Custom Kitchen Cabinets
99 project photographs — every one an AV’s Cabinets build.
Custom kitchen cabinets are what AV’s Cabinets has led with since 2006: cabinetry designed around each home rather than assembled from stock boxes. Every kitchen in the gallery below was built and installed by AV’s Cabinets for a client in Northern or Central California.
Because each project is built to order, door style, wood species, finish, storage layout, and trim details are decided with you during the design selection process — the stage Andrey treats as the most important part of the job. The photographs show the range that process produces, from ornate glazed traditional kitchens to flat-panel contemporary work.
Filed under: Kitchen Cabinets Archives
What a custom kitchen actually involves
The layout comes first, and it is decided around how the household actually cooks rather than around what a catalogue offers in stock widths. Where prep space sits relative to the sink and range, whether an island works as a work surface or a gathering place, how far the pantry is from the door you carry groceries through — those decisions set everything downstream, and they are why cabinetry is drawn for the room rather than fitted into it.
Then the storage is engineered. Deep drawer banks instead of a base cabinet you kneel into, corners solved rather than surrendered, a narrow pull-out beside the range for oil and salt, drawer interiors divided for what actually goes in them. This is where building to order earns its money, because almost none of it is a standard size.
Only after that do the visible decisions land: door construction, wood species, finish, and how the run meets the ceiling. Older kitchens often carry a soffit above the wall cabinets — a boxed-in gap that dates a room instantly — and building to full ceiling height with crown stacked into the transition is one of the biggest single changes available to a remodel.
Kitchen Cabinets — questions, answered
- Can you work with my existing layout, or does everything have to move?
- Either. Many kitchens are transformed without relocating plumbing or gas at all — the gains come from storage design, full-height cabinetry, and door and finish choices. Moving services opens up more and costs more; we look at both at the consultation so the trade-off is yours to make with real information.
- How is this different from semi-custom cabinetry?
- Semi-custom means standard boxes with a wider menu of doors and finishes, still built in fixed increments and filled out with filler strips where the room does not cooperate. Here the cabinet is built to the dimension the room actually is.
- Which wood should I choose if the kitchen is being painted?
- Paint-grade work does not need figured grain, and a tight, closed-grain species takes a smoother finish — the grain of an open-pored wood reads through paint. For stained work the species is the whole look, which is a different decision entirely.
- How long does a custom kitchen take?
- It depends on the scope of the work and the shop schedule, so the timeline is set at your consultation rather than promised up front. Because the person who designs and builds your cabinetry also runs the schedule, the date you are given is real rather than a slot in a production queue.
General questions — cost drivers, process, licensing, hours — live on the main FAQ.
Other work we build
- Bathroom VanitiesCustom bathroom vanities and bath cabinetry.
- Entertainment CentersBuilt-in entertainment centers and media walls.
- Custom DoorsCustom wood doors, built by hand.
- Home BarsCustom home bars and wine storage.
Consultation & design selection
Talk with Andrey about your kitchen cabinets project.
The time spent at the beginning of the process is critical — you look at as many options as you want until the design of your new or rebuilt space is right.