Built In Cabinets From Stock Cabinets: Room-by-Room Plans and Real Costs

Built in cabinets don't have to be built on site. Most of the media walls, desk runs, window seats and closet conversions people call built-ins are ordinary stock or RTA kitchen boxes, set on a level base, tied to the walls with fillers and scribe, and finished with a toe kick, end skins, a top and crown so no box edge shows. Kitchen cabinets come in fixed widths, depths and heights, so the work is mostly arithmetic: choosing a 24-inch base, a 12-inch-deep base, a low drawer bench or a tall cabinet for each run so the result fits the room. Below is how to do that room by room, with the sizes we actually sell, a priced worked example and an honest comparison with custom millwork.

Table of Contents

• What Makes Stock Cabinets Read as Built-Ins
• Depth and Height: Picking the Right Box for Each Run
• The Finishing Kit: Fillers, Skins, Toe Kick, Scribe and Crown
• Living Room Media Walls and Fireplace Alcoves
• A Built-In Home Office Desk Run
• Window Seats and Bench Storage
• Converting a Closet to Built-In Storage
• Basement and Garage Cabinets
• Mudrooms, Laundry Rooms, Bars and Hutches
• Worked Example: Two Fireplace Alcoves, Priced
• Built In Cabinets vs Custom Millwork: Where the Money Goes
• RTA or Assembled for a Built-In Project
• Frequently Asked Questions

What Makes Stock Cabinets Read as Built-Ins

Freestanding furniture has air around it: a gap at the wall, legs or a plinth you can see under, and a top that stops short. A built-in has none of that. Every edge meets something, and the eye reads the whole wall as one piece of the house. You get there with stock boxes by handling six joints:

1. Wall to cabinet. Walls are rarely straight or plumb, so the last cabinet at each end gets a filler strip, ripped or scribed to the wall's actual shape.
2. Floor to cabinet. One continuous toe kick across the run, in the cabinet finish, instead of individual box bottoms.
3. Exposed ends. A cabinet side that shows gets a matching skin or a thicker end panel, so it looks like furniture rather than a box side.
4. Top. One top running wall to wall: stone, laminate, butcher block or a painted or stained wood top. It ties separate boxes into one piece.
5. Ceiling. Upper cabinets that stop at the ceiling, or crown and a filler that close the gap. A 6-inch strip of dust shelf above an upper is the most obvious giveaway.
6. Proportion. Boxes sized to the room. Two 36-inch cabinets centered in a 78-inch alcove with 3-inch fillers each side look planned; a 30 and a 36 with a 12-inch gap at one end does not.

None of this needs a cabinet shop. It needs accurate measuring and the right trim on the order. Our guide to millwork explains where boxes stop and trim begins, if the terms are new.

Depth and Height: Picking the Right Box for Each Run

Kitchen cabinets are built to kitchen dimensions. In the Fabuwood Allure line, a base cabinet is 34½ inches tall including a 4½-inch toe kick and 24 inches deep; wall cabinets are 12 inches deep and come in heights from 12 to 42 inches; tall pantries are 12 or 24 inches deep at 84, 90, 93 or 96 inches. Two less obvious boxes matter for built-ins: 12-inch-deep bases and drawer bench seats. Most framed lines use a similar grid, but check the spec book of the line you choose before drawing. The trick is that you are not limited to using each type where a kitchen would.

The second row is the useful one. A 12-inch-deep base is the same 34½ inches tall as a full-depth base, so after a 1½-inch top both land at 36. That lets a shallow run sit next to a full-depth run under one continuous counter line, or stand alone in a room where a 24-inch base would eat the walkway. Those shallow bases have full-height doors and a shelf, no drawers.

If you want drawers in a shallow run, the spec book's CUT-BASE and CUT-DBASE modifications reduce base and drawer-base depth in ¼-inch steps to as little as 12 inches, and CUT-BASE HEIGHT cuts a base down to 28⅛ inches tall. Ask your designer before planning around a modification.

You will also see built-ins where wall cabinets stand on a floor platform in place of bases. That is a field workaround some installers use, not a use the manufacturer lists: wall cabinets are built to hang, and Fabuwood's warranty excludes alterations and improper use. If you consider it, confirm it with your designer and installer first, and prefer the purpose-made shallow bases above where they fit.

For every width and height in the Allure grid, see our Fabuwood sizes and specs guide, and for uppers and talls in detail the wall and tall cabinet guide.

The Finishing Kit: Fillers, Skins, Toe Kick, Scribe and Crown

This is the part people leave off the order and then try to buy at a home center in a finish that doesn't match. Order it with the cabinets, in the same finish. Prices below are Fabuwood Galaxy, which prices every standard finish the same (Natural Oak and Desert Oak cost more: about 20 percent on cabinets, and more than that on some trim).

A skin is a thin veneer you apply over a side that is already a finished face; an end panel is a thicker board that sits proud of the box and can carry down past the toe kick to the floor, which reads more like furniture. On a freestanding end of a media wall, the end panel is usually worth the extra. Our guides to skins and gables, installing filler strips, scribe molding and molding types cover the fitting, and the toe kick guide covers kick heights and recessed versus flush options.

Two parts are not on our order. We don't sell countertops; a stone or laminate fabricator, or a lumberyard for a wood top, supplies those. And we don't sell decorative knobs or pulls. Hinges and drawer glides come on the cabinets.

Living Room Media Walls and Fireplace Alcoves

The most common built-in request we draw is a living room wall: a TV in the middle, closed storage below, shelves or glass-door cabinets above, often flanking a fireplace. Stock boxes handle it well because the wall is usually a simple rectangle.

Low console under the TV. Full-depth bases at 36 inches put the TV higher than most people like and stick out 25 inches into the room. Shallow is usually better here: 12-inch-deep bases such as the B36FD-12D ($477.75) give a 13-inch-deep console at the same 36-inch top, and the 24-inch-deep drawer bench seats (DBS36, $425.75) make a low console about 17 inches high with a top. If electronics live behind doors, read the equipment manuals for ventilation clearances, and plan a cable path through the cabinet backs before the boxes go in.

Flanking towers. For floor-to-ceiling sides, 12-inch-deep tall cabinets keep the TV wall shallow. A TP181284 is 18 inches wide, 12 deep and 84 tall at $1,020.50; with crown, or a stacked wall cabinet above, it reaches an 8- or 9-foot ceiling. Screw every tower and base to wall studs, not just to its neighbours: a tall, shallow box is easy to pull over. If an outlet or cable plate falls behind a cabinet, cut its back so the box stays reachable. The other approach, base cabinets with uppers above, is the classic fireplace alcove; it is worked through, with prices, in the example below.

For a wall-hung version with no toe kick at all, the floating look, see our guide to floating cabinets; it needs stronger wall fastening than a floor-standing run.

A Built-In Home Office Desk Run

A built-in home office is usually one wall: drawer stacks either side, a knee space in the middle, uppers or shelves above. The decision that shapes everything is height.

Base cabinets put the work surface at counter height, about 36 inches with the top. That is a good standing desk or a stool-height homework counter, but it is high for typing in an ordinary chair. OSHA's computer-workstation guidance puts the keyboard at about elbow height for seated work, and for most adults in an ordinary chair that is well below a 36-inch counter. So pick one of two plans:

In the counter-height plan, the KD30 knee drawer (a 30-inch-wide, 21-inch-deep drawer, $172.25) hangs between the two 21-inch four-drawer bases ($832.00 each) and leaves open space below it. In the seated plan, each B24 ($471.25) is cut at the factory to 28⅛ inches tall with the CUT-BASE HEIGHT modification ($201.50), which removes the top drawer and is ordered through your designer rather than added online; a 1¼-inch top brings it to about 29⅜ inches. Keep the knee space at least as wide as the chair you will use, and add a keyboard tray if you sit lower.

Above the desk, 12-inch-deep wall cabinets at the usual 18 inches over the surface hold files and printer paper; leave a section open or use glass doors so the wall doesn't feel like a kitchen.

If you searched for RTA office cabinets, the same boxes come flat-packed. US Cabinet Depot sells its framed lines RTA online, and its Shaker line includes a desk knee drawer; see RTA or assembled below.

Window Seats and Bench Storage

A window seat is a short run of low, deep boxes with a top and a cushion. Galaxy makes a box for exactly this: the drawer bench seat, 24 inches deep and 16⅜ inches tall, built like a standard base with one drawer and an open top. The DBS30 is $383.50 and the DBS36 $425.75; two DBS36s make a 72-inch seat, and fillers take up whatever is left to the walls.

Height is the thing to get right. A ¾-inch top on the 16⅜-inch box puts the seat surface about 17 inches off the floor before the cushion. Measure a chair in your house that you find comfortable and work backward, and choose the cushion thickness to match. Our mudroom guide works through bench seat heights in more detail.

The drawers face the room, so you open them from the front rather than lifting the seat. If the seat sits under a window with a radiator or heat register, leave an opening in the toe kick or the top so the heat still reaches the room.

Converting a Closet to Built-In Storage

Turning a reach-in closet into a cabinet wall is a popular way to gain an office nook, a linen closet or a pantry outside the kitchen. Measure three things before choosing boxes: interior depth from the back wall to the inside of the closet face, interior width wall to wall, and the opening width, which is often narrower than the interior.

• Depth 24 inches or more: base cabinets fit, with a top, and 12-inch uppers above. This is the desk-in-a-closet layout.
• Shallower closets: 12-inch-deep tall cabinets (TP181284, $1,020.50) or 12-inch-deep bases with wall cabinets above, which suit linens, cleaning supplies and pantry overflow.
• Interior wider than the opening: boxes tucked behind the returns are hard to reach. Use fillers or blank panels there and put the cabinets where you can open them.

Removing the closet doors and framing around the opening is carpentry and drywall work; plan it with whoever is installing. For hanging clothes rather than storage cabinets, a wardrobe system is the better tool: St. Martin makes wardrobe and closet systems we design and quote.

Basement and Garage Cabinets

Basement cabinets work well when the basement is finished, heated and dry. The risks are the slab and the air. A slab can stay cooler and damper than the room above it, so set the run on a platform or sleepers rather than straight on the concrete, and keep cabinets off any wall that has shown water. The U.S. EPA recommends keeping indoor relative humidity below 60 percent, ideally 30 to 50; a dehumidifier in a basement is cheap insurance for the cabinets as well as the room.

Box material matters more here than upstairs. Plywood handles occasional humidity swings better than furniture board, though neither survives standing water. US Cabinet Depot builds with a ½-inch plywood box, and Diamond offers a plywood upgrade on lines that are furniture board as standard. Our plywood vs furniture board comparison has the detail. Also read the warranty: Fabuwood's spec book excludes damage from moisture and humidity and expects year-round environmental controls, which is reasonable for a finished basement and a problem for a damp one.

That same clause is why we steer people away from kitchen cabinets in an unheated garage. Freezing winters and humid summers outside the conditioned house are not what painted kitchen doors are made for; purpose-built garage storage is the better buy there. A garage that is insulated and heated like the rest of the house is a different case.

For a basement bar, the bar cabinet sizes, sink base and refrigerator openings are covered in our wet bar cabinet guide; a basement kitchenette follows the same rules as any kitchen.

Mudrooms, Laundry Rooms, Bars and Hutches

Four built-in rooms have their own guides, so here is only the short version and where to go next:

• Mudroom: tall cabinets or open lockers over a bench, with a drawer base for shoes. Locker sizes and bench heights are in our mudroom cabinets and lockers guide.
• Laundry room: wall cabinets over the machines, a tall cabinet for the ironing board and brooms, and a base with a top for folding. Our laundry room cabinets guide covers machine clearances and layouts.
• Coffee or drinks station: a short base run with uppers on a dining-room wall; see the coffee bar cabinet guide.
• Hutch: a base run with glass uppers sitting on the counter, the dining-room classic; see our kitchen hutch guide.

Worked Example: Two Fireplace Alcoves, Priced

Here is a real-shaped job: a living room with an 8-foot (96-inch) ceiling and a fireplace with an alcove each side, each 39 inches wide. The owner wants closed storage below a countertop-height top, glass or solid-door cabinets above, and everything to the ceiling. Finish: any standard Fabuwood Galaxy colour, which all price the same.

Plan A, full-depth bases. Each alcove gets a 36-inch base and a 36-inch-wide, 42-inch-tall upper, with 1½ inches of filler at each wall (one 3-inch filler ripped in two). With a 1½-inch top the counter lands at 36 inches; with the standard 18-inch gap the upper runs from 54 to 96 inches, straight to the ceiling.

Plan B, shallow. If the alcoves are only 14 or 15 inches deep, or a 25-inch-deep counter would stick out past the fireplace breast, swap each B36 for a 12-inch-deep B36FD-12D ($477.75) and keep the same fillers and toe kick. The counter line stays at 36 inches, the run is about 13 inches deep with its top, and the order drops to $2,388.10. You give up the drawers and some depth; you gain floor space and a lighter look.

Not in either total: the two tops, which come from a fabricator or lumberyard; crown, CM-1 at $117.00 per 8-foot length, quantity depending on the run and returns; glass doors if you want them; and labor. Across 6½ feet of alcove (two 39-inch runs), Plan A's cabinets and trim work out to about $428 per linear foot for both tiers, and Plan B to about $367.

Built In Cabinets vs Custom Millwork: Where the Money Goes

A finish carpenter or cabinet shop building from sheet goods charges for design, materials, shop time, finishing and installation, and every box is a one-off. Fixr's custom cabinet cost guide (updated January 2025) puts custom cabinetry at about $550 to $570 per linear foot, roughly $400 for the cabinets themselves plus $150 to $170 for doors and finishes, and about $100 to $200 per linear foot to install. Those figures are for kitchen cabinetry, so treat them as a reference point, not a quote for your wall.

Stock boxes move most of that cost off the job: the boxes, doors and finish arrive factory-made, and on-site work shrinks to leveling, fastening, scribing and trim. What you give up is flexibility. You get 3-inch width steps, fixed depths and the door styles of the line, and the fillers do the rest. Rooms with an angled ceiling, a curved wall or a 10-inch alcove are where a cabinetmaker earns the premium; flat walls with square corners are where stock boxes win.

Labor is the cost people forget on both routes. Built-ins take a careful installer longer per foot than a kitchen run, because of the scribing, platforms and trim. Our installation cost guide explains how installers price it, and our cost per linear foot guide shows how per-foot prices compare across value, mid-range and semi-custom lines.

RTA or Assembled for a Built-In Project

Built-ins are a good fit for ready-to-assemble cabinets: the runs are short, so assembly is a weekend, and flat boxes are easier to get down a basement stair or through a closet door. US Cabinet Depot sells its framed lines RTA online with a ½-inch plywood box and soft-close hinges, and J&K ships RTA or assembled. Fabuwood ships assembled. Our RTA vs pre-assembled comparison and RTA assembly guide cover the trade-offs, and you can browse the RTA cabinet collection.

Framed or frameless matters for the look. Frameless boxes, such as Fabuwood Illume and Ovela, give full-access interiors and a flatter, furniture-like face that suits modern media walls; framed shaker boxes read as traditional built-ins. See framed vs frameless cabinets if you are deciding.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you use kitchen cabinets for built-ins?

Yes. Most built-ins are kitchen bases, wall cabinets and tall cabinets with fillers, a continuous toe kick, finished ends, a top and crown. The trim, not the box, is what makes them look built in.

Are built-ins from stock cabinets cheaper than custom?

Usually. Our fireplace example comes to about $428 per linear foot of alcove in cabinets and trim for two tiers, against Fixr's figure of about $550 to $570 per foot for custom cabinetry. Tops, crown and labor apply either way.

How deep should built-ins be?

24 inches for a counter or desk with drawers, about 12 to 13 inches for bookcases and shallow consoles, and 24 inches for window seats. Let the walkway decide: a shallow run is often the better choice in a living room.

Can wall cabinets be used as base cabinets?

Not as designed. Some installers stand them on a fastened platform as a workaround, but that is not a manufacturer-listed use and Fabuwood's warranty, for one, excludes alterations and improper use, so confirm it with your designer and installer. For shallow runs, 12-inch-deep bases are the purpose-made option.

What height should a built-in desk be?

For a seated desk, lower than a kitchen counter: OSHA puts the keyboard at about elbow height for seated work. Base cabinets give about 36 inches, which suits standing or a stool; factory-cut bases give about 29⅜ inches with a top.

Can I convert a closet into built-ins?

Yes, if the depth allows. A closet 24 inches deep takes base cabinets and a top; shallower ones take 12-inch-deep bases or tall cabinets. Check that the boxes fit through the opening.

What cabinets are best for a basement?

Cabinets with a plywood box, set on a platform off the slab, in a basement kept dry and heated. Kitchen-cabinet warranties generally exclude moisture damage, so fix water problems first.

Do built-ins add value to a home?

There is no reliable resale figure for them. Built-ins are fastened to the house and usually stay with it, so a buyer sees them as part of the room. Build them for how you use the space, and keep the finish neutral if you expect to sell soon.

Do you install built-ins?

No. We design, quote and ship the cabinets and trim; your contractor or you install them.

Send Us the Wall and We'll Draw It

Measure the wall, the ceiling height, any alcove depths and the positions of outlets, windows and vents, take a photo, and send it to our free 3D design service. A designer replies within one business day, and you get renderings and an itemized quote with every filler, skin and toe kick listed within 24 to 48 hours. You can browse the Fabuwood Allure line, check sizes in the Allure spec book and order door samples to see the finish in your room's light.

We design, quote and ship cabinets nationwide; installation is done by your contractor or by you. Questions about a tricky alcove or a basement run? Reach us through the contact page or call 609-900-3358. Contractors building out several rooms can ask about Captivating Pro trade pricing.

Sources: Fabuwood Allure spec book and our Galaxy finish spec books (cabinet dimensions, prices, modifications, warranty); Fixr custom cabinet installation cost guide (updated January 30, 2025); OSHA Computer Workstations eTool (keyboards and desks); U.S. EPA, A Brief Guide to Mold, Moisture and Your Home. Prices are our displayed Fabuwood Galaxy standard-finish prices at the time of writing and change with the price list.