We measure every opening at three heights and work off the tightest one. Scribing that run into a pre-1940 opening adds $450 to $1,600 on top of the $500 to $1,200 a foot your cabinets cost.
Every kitchen Custom Cabinets Lynn measures here gets the same treatment. Plaster over lath has had a century to move, and almost no opening in this housing is the same width twice. One number taken across the middle of a wall is how cabinets end up being trimmed on your floor.
So we take your opening at the top, at counter height and at the floor. The three rarely agree. Your layout comes off the smallest of them. Cabinets sized to the widest number will not pass the narrowest point, however good the drawing was.
Then we check your floor and your walls separately. A level along the run tells us how far your floor falls, and that sets the packing under your base cabinets. A level up the wall tells us how far it leans, and that sets how much has to come off your end panel when we cut it to the plaster.
The last check is your corner. Very few corners in a house this old are a true 90 degrees. A corner out by a degree or two throws the two runs meeting there out of parallel. You see it as a wedge-shaped gap at your countertop long before anybody looks at a door.
One more thing goes on the drawing before we leave. We mark where your outlets sit, because a deeper wall cabinet or a taller backsplash can swallow one. Putting it back is an electrician's line on the job, and we would rather price that at the measure than find it with your run already up.
All of it lands as one line on your estimate instead of as a surprise on fitting day. The alternative is a filler strip, and a filler strip is a gap with a board across it. Our cabinet cost guide shows the scribing line, and custom against semi-custom and stock covers why fixed widths struggle here.
Related questions
Can I measure my own kitchen for a quote?
Send us your wall length in feet and we can price most of it. That is enough to tell you whether you are in the right range. We still take the three heights ourselves before anything is ordered, and that visit costs you nothing.
How far out of square is normal here?
Enough to matter on nearly every pre-1940 kitchen we open up. Your house is not faulty. It has had a century of settling and patched plaster. That is why we quote the scribing at $450 to $1,600 as a normal line rather than an exception.
Does refacing avoid the problem?
It sidesteps it. Your boxes are already fitted to the walls they sit in. That is part of why refacing at $5,000 to $13,000 goes in over days. Nothing has to be cut to a wall that was never straight.