Rollingwood · West Lake Hills · Sunset Valley · Shady Hollow
Austin Elite Cabinets builds custom cabinets in Lost Creek, TX, and is a Travis County specialist in rethinking kitchens that date from a neighborhood's first building years, specializing in full kitchen cabinet replacement, refacing over sound face frames and reworking closed galley layouts into open plans. We offer painted inset doors and tall pantry cabinets with pull-outs.
Book a free design visit
Our team provides built-in storage for dens and studies, delivering a modern working kitchen for homes and durable, carefully fitted cabinetry for both residential and commercial projects. Our own crew measures every wall in person, draws up shop drawings you sign before production begins, installs exactly what it measured and leaves a written warranty behind.
From scribing a new end panel to a wall that is no longer plumb to a whole-kitchen rebuild with a relocated island, our team handles every detail. Serving Lost Creek, Barton Creek, West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, we begin each job by opening the existing boxes and telling you honestly what they can still carry.
Why Austin Elite
No catalogue boxes and no handoffs. The people who measure your room are the people who build and install it.
Lost Creek is a census-designated place in western Travis County, bounded by Capital of Texas Highway on the east, Barton Creek on the south, Barton Creek Boulevard on the west and Bee Caves Road on the north. It takes its name from a secluded stretch of Barton Creek, well away from the busier water downstream at Barton Springs and Zilker Park. The Lost Creek Municipal Utility District was formed in 1972 to bring water and sewer service, and custom houses went up across the hills and knolls along Lost Creek Boulevard for decades afterward. Today the neighborhood is almost completely built out.
That history is what shapes a cabinet job here. The large majority of the houses were built in the neighborhood's first two decades, so a great many kitchens are either original or were updated once, a long time ago. The homes themselves are valuable and well kept. The kitchens often lag behind them.
Two things tend to be true at once in an original Lost Creek kitchen. The boxes may still be solid, and the layout may no longer suit the way the family lives. Which of those matters more decides whether the answer is a reface, a replacement or a new plan.
If the cabinet boxes are dry, square and firmly fixed to the wall, and you are happy with where the sink, range and refrigerator sit, refacing keeps them. We clad the face frames and exposed ends in new veneer, then fit new doors, drawer fronts, hinges and slides. The countertop usually stays where it is, and there is no demolition.
Particleboard swells irreversibly once water reaches its core, and a sink base that has seen a slow leak over the years is often soft, stained or delaminating. Boxes like that are not worth covering. New boxes in plywood, which resists warping and holds screws well, give the kitchen a sound structure for its next few decades.
Many kitchens of this era were drawn as a separate room, closed off from the living area with a doorway or two and a run of upper cabinets on every wall. Where the goal is an open kitchen that shares light with the family room, new cabinetry is drawn around the new plan rather than patched into the old one. At the design visit we pull drawers, open the sink base and check every box for level. Then we tell you which of the three we would choose, and why.
Lost Creek houses sit on rolling ground among mature trees, some high on a knoll with a long view and others set into the slope. A kitchen that turns its back on that setting is the most common complaint we expect to hear here, and it is the one new cabinetry can answer best.
Any wall that comes out needs checking by a qualified contractor or engineer before it is removed. We draw the cabinetry once the new plan is settled, and we work alongside whoever handles the structural part.
Because the neighborhood grew house by house rather than from one builder's catalog, Lost Creek holds sprawling ranch houses beside traditional custom homes and later contemporary designs. A kitchen should look current without looking like it was taken from a different house.
We bring door samples to the house and hold them against your flooring, trim and stone, because a finish chosen in a catalog rarely looks the same in a room lit by a hillside window.
Lost Creek has its own review process, and it is worth knowing before a remodel reaches the calendar. The Lost Creek Neighborhood Association's Architectural Control Committee approves or disapproves new structures and any and all exterior changes or improvements to existing ones. Its authority covers anything that alters an exterior dimension, shape, construction material or exterior appearance.
For most sections, the owner submits the association's Building/Remodeling Application Form together with plans or drawings. The committee acknowledges an application within three business days and issues a decision within fifteen days of that acknowledgment. The Woodslopes and Valley at Lost Creek sections are handled by their own homeowner associations instead. The Lost Creek Limited District, which enforces the deed restrictions from its offices on Quaker Ridge, warns that starting work without approval can lead to enforcement and delay, and notes that Travis County and Westlake Fire Department permits may also be needed.
Replacing cabinets inside the house does not change the exterior. A remodel that adds a window over a new sink, moves an exterior door or runs a range hood duct out through a wall or roof may well do so. We mark any such change on the drawings at the start, so you can file with the committee before the job is booked rather than after.
We do not post a price, because two kitchens of the same size in this neighborhood can call for completely different work. These are the things that set the figure:
You get a written figure for your kitchen after a free in-home measure, and nothing is ordered until you approve it.
Lost Creek uses the 78746 ZIP code and sits entirely within the Eanes Independent School District, so we plan work hours around a household that is often juggling the drive to Forest Trail Elementary, West Ridge Middle or Westlake High. Many houses here have steep driveways or entries set into a slope, which we check at the first visit so delivery and carry-in are planned rather than improvised.
A kitchen from the neighborhood's early years usually shares its age with the bathrooms and laundry room. Homeowners replacing the kitchen often add:
Keeping those rooms on one set of drawings carries a single door style and finish through the house. Call to book your measure.
The process
Four steps, and nothing is built until you have signed off on the drawings and the price.
We measure the room, talk through how you use it and look at door styles and finishes together.
You get shop drawings and one written price. Nothing is built until you sign off on both.
Boxes, doors and panels are made to the dimensions taken in your home, not to catalogue sizes.
The same crew installs, levels, scribes to your walls and adjusts every door and drawer before we leave.
Questions
It can be, if the boxes are dry, square and in a layout you want to keep. If the sink base has water damage or you want to open the kitchen to the living area, new cabinetry is the better spend. We check every box at the design visit before recommending either.
Mainly whether you reface, replace or redesign, then linear footage, box material, door style and mounting, species and finish, sizing, accessories and the demolition and repair around the old cabinets. You receive a written figure after the free in-home measure.
The committee reviews exterior changes, so cabinets replaced inside the house generally do not. A new window, an exterior door or a hood duct through the wall or roof may. Check with the committee, or with the Woodslopes or Valley association if you live in those sections, before that part of the work starts.
We design and install the cabinetry for the new plan, including islands, tall pantry storage and built-ins for the adjoining room. The wall itself should be assessed by a qualified contractor or engineer, and we coordinate our drawings with that work.
Refacing moves faster than replacement because there is no tear-out and no new box build, and a new layout takes longest. You get a delivery date once you sign the shop drawings.
Yes, the whole 78746 neighborhood between Bee Caves Road and Barton Creek, including the Woodslopes and Valley sections, as well as neighboring Barton Creek, West Lake Hills and Rollingwood.
Yes. Every install comes with a written warranty, and we walk you through what it covers during the design visit.
Texas does not issue a statewide contractor licence for cabinet work. Ask us, or any cabinet company you are considering, for a certificate of insurance at the first visit.
We measure every wall, window and appliance, open the existing cabinets to check their condition, note anything that would change the exterior and need committee review, and bring door and finish samples. Shop drawings follow for your approval before anything is built.
Free in-home design visit across Austin and the west side. We call you back to set a time.
Calls only, we do not receive text messages.
