Austin Elite Cabinets builds built-in cabinets in Austin, TX, and is Travis County's leading built-in cabinet maker, specializing in floor-to-ceiling bookcases, home library walls and window seats with drawer bases. We offer glass-door display cabinets and alcove shelving on either side of a fireplace.
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Our team provides face-frame and frameless cabinet construction, delivering furniture-grade built-ins for homes and durable fitted storage for both residential and commercial projects. We measure every wall ourselves, and the same crew builds from shop drawings you approve, fits it, and backs it with a written warranty.
From adjustable shelf spacing and shelves stiffened against sag to a paneled library that runs around a whole room, our team handles every detail. Serving Austin, Rollingwood, Sunset Valley and The Hills, we build pieces that look as though they were always part of the house.
Why Austin Elite
No catalogue boxes and no handoffs. The people who measure your room are the people who build and install it.
A built-in is cabinetry made for one particular place and fixed there, on the floor, against a wall or framed into an opening. That is what separates it from a bookcase you buy and push against the drywall. It fills the space edge to edge, it cannot tip, and it reads as architecture rather than furniture.
Bookcases can run from table height to the ceiling. Ours use adjustable shelves on most of the run so you can reset the spacing as the collection changes, with fixed shelves where the structure needs them. Glass doors keep dust off books you want to see but rarely handle.
Libraries have long arranged shelving three ways: flat against the walls, in parallel stacks, or in bays set perpendicular to the wall to form alcoves. In a house, the first is the usual choice, but a large room can take short bays that create reading nooks. Wide lower shelves hold oversized books flat, the way many libraries store their largest volumes.
A window seat is a small backless bench built to fill a window recess. Built as cabinetry, the base becomes storage, with drawers or doors below a cushion, and bookcases can rise on both sides of the window to frame it.
Books are heavy, and a shelf that looks fine on install day can bow within a year. A common woodworking benchmark treats sag of more than about 1/32 inch per foot of span as visible. Three things keep a shelf under that line.
Adjustable shelves ride on pins in rows of drilled holes. Fixed shelves are dadoed or screwed into the sides and tie the case together, so a tall bookcase usually carries one or two of them even when the rest move.
The construction method sets the look of a built-in as much as the wood does.
Face-frame cabinets carry a frame on the front of the box. It stiffens the case, gives the doors something to hang from, and suits traditional rooms. Frameless cabinets, often called European style, hang the doors straight off thicker box sides, with only a small gap between doors, which gives a flatter, more modern face.
Doors can sit inset, flush inside the frame, or overlay it. Inset is the traditional library look and demands more precise fitting. Overlay is more forgiving and shows more door. We draw both on your elevation so you can see the difference before choosing.
For wood, we work in species such as maple, oak, ash, birch, cherry, walnut and alder, stained or painted. Painted built-ins often use MDF doors, because its smooth face shows no grain under paint.
A built-in is priced on the wall it fills and the way it is made, so we quote after measuring rather than from a table.
Call for a free in-home measure. You get an elevation drawing and a written quote tied to your actual wall.
A built-in only looks built in if it meets the room exactly, so the process is organized around the wall.
We record the wall length at floor, middle and ceiling, check it for plumb, and note outlets, switches, vents, window casings and baseboard heights. Those small details decide where uprights can land.
You see the front elevation with every shelf, door and drawer, plus the construction details. Nothing is cut until you approve them.
Cases are built and finished as drawn, with extra material left on the sides and top for fitting.
On site, those edges are scribed to the wall and ceiling, the cases are leveled and fixed, and trim is applied so the joint to the room disappears.
The age of the house changes the job. In Rollingwood and West Lake Hills, where much of the housing predates 1990, walls and floors have usually moved enough that a built-in has to be scribed tightly to meet them, and a library wall is often part of a larger remodel. In Sunset Valley, one-acre lots and ranch plans leave long, low walls that suit a run of cabinets with bookcases above.
In the newer lake homes of Volente and on custom builds still under construction, built-ins are often planned while the house is being finished, which lets wiring for shelf lighting go in before the drywall. The Hills, a gated golf community inside Lakeway, and Steiner Ranch, with its 2000s builder-grade homes, are common places to replace a plain niche with a proper built-in. We also serve Austin, Shady Hollow and Lakeway itself.
Built-in bookcases often sit beside other fitted work. A media wall with a place for the television and the equipment behind it, a home office with a desk and file drawers, a wet bar in the same living space, or a custom closet in the bedroom above can all be drawn in one set of plans so the finishes match from room to room.
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
The price follows the length and height of the wall, the box material, whether the doors are inset or overlay, the wood species and finish, and how much glass, drawers and trim you want. We quote after a free in-home measure so the number reflects your room.
Not if they are designed for the load. We keep spans sensible for the depth and material, build shelves from plywood, and add a solid hardwood front edge that stiffens them. Fixed shelves at intervals also tie tall cases together.
Yes. We build the seat as a cabinet with drawers or doors below the cushion, and we can add bookcases on both sides of the window so the whole wall reads as one piece.
It depends on the size of the wall, the finish and whether glass doors or paneling are involved. Building starts once you approve the shop drawings, and the schedule comes with your written quote.
A built-in fills the space edge to edge, is fixed to the wall so it cannot tip, and is made for your room rather than an average one. Freestanding pieces leave gaps at the ceiling and sides and never quite line up with trim.
Yes. We measure the wall ourselves and scribe the cabinet sides and top to follow it, so there are no gaps where the wall bows or the floor slopes.
We serve Austin, Rollingwood, West Lake Hills, Sunset Valley, Shady Hollow, Barton Creek, Lost Creek, Steiner Ranch, The Hills, Lakeway and Volente. Call with your address and we will confirm.
Texas does not issue a state contractor licence for cabinet work. What we can show you is our process: we measure in person, you approve shop drawings before we build, the same crew installs, and the work carries a written warranty.
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.
