 to $5,000. Restaining runs $4 to $15 a square foot, and a color change on old oak behaves nothing like the same change on maple.
We fit rust-resistant hardware throughout out on the Neck, which is the most exposed address we work after Nahant. A hinge and runner retrofit runs $30 to $80 a door, and seven tables with a source on every row sit on our cost guide.
- Coastal exposure
- Heavy. Peninsula on three sides, worst on the Neck
- Housing era
- Colonial and pre-1900 Old Town, inside a protected historic district
- What changes the job
- Narrow lanes and tight stairs, so cabinetry arrives as components and is built in place
- Sets your permit rules
- Town of Marblehead building department, under 780 CMR
What cabinets cost in Marblehead
An Old Town kitchen at the back of an 18th century house, on one of the lanes behind Fort Sewall. No box truck was getting anywhere near the door. We cut and finished everything in the shop, carried it in as parts and built the boxes in the room. The cabinets ran $500 to $1,200 a linear foot. We ordered the hardware rust-resistant throughout, because the harbor is two streets away.
| 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 Marblehead
Can you get cabinets into a house in Old Town at all?
Yes, in parts. Nothing assembled turns those stairs or clears those casings, so the run is cut and finished in the shop and built in your room. That adds a day or two to the fit. We quote it that way from the start rather than after a truck has failed to get down the lane.
Does the historic district affect a kitchen?
Not the cabinets themselves. A swap that leaves your plumbing, your wiring and your walls alone counts as an ordinary repair, so nothing gets filed. Historic district review sits on outside work, and the inside of your kitchen is not what it is looking at.
What does salt actually do to cabinet hardware?
It corrodes the parts you never see. Salt comes in through open windows and settles into the hinge cup, where it rusts the metal while your door still looks new. Your doors go out of line somewhere around year three. By then almost nobody connects it back to the hardware chosen on the day.