If you have ever considered building your own kitchen cabinets and scraped the idea by convincing yourself that you have no woodworking tools, know nothing about wood staining or finishing, or know little about cabinet making in general, then read on! Believe me, it can be done with minimal tools.

With the rising price of lumber and plywood on the market today a set of kitchen cabinets bought pre made, or custom made is becoming an unreality for some home owners. Consider building your own and saving money.

It would be nice to have a complete woodworking shop all ready to just punch out a set of kitchen cabinets on demand, but that is probably not a reality so here is the alternative to the solution.

You can measure and layout on paper the design of your kitchen using the existing kitchen as a example of how things are constructed then break it down into a parts list forgetting any doors, drawers, or hardware for the time being. Just concentrate on the shell.

When you have your parts list ready you can buy the materials and hire a cabinet shop to cut and mill the parts for the boxes and what your left with is assembling the boxes. This is not an uncommon practice in cabinetry today as more cabinet manufactures are farming out there work so they can produce more. The cabinet shop will package the order for each box making it easy to identify the cabinet and understand the assembly.

When your kitchen cabinets are assembled, you measure the door and drawer opening and take your list to a company that specializes in building just doors and drawers.

Once the cabinets are assembled and the drawer slides installed to each cabinet box and drawer, it is a good idea to dry fit all parts before installing your kitchen cabinets.

At this point you need to decide what type of finish and top coat you want to use on your kitchen cabinets and how it should be done. You may consider hiring a professional painter to stain or finish the cabinetry once installed.

Another alternative to save money, labor, and error factors is to buy "ready to assemble" cabinets from companies that specialize in this area. The savings may not be as great as doing it all yourself, but ready to assemble cabinets cost less to ship than pre-made kitchen cabinets and usually provide professional assistance in design.