Austin Elite Cabinets builds wet bar cabinets in Austin, TX, and is Travis County's leading specialist in entertaining millwork, specializing in bar sink base cabinets, glass-front display uppers and butler's pantry storage. We offer built-in wine racks and dry bar layouts that need no plumbing.
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Our team provides cabinet runs framed around an under-counter refrigerator, delivering elegant, custom bars for homes and hard-wearing beverage stations for both residential and commercial projects. The same crew that measures your room builds and sets the bar, you sign off on shop drawings first, and a written warranty stands behind the finished work.
From a sink base cut to clear its drain and supply lines to a complete butler's pantry between the kitchen and the dining room, our team handles every detail. Serving Austin, West Lake Hills, Rollingwood and Barton Creek, we plan each bar around the glasses, bottles and serving pieces you own.
Why Austin Elite
No catalogue boxes and no handoffs. The people who measure your room are the people who build and install it.
A wet bar is a small bar for mixing and serving drinks that includes a sink with running water. A dry bar has no sink. That one difference decides most of the cabinetry.
A sink lets glasses be rinsed right where drinks are made and spills cleaned up on the spot, which is why a wet bar works so well for hosting. It also means a sink base with open space for the drain and supply lines, a box material that tolerates the occasional drip, and a countertop cut to take the bowl.
In Texas, plumbing work is regulated under the Plumbing License Law, chapter 1301 of the Texas Occupations Code, administered by the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners. We build the cabinetry around the rough-in and leave the connections to a licensed plumber, and we plan the sink base so they can work inside it without cutting it apart.
If there is no water line near the wall you want, a dry bar gives you the same cabinetry, bottle storage and serving surface with none of the plumbing. It is often the right answer for a living room wall or a converted niche.
The butler's pantry started as a working room in large houses, where the butler kept the household silver under lock and key. In middle-class American homes of the late 19th and early 20th centuries it became a china pantry, built between the dining room and the kitchen.
Today it does the same job with a different cast. A butler's pantry is a staging area for serving meals, a place to plate food, set out drinks and store the things that only come out for guests: serving pieces, table linens, tableware, candles and wine. More ambitious versions add a dishwasher, a refrigerator or a sink, which turns the pantry into a second wet bar.
If your butler's pantry leans more toward food storage than serving, our pantry cabinet page covers pull-outs and dry goods storage in more depth.
A dedicated base sized to the bar sink, left open at the back for plumbing and built from plywood with sealed edges.
Wet bars commonly pair the sink with under-counter refrigeration. We size the opening to the model you choose and plan the panels and ventilation around it, so bring the specification sheet to the design visit.
A wine rack is simply shelving organized for bottles. Wood is the most common material, including oak, mahogany and fir. We steer clients away from cedar inside a wine rack, because its aroma can reach the wine through the cork. Stainless steel is another option near a sink, since it resists corrosion and staining in a humid space.
Upper cabinets with glass doors keep glasses visible and dust-free. Stemware can also hang from racks beneath a shelf.
Soft-close hinges and slides close doors and drawers gently and quietly, which matters in a room full of glass. For the doors themselves you can choose full overlay, partial overlay or inset, where the door sits flush inside the frame.
A bar can be one sink base and two uppers, or a full wall with a pantry behind it, so we price from drawings rather than a list. These are the factors that decide the quote.
Every quote starts with a free in-home measure. We see the room, the water line and the appliances you have in mind before we put a number on paper.
A bar sink puts water next to wood every evening you entertain. Particleboard absorbs moisture and expands, especially at an unsealed edge, and the base under a sink is where that shows first. For wet bar sink bases we build in plywood, whose cross-grain plies give it better dimensional stability and resistance to warping.
For the doors and drawer fronts, natural hardwoods such as maple, oak, ash, birch, cherry and alder are the usual choices. They can be stained, painted or finished clear. Face-frame construction puts a frame of about an inch and a half across the front of the box, while frameless construction hangs doors directly on the box sides and gives slightly wider openings, which helps when you are fitting a refrigerator.
If the bar sits beside your kitchen, we can match the kitchen's door style and finish so the two read as one room, or contrast them on purpose so the bar feels like its own piece of furniture.
Where a bar goes depends on the house. In West Lake Hills and Rollingwood, many homes were built before 1990, so a bar is often part of a larger remodel: a hall closet or an old desk nook converted into a dry bar, or a butler's pantry opened up between a kitchen and a formal dining room. Rollingwood's teardowns and rebuilds are the easiest case of all, because the water line can be planned before the walls close.
Barton Creek developed as a country club community in the mid-1980s, with Tuscan and Mediterranean estates where a bar can be built to match the formality of the rooms around it, in stained hardwood with inset doors if that suits the house. Lakeway and The Hills sit on and near Lake Travis, where a bar near the living area can serve guests coming in off the water.
Steiner Ranch homes from the 2000s often have the space for a full butler's pantry but shipped with builder cabinetry in it, and replacing those boxes is a common starting point.
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 main drivers are the length of the run, whether it is wet or dry, box construction, door style, species and finish, glass doors, wine storage and appliance openings. We quote from shop drawings after a free in-home measure.
The sink needs a water supply and a drain, and in Texas that connection is licensed plumbing work. If running lines is not practical, a dry bar gives you the same cabinets and storage without a sink, and we can build it so a sink base can be added later.
A wet bar is built for mixing and serving drinks around a sink. A butler's pantry is a staging area between the kitchen and dining room for serving meals and storing linens, tableware and serving pieces. Many homes combine the two in one run.
Yes. We note your kitchen's door style, species and finish at the measure and carry them into the bar. If you would rather set the bar apart, we can do that deliberately instead.
Building begins after you approve the shop drawings, and we confirm an installation date then. The appliance you choose affects timing, so it helps to pick the refrigerator early.
If the boxes are sound and the layout works, refacing the doors and drawer fronts can refresh it. If the sink base has swelled from water or the layout no longer fits how you entertain, replacement makes more sense. We will say which after we see it.
We work throughout Travis County, including West Lake Hills, Rollingwood, Barton Creek, Lakeway, The Hills, Steiner Ranch, Volente, Lost Creek, Sunset Valley and Shady Hollow.
Our work comes with a written warranty, and we walk you through it before the build starts.
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.
