You start looking at kitchen cabinets and the quotes make no sense.
One place says a 10×10 kitchen runs about $2,000. Another says $9,000. A third won’t give you a number at all until someone comes out to measure. Same kitchen, same square footage, wildly different answers.
It isn’t that two of them are lying. They’re quoting different products. Once you understand what the categories actually mean, the numbers line up and you can tell a real deal from a bad one.
The Four Main Categories
Almost every cabinet you’ll be offered falls into one of these.
RTA (ready to assemble) ships flat in boxes. The parts are cut, drilled, and finished, but someone has to put them together. That someone is either you, at your kitchen table over a weekend, or the installer, for a fee. RTA is the cheapest way to get a decent cabinet, and plenty of RTA lines use solid plywood boxes.
Stock cabinets come pre-made in fixed sizes, usually in 3-inch increments: 12, 15, 18, 21 inches and so on. You pick from what exists. They’re available fast and priced low, but your layout has to bend to their sizes, which usually means filler strips in the gaps.
Pre-assembled is the same idea as stock, just already built when it arrives. You pay more for the box and less for labor, and installation goes faster. For a lot of people this is the sweet spot.
Semi-custom and custom means the cabinets get made for your kitchen. Semi-custom works from a standard catalog with changes to size, depth, and finish. Full custom is built from scratch to whatever you want. Price climbs accordingly, and so does lead time.
Why Quotes Differ So Much
Here’s the thing people miss: most quotes you see online are for cabinets only.
A cabinet price doesn’t include installation. It usually doesn’t include delivery. It almost never includes countertops, and it definitely doesn’t include tearing out your old kitchen or moving plumbing.
So when you compare $2,000 against $9,000, you may be comparing a box price against a box price, but you’re still missing half the project. A realistic budget needs all of these lines:
Cabinets. Assembly, if they arrive flat. Delivery, which is often a few hundred dollars and sometimes more if they carry it inside. Installation, which is usually quoted per cabinet box. Countertops, priced per square foot. Demolition of the old kitchen. Plumbing and electrical, if anything moves.
Installation alone on a typical 10×10 kitchen often lands in the same range as a budget set of cabinets. That surprises people more than anything else.
The useful question when you get a quote is simply: what is not in this number? A good salesperson will tell you straight. A vague answer is a warning.
The Part That Actually Matters: The Box
Door style is what you look at. The box is what decides whether the kitchen lasts.
Cabinet boxes are built from plywood, particleboard, or MDF. Plywood holds screws better, handles weight better, and survives a leak under the sink far better than particleboard does. Particleboard isn’t automatically bad, and a lot of perfectly fine kitchens use it, but if water gets to it, it swells and doesn’t come back.
In a humid climate like Georgia’s, that’s worth thinking about, especially for the sink base and anything near the dishwasher.
A few other things to check when you’re standing in front of a sample:
Drawer boxes. Solid wood with dovetail joints outlasts stapled particleboard by a wide margin.
Drawer glides. Soft-close undermount glides are the standard now. Side-mount roller glides are a sign of a cheaper line.
Hinges. Six-way adjustable hinges mean doors can be aligned properly at install and re-aligned later.
The back panel. A full plywood back is sturdier than a thin panel stapled into a frame.
None of this shows up in a photo. This is the main argument for walking into a local cabinet showroom and opening a few doors yourself instead of buying from pictures.
Where the Money Is Best Spent
If your budget is tight, there’s a reasonable order of priorities.
Spend on the boxes and the hardware. Those are the parts you can’t upgrade later without taking the kitchen apart.
Save on the door style. A simple shaker door in a good color looks right in almost any house and costs much less than an ornate profile.
Be careful with organizers. Pull-out spice racks, tray dividers, and corner carousels add up fast, and some of them you’ll use twice a year. Pick the two you’ll actually use daily.
And think hard before moving the sink or the range. Relocating plumbing or gas is one of the biggest hidden cost jumps in a kitchen remodel. Keeping the layout where it is can save thousands.
Getting the Measurements Right
This is where projects go wrong, and it’s worth being blunt about it.
Cabinets are ordered to a specific plan. If a wall measurement is off by an inch or two, you don’t get a small problem. You get cabinets that don’t fit, and since they’re made per project, there’s usually no return.
Measure yourself first so you know roughly what you’re working with, but have whoever is supplying the cabinets measure the room before anything gets ordered. Walls are rarely square, floors are rarely level, and a professional measure accounts for that.
Also confirm who is responsible if the measurements are wrong. When the supplier measures, that’s on them. When you measure, it’s on you.
Buying Local vs. Ordering Online
Online cabinet sellers are genuinely cheaper on the box price. The trade-offs are the parts you don’t see in the listing.
You can’t inspect what you’re buying. Shipping damage is your problem to document and chase. If three doors arrive in the wrong finish, you’re emailing someone far away while your kitchen sits in pieces. And you still need to find an installer, who may not want to warranty work on cabinets he didn’t supply.
A local supplier costs more on paper and folds a lot of that risk into the price. If the measure is wrong or a door is damaged, one company owns the problem.
For most people in the north Atlanta suburbs, the practical move is to price both. Get an online quote, then get a quote for kitchen cabinets in Alpharetta, GA that includes measure, delivery, and install, and compare the finished totals rather than the box prices.
A Sensible Order of Operations
If you’re starting from zero, this sequence keeps things calm.
Set a total budget, then assume cabinets will be roughly a third to a half of it. Decide whether the layout is staying or moving, because that single choice swings the cost more than any door style. Go look at real samples and open the drawers. Get a design drawn up before you commit to anything. Get the room measured by whoever is supplying the cabinets. Then sign.
Also ask about timing early. Cabinets usually need to be ordered weeks before anyone shows up to install them, and cabinet installation in Alpharetta and the surrounding towns books out, particularly in spring and early fall when everyone starts projects at once.
Whichever category you land on, the same three things decide how you’ll feel about the kitchen years from now: the box, the drawer glides, and whether the measurements were right.
The door color is the easy part. It’s everything behind it that you only get to choose once.