Austin Elite Cabinets designs and installs kitchen cabinets in Austin, TX, and is Travis County's trusted specialist in full kitchen cabinetry, specializing in plywood cabinet boxes, frameless full-access layouts and face-frame kitchens built to the room. We offer soft-close drawer banks and pull-out corner storage.
Book a free design visit
Our team provides made-to-measure wall and base cabinets, delivering a kitchen that fits the way you cook at home and durable, easy-to-service storage for both residential and commercial projects. Every job begins with an in-home measure taken by our own installers, moves to shop drawings you sign off before a single box is cut, and closes with a written warranty.
From six-way hinge adjustment on every door to demolition, layout, installation and final alignment, our team handles every detail. Serving Austin, West Lake Hills, Shady Hollow and Steiner Ranch, we bring the measuring tape, the drawings and the install crew straight to your kitchen.
Why Austin Elite
No catalogue boxes and no handoffs. The people who measure your room are the people who build and install it.
A kitchen cabinet is a six-sided box, the carcass, closed on five sides with a door or drawers on the sixth. What that box is made of decides how the kitchen feels in fifteen years, long after the paint color stops mattering. We favor plywood carcasses for the boxes that carry weight and see water. Plywood and higher-grade particle board are the strongest common choices for shelves and sides, and both resist warping better than cheap sheet goods. The difference shows at the sink. If water reaches the core of particle board, it swells and does not come back, which is why the sink base is the first box we inspect when an older kitchen is torn out.
Stiffness climbs quickly with thickness. A three-quarter-inch shelf is about 73 percent stiffer than a five-eighths-inch shelf while being only about 20 percent thicker. On a long upper run holding dinnerware, that is the gap between a shelf that stays flat and one that sags into a smile.
Plywood boxes are usually assembled with screws and nails. Particle board does not hold fasteners as well, so it is typically joined with glue, grooves or confirmat-style connectors. We tell you which method your boxes use, on the drawings, before anything is ordered.
There are two ways to build the front of a cabinet, and the choice shapes both the look and how much you can store.
A face frame is a band of narrow hardwood strips, usually about an inch and a half wide, fastened to the front of the box. It keeps the opening square, stiffens the cabinet and gives the hinges something solid to grip. Face-frame kitchens remain popular across the U.S. The catch shows up in stock lines: each box is built separately, so two stiles meet side by side and become roughly three inches of frame between neighbors. Built as one run, a single stile can serve two openings and that doubled frame disappears.
Frameless cabinets drop the frame and let the box sides do its job, with doors covering nearly the whole edge. The payoff is width. A twelve-inch frameless base takes a drawer about ten inches wide, while the same cabinet with a frame fits one closer to eight and a half. Across a kitchen of narrow bases, those inches add up to real drawer space. Frameless design grew out of postwar Europe and brought the 35 mm cup hinge with it. Neither is wrong. A traditional Austin kitchen with painted shaker doors often wants a frame; a clean, handle-light modern kitchen usually wants frameless. We draw both options when you are undecided.
Doors are what visitors notice. Drawers and hardware are what you notice twice a day.
Traditional doors use a solid wood frame with a panel captured inside it. The frame is joined with mortise and tenon or cope and stick, and the panel floats rather than being glued, so it can expand and contract with the seasons. Maple, cherry, oak, birch and hickory are all common species for stained doors. For painted doors, MDF has become the standard core because it machines crisply and stays flat under paint.
Full-extension slides, so the back of a deep drawer comes all the way out to you. Deep drawers for pots and pans, which end the crouch-and-dig routine of a base shelf. Soft-close hinges and slides that ease every door and drawer shut quietly. Push-to-open hardware for a handle-free front. Lazy susans and blind corner pull-outs that turn a dead corner into usable storage. Pull-out trash and recycling, spice pull-outs and vertical slots for sheet pans. A mixer shelf that swings up to counter height and locks. A typical drawer carries somewhere around 75 to 100 pounds in ordinary use, depending on the slide, so we match the slide rating to what the drawer will hold.
Painted doors are sprayed rather than brushed or rolled, usually over maple or MDF, with primer underneath and a protective lacquer on top. That sprayed build is what gives a painted kitchen its smooth, even face.
Stain behaves differently. It lets the grain show through, and the wood underneath changes the result, so one stain on oak will not match the same stain on maple. We finish a sample door in your chosen species and color and hold it up in your kitchen light before the order goes in.
Repair is worth thinking about now. Solid wood can be refinished by a skilled refinisher if it is ever damaged. Thermofoil, a plastic film pressed over shaped board, looks glossy and resists impact but cannot be repaired once it lifts or chips. For a busy family kitchen, that difference often decides the door.
We do not post a price, because two kitchens with the same footprint can land far apart. These are the factors that actually move the number on your written quote:
The only way to price your kitchen honestly is to measure it. Call us to book a free in-home measure and you will get a written quote tied to real dimensions.
When older cabinets start to look tired, homeowners have three paths: buy new, reface the existing boxes, or strip and refinish what is there. New is the largest investment. Refacing costs less. Refinishing costs least but changes only the surface.
The deciding question is the box. If the carcasses are square, dry and solid, refacing or painting can make sense and we will say so. If the sink base has swollen, the layout fights how you cook, or you want deep drawers where there are only shelves, new cabinets are the better spend. We check box condition during the measure and tell you plainly which path fits.
Housing age decides the conversation. In West Lake Hills and Shady Hollow, many homes date from before 1990, so we often meet original kitchens with framed boxes and dated layouts that are ready for replacement. In Steiner Ranch, a large share of homes went up in the 2000s, and those builder-grade kitchens tend to need better storage and sturdier boxes rather than a new floor plan. Newer lake homes in Volente usually call for fully tailored work from the start.
We also cover Rollingwood, Sunset Valley, Barton Creek, Lakeway and The Hills. Call to set up your free in-home 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 depends on linear footage, box material, door style, species, finish, hardware and how much demolition the room needs. We quote only after measuring your kitchen, so the number reflects your walls and not an average. The in-home measure is free.
Stock cabinets can ship within about a week. Made-to-order boxes take longer because they are built after you approve the drawings. We give you a written schedule once the drawings are signed, so you know the build and install dates before work starts.
Reface when the boxes are sound and the layout works. Replace when the sink base has water damage, the boxes are out of square, or you want a different layout or deep drawers. We look at the boxes during the measure and give you a straight answer.
We cover Austin and nearby communities including West Lake Hills, Rollingwood, Sunset Valley, Shady Hollow, Barton Creek, Lost Creek, Steiner Ranch, Lakeway, The Hills and Volente. Call with your address and we will confirm.
Yes. Every kitchen we build and install comes with a written warranty, and we walk you through it before you sign.
Texas does not issue a statewide contractor licence for cabinet work, so there is no state number to quote. Ask us any insurance question at the design visit and we will answer it directly.
We measure every wall, window, opening and appliance, check the floor for level, look at the condition of your current boxes, and talk through how you cook and store things. From that we prepare shop drawings for your approval and a written quote.
Sometimes. If the top is stone and the new boxes match the old footprint and height, reuse can be possible, but removal carries a risk of cracking. We assess it at the measure and tell you honestly whether it is worth attempting.
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.
