The trim in your Salem kitchen was there before the kitchen was, so Custom Cabinets Lynn cuts a run to fit it. Original casing and chair rail come off a Federal-period wall in pieces more often than whole, and nothing you can buy replaces them.
We stop your end panel against what is already on your wall, so the cabinets meet the room rather than the other way round. That is hours instead of material, and it is the line a quote written off a photograph never carries.
We measure your opening at three heights before ordering, because plaster over lath on a two-hundred-year-old frame is not the same width top and bottom. An inch of difference across a 12-foot wall is ordinary here and fatal to a run ordered off one number.
Federal-period rooms carry their proportions in the trim, and a wall cabinet that crashes into a chair rail reads wrong from day one. So we set the height of your run off the trim line rather than off a standard. Sometimes that means a shorter upper and a deeper crown.
We set your doors inside the frame where the room asks for it, since a door hung over the frame looks bought rather than built. Original doors and fronts are worth keeping wherever they have survived. Stripping and refinishing a kitchen back to wood runs $1,500 to $5,000.
We look at what is already hanging before quoting anything new, since a restoration is often both the cheaper answer and the better one. Historic district review applies to the outside of your building, so nothing about the inside of your kitchen goes in front of it.
Salem at a glance
Building your kitchen to the room costs $500 to $1,200 a linear foot in this stock. A published North Shore job for the same work came in at $28,564, and that sits in our tables as a comparable rather than as our price.
We carry the out-of-square work at $450 to $1,600 as its own line, so you can see what the age of the house is costing you. Semi-custom at $150 to $700 a linear foot works in the newer North Salem stock and struggles in the McIntire Historic District.
We reface at $5,000 to $13,000 where your boxes are sound, and out on Salem Neck and Winter Island we change the hardware while the doors are off. The seven price tables and every source behind them are published on our price guide.
- Coastal exposure
- Real on the Neck and the waterfront, easing inland
- Housing era
- Federal period over a colonial core, 407 protected buildings in one district
- What changes the job
- Original trim stays, so the run gets scribed to the casing rather than the casing removed
- Sets your permit rules
- City of Salem building department, under 780 CMR, plus historic district review
What cabinets cost in Salem
A Chestnut Street district kitchen where the original chair rail ran the length of two walls. The owner had been told it would have to come off. We set the uppers above it and cut the end panels to fit the casings, at $450 to $1,600. Every piece of that trim stayed exactly where it was. The cabinets came in at $500 to $1,200 a linear foot, well inside the $28,564 a published Salem job carried.
| 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 Salem
Will you have to take my original trim off?
Almost never, and that is the whole point of measuring this way. Your end panels get cut to fit the casing already on your wall, at $450 to $1,600 on top of the cabinets. Old casing splits on the way off far more often than it survives, and there is nothing in a catalog that replaces it.
Does the historic district control what happens inside?
No. Review in the McIntire Historic District applies to outside work, and the inside of your kitchen is handled the same as every other Essex County house. A cabinet swap that leaves your services and your structure alone counts as an ordinary repair, so nothing about it gets filed.
Is my kitchen worth restoring rather than replacing?
Often, in this stock. Stripping and refinishing back to wood runs $1,500 to $5,000 against $10,000 to $26,500 for a kitchen built new. Original doors on a frame of that age are worth more than anything that would replace them. What decides it is the boxes under your doors, and one that has rotted out is $400 to $1,400 either way.