By Alexei, founder of Loon Cabinetry. Written from our shop in Minneapolis, MN.

Most of the bad cabinet stories I hear from new clients start the same way. The previous shop seemed nice. The quote was reasonable. The contract was a single page. Then something went wrong in week 8 and the homeowner realized they didn’t actually know what they had signed.

I’m not going to pretend a list of questions can replace your gut on this. Some of the worst cabinet makers in this state are extremely good at sounding correct in a first meeting. But there are 11 questions I’d want a homeowner to ask me before signing with us, and I’d want them to ask the same of every other shop they’re considering. If a shop can’t answer all of these clearly in the room with you, that’s enough information to keep looking.

1. Who actually builds the cabinets, and where?

This is the single most important question and almost nobody asks it.

A lot of “custom cabinet” companies in the Twin Cities are really designers who outsource production. They draw the layout, mark it up 30 to 50 percent, and ship the order to a factory in another state or another country. The homeowner has no relationship with the person making the cabinets and no way to fix problems quickly when they come up.

Ask to see the shop. If you can’t tour it before signing, that’s information. We work out of a shop in Brooklyn Park, and we’d rather have you come measure the sawdust on the floor than read a glossy brochure.

2. What is the cabinet box made of, specifically?

“Plywood” is not a specific answer. There’s a real range between domestic furniture-grade plywood and the cheap pre-finished sheet goods sold at the big-box store.

Ask for the species, the grade, the country of origin, and whether the interior is finished. Particleboard is fine for kitchens that are going to be replaced in 10 years. It is not fine for the kitchen you intend to keep. We wrote about the box-material question in more detail in how we build the most durable custom cabinets in Minneapolis, and I’d encourage you to read it before signing with anyone.

3. Are the drawer boxes solid wood and dovetailed?

Dovetailed solid-wood drawer boxes are standard in the high end of this trade and they should not be an upcharge in a true custom kitchen. If a shop is quoting custom prices and giving you stapled MDF drawer boxes, you are being overcharged.

Run a drawer all the way out and look at the corners. The joinery there has to survive every open-and-close for the life of the kitchen, and a stapled MDF box won’t.

4. What hardware comes standard, and what’s an upgrade?

Soft-close hardware on every door and drawer should be standard in 2026. If a shop charges extra for it, ask why. Then ask about the brand of slides and hinges. Blum and Salice are two reputable Austrian and Italian brands you’ll see at the better shops. If the shop can’t name the brand of slide they install, that’s a tell.

Also ask whether the slides are full-extension. Three-quarter extension on a deep drawer means you can’t reach the back of your own cabinet without lying on the floor.

5. Who designs the kitchen, and is the design free?

Some shops charge a design fee, some don’t. Both can be legitimate. The thing you actually want to know is who is doing the design and how much they care about the result.

A designer who never visits the house and works only from your photos is going to miss things. The window trim is thicker than it looks. The hood vent has to run through a structural joist you don’t know about. The dishwasher won’t open if the island is 4 inches closer to the sink wall. I’ve measured a lot of kitchens and I run into something in this category on most of them.

Ask whether the same person who designs your kitchen is going to be on-site during install. Different people is fine. No coordination between them is not.

6. What’s the realistic timeline, in weeks, with caveats?

If a shop gives you a single number, push for the range. A real answer sounds like “10 to 16 weeks from signed contract, plus 2 to 4 weeks of design before signing, and here’s what would push it longer.” A bad answer sounds like “we can have it done by [some date you really want it done].”

I broke this down in detail in how long do custom kitchen cabinets take, with what each week of the process actually involves. Read it and then ask your other shops how their timeline compares. The ones who can’t explain where the weeks go usually can’t deliver on them.

7. What is the payment schedule, and what’s the deposit?

The Better Business Bureau has been consistent on this for years: you should not pay the full price of a contracting job upfront, and any reputable shop won’t ask you to. Industry-standard for custom cabinetry in our market is somewhere in the range of a third at signing, a third when the cabinets are built and ready to finish, and the final third on installation completion. Some shops break it into four payments. The details vary.

Watch for a shop asking for 70 or 80 percent up front, or asking you to make a check out to a person rather than a business. Both are red flags. An undercapitalized shop will treat your deposit as their working capital, and that exposure becomes your problem if the work stalls.

8. What’s included in the price, and what’s not?

Get this in writing before you sign. The list of things that frequently aren’t included in a cabinet quote:

Crown molding. Light rail. Toe kicks. Filler strips. End panels on exposed cabinet ends. Decorative legs. Soffit work. Drywall patching after removal of old cabinets. Disposal of old cabinets. Plumbing and electrical disconnect/reconnect. Counter template fees. Range hood inserts (the metal liner inside a wood hood). Delivery if the shop is far from your home.

Some of these are reasonably outside the cabinet scope. Others should be included by any honest shop. There’s no universal right answer for any specific item, but you should know the answer for each one before the contract is signed.

9. Who handles the install, and are they employees?

The cabinets are only as good as the installation. I have walked into kitchens where beautiful cabinets were ruined by an installer who didn’t shim properly, didn’t seal the back of a sink base, or didn’t level the run before hanging uppers. Reveals went uneven and stayed uneven.

Ask whether the install crew is employed by the shop or subcontracted. Both can work. Subcontracted installers can be excellent, but the chain of accountability is longer when something goes wrong. Employed installers have skin in the long-term reputation of the company. We do the install ourselves and you can see how that fits into the rest of our services on our site.

10. What’s the warranty, in writing, and what does it actually cover?

Most cabinet warranties are technically lifetime warranties on the construction of the cabinet box, and that sounds great until you read the fine print. “Lifetime” often means “lifetime of the original purchaser at the original installation address” — meaning if you move, the warranty is void.

Finish warranties are shorter and more limited. Paint can fade. Stains can shift slightly with sunlight exposure. That’s not a defect. What you want to know is what the shop will fix without arguing about it. A door that warps in year three. A hinge that fails. A drawer that stops tracking right. We’ve talked about long-term care in our piece on how to maintain custom kitchen cabinets, and a fair warranty assumes you’re going to maintain the kitchen as expected.

Also ask how the shop has handled a real warranty claim. Not in theory. Tell me about an actual one.

11. Can I talk to two past clients whose projects are at least three years old?

Anybody can produce a glowing reference from a kitchen they finished last month. The kitchen still smells like fresh finish. The drawers still glide perfectly. Nothing has had a chance to go wrong yet.

Three years in is when the answers actually matter. Did the joints hold up. Did the finish handle a household with kids and a dog. Did the shop come back at year two and fix something without an argument. That’s the reference you want. If a shop can give you that name and number without hesitating, you’ve learned something useful. If they hedge, you’ve also learned something.

One thing the list can’t tell you

Behind all 11 of these is a question I can’t help you answer: do you trust the person sitting across from you. What I can tell you is that the shops who can answer the questions above clearly, without defensiveness, are almost always the ones whose work I’d want in my own house.

If you want to come run these questions on us in person, set up a consultation or take a look at some of our recent projects first to see what we’ve actually been finishing this year.

— Alexei