Kitchen Cabinet Installation Cost in Ontario: What the Labour Is, and When It Doubles

The number

Installation of kitchen cabinets in Ontario runs $100 to $300 per linear foot of cabinet run, or, the way most shops price it, 15 to 20% of the cabinet price. On the 18-foot base and 14-foot upper reference kitchen used across this site, that is $2,500 to $4,500 for a mid-grade kitchen, and it is already inside the installed rates on the cabinet cost guide and the calculator.

The spread is not the installer being greedy. The bottom of the range is a straight run of stock boxes on a level floor against a square wall. The top is a nine-foot ceiling, stacked uppers, crown moulding scribed to a ceiling that is not flat, finished end panels, an island that has to be bolted through a tile floor, and a 1960s house where the only square thing in the kitchen is the fridge.

What the crew actually does

Day one, morning: find the high point of the floor, because every base cabinet gets levelled to it and the gap at the low end gets hidden by the toe kick. Snap a level line for the uppers. Find the studs and mark them, since the uppers hang on the studs and nothing else. Check the walls for bow with a straightedge; a wall that bows a half inch in the middle means every cabinet on it gets scribed.

Day one, afternoon: hang the uppers first, while the floor is still clear to stand on. Corner cabinet first, then out from it, each one screwed to the next through the face frame or the side and screwed back to the studs. Then the bases, same order, shimmed level and plumb, screwed to the wall and to each other.

Day two: the island, which is the hardest piece because it has nothing to lean on. Cleats screwed to the floor, cabinets screwed to the cleats, panels on the exposed sides. Then fillers cut and scribed to the walls, toe kick, finished end panels, light rail under the uppers, crown moulding on top. Doors and drawers go on last and get adjusted so the gaps are even, which on a 40-door kitchen takes most of an hour by itself.

Day three, if there is one: the crown to the ceiling, the appliance panels, the trip back because the dishwasher the homeowner bought on sale is a different height from the one on the drawing.

What is included, and what never is

The four things that double the bill

1. The room is not ready. The installer arrives, the drywall is not done, or the floor is going in next week, or the electrician has not moved the outlet. The crew either leaves and comes back, which is a trip charge and a lost day, or works around the other trades at half speed. Cabinets are the last trade before the countertop. The order of work exists for this reason.
2. Out-of-square walls and out-of-level floors. Normal for anything built before 1990. A half inch is shims. An inch and a half across the room is a day of scribing, a filler at every wall, and a toe kick that has to be ripped on a taper. Tell the installer before they quote. They will find out anyway.
3. Ceiling-height uppers with crown. Stacked cabinets to a nine-foot ceiling look wonderful and take twice as long: a second row to hang, a ceiling that is never flat to scribe to, and crown that has to be cut and coped on site. Budget $25 to $40 a foot for the crown alone.
4. Flat-pack cabinets. Assembly is most of an IKEA install. A 24-cabinet kitchen is 24 boxes to assemble before anything gets hung, and a good IKEA installer charges $100 to $175 per cabinet, assembled and installed, which comes to the same money as installing assembled cabinets from a shop. The saving was on the boxes, not the labour.

Who should install them

The shop that sold them, if they install, because then the drawing, the delivery and the install are one phone number and nobody can blame anybody else. A dedicated cabinet installer if the shop does not; they exist in every city in Ontario and the good ones are booked a month out. A general contractor’s carpenter if the kitchen is part of a bigger renovation and the contractor is running the schedule.

Not, with respect, the handyman who did your deck. Cabinets are finish carpentry at its fussiest: the doors have to line up across a 20-foot run, the gaps have to be even, and the countertop fabricator will template whatever is there and cut stone to it. A quarter inch of out-of-level at the cabinets is a stone top that rocks. Hire someone who does this every week.

Installing them yourself

It can be done, and plenty of people do it well. You need a four-foot level and a laser, a stud finder you trust, a drill, clamps, a jigsaw for the sink base cutouts, a table saw or track saw for fillers, and a second person for the uppers. You need a weekend for a small kitchen and two for a large one, and you need to accept that the first run of uppers will come down once because they were not on a level line.

If you do it, three things the pros know. Hang the uppers before the bases, so you can stand close to the wall. Level everything to the highest point of the floor, not the lowest. And buy a box of plastic shims, not wood; wood shims crush when you tighten the screw and the cabinet goes out of level a month later.

What to ask before you sign

• Is this installed, or supplied? If installed, by whom?
• Does install include fillers, end panels, toe kick, light rail and crown? Each one, by name.
• What happens if the walls are out of square more than a half inch?
• Who connects the sink, dishwasher and hood, and is that priced?
• What has to be done in the room before you arrive, and what do you charge for a return trip if it is not?
• Do you adjust the doors after the countertop goes in? (They move. The good ones come back.)

Put those answers on the same written scope you give every shop, which is what the quote comparison guide is for. The installer who answers them without flinching is the one you want standing on your new floor.