Pricing kitchen cabinets from their sizes, edge banding included
Joinery workshops often price a cabinet by feel and learn later what it used. Pricing kitchen cabinets from their parts follows the same rules each time.
In a joinery workshop, a kitchen base cabinet often gets a price per linear metre, adjusted by feel. That way of pricing kitchen cabinets works while the order is ordinary. A deeper unit, an extra shelf or a board in plywood instead of MDF changes the panels, the edge banding and the hours, and the price stays the same. The difference shows at the end of the month, when the stock of boards runs out sooner than expected.
Counting the materials of a cabinet is easy and tedious, so they get estimated. A base cabinet is two sides, a top and a bottom, and its shelves. Every visible edge gets banding. Hinges and feet are a fixed set. The labour is a base time for cutting and assembly plus a little more for each shelf. Once these rules are written down, any size can be priced from them in seconds, and priced the same way every time.
Take a cabinet of 600 × 720 × 560 mm in 18 mm MDF with one shelf. The two sides are 720 × 560 mm. The top and bottom sit between the sides, so they are the width minus two thicknesses: 564 × 560 mm. The shelf is set back 20 mm, so 564 × 540 mm. The edge banding covers both sides, top, bottom and the shelf front: 3.13 m. Every figure here comes from the sizes and the thickness of the board chosen.
Grain and offcuts shape the cutting plan
The choice of board also changes the cutting. MDF has no grain, so its parts can be turned on the panel to fit better. Plywood and solid oak have a grain that must run one way, so their parts keep their direction when they are placed. A cutting plan that knows this places MDF parts freely and keeps the others aligned. It leaves the width of the saw cut between every part and starts with the offcuts already in stock before opening a full panel.
Offcuts only help if they can be found. When every full panel, every offcut and every oak board is a numbered piece with its size, the plan places a part on the offcut it fits, and nobody has to remember that offcut. What is left after cutting goes back to stock with its own number if it is large enough to be useful.
Each step counted, solid wood by volume
The work itself follows the same parts. Panel cutting, edge banding, drilling and assembly are done in the workshop. Finishing, with oil or lacquer, is often given to an artisan paid by the piece. When that step is closed on the phone, the pieces count towards the artisan’s monthly pay, and nobody has to rebuild the month from paper notes.
Solid wood brings one more habit: it is bought and counted by volume. A table top in oak is a set of boards glued together, so it is priced from the length and width of the top and the thickness of the boards, and the boards are taken from a stock counted in cubic metres.
sahmrev Workshop works this way for wood joinery and furniture. It includes everything in sahmrev Commerce and adds the workshop work. The wood joinery page shows the cabinet template with its parts, and the live demo lets you try a workshop end to end.