Woodmark Kitchen & Bath Houston > Bath Remodeling

Restoring existing bath vanity cabinets is usually not a sensible choice as usually only a small number of existing cabinets are involved and most are obsolete. Usually obsolete because they are built at too low a height. If you were to build a completely new adjoining master closet it would be even wiser to choose either job built or factory cabinets so as to have the same quality of cabinets throughout.

Job building cabinets for one bath or maybe an added master closet is usually a very wise choice. One reason is that these cabinets can usually be built in a few days and so you can avoid the delay in waiting for the delivery of purchased factory cabinets. A second reason is that job built cabinets can be built specifically for what is often a very tight space. One popular Woodmark job built vanity cabinet is a seven foot vanity cabinet which allows for two large vanity bowls, each having a door below, plus three stacks of four drawers each. More than enough to take care of most storage in a bath.

It must be noted that you must be careful in having cabinets job built as the quality of job built cabinets can vary widely. The quality of carpenters throughout any market area and the quality of individual carpenters particularly within a large crew can vary widely. Today in Houston there are only a small number of highly experienced quality cabinetmakers who turn out high quality work. And because most highly experienced cabinet makers feel it necessary to run large crews to complete the large custom homes they generally work on, most kitchen and bath vanity cabinets are built by helpers having little experience. The important question to always ask concerning bath vanity cabinets is WHO will build the cabinets: how many people are involved and what is their individual experience. Any experienced contractor can walk through a completed project and tell whether it was built by one experienced carpenter or one experienced carpenter with a large number of helpers. The detailing is always different and quite apparent to those who understand cabinet quality. Well constructed cabinets will almost always take longer to build as they are built by only one or two cabinetmakers having many years of experience. But these cabinets have the significant advantage over any other cabinet of being easily built to accommodate the specific requirements of the room they are built for.

The quality of factory cabinets varies as widely as the number of manufacturers building them. And with factory cabinets nothing is truer than the comment “you get what you pay for”. To the untrained eye the difference at the outset may not be readily apparent. But as you live with them and use them, the quality or lack thereof will become quite apparent. When you sell your home the purchaser at that time will be able to readily see the difference as over time lower-cost cabinets will not hold up and will lose their new appearance with daily use.

Remodeling a bathroom is never an inexpensive proposition. All the elements such as glass shower doors, tile, tubs, toilets, bath vanity bowls and bath vanity hardware plus other bath accessories can be quite costly. It follows then that it does not make financial good sense to install poorly built factory cabinets in your bath as they may in turn devalue your bath and your entire home, and turn your investment into a poor one. If budget is a compelling consideration it is much better to choose job built cabinets built by a good cabinetmaker with a great reputation and whose work you have verified. A good cabinetmaker will build quality cabinets which will never lose their value as they will hold up under many years of use.

Woodmark’s main cabinetmaker in Houston has 32 years of experience. His father was a lifelong trim carpenter and cabinetmaker. The father of Woodmark’s owner was also a lifelong carpenter and cabinetmaker. The result is as it would seem to be: Woodmark Kitchen and Bath has always emphasized cabinet quality.

Woodmark job builds all types of cabinets: face frame, full overlay, those with inset doors and all others. The price of the kitchen to you does not vary substantially from one type or the other.

The vanity cabinet “boxes” are made of ¾” birch plywood. The face frames (the part the doors are hung from) are made of solid poplar or maple—no veneered plywood. Each piece is cut to fit the bath vanity cabinets. The top surface of the cabinet is covered with BC plywood. Cabinet door and drawer faces are made by a door manufacturer, Evans Cabinets and Doors in Brenham , Texas , to specially accommodate the measurements of the created cabinet and are made of birch in a style chosen by you. They are installed to cover almost the entire face of the cabinets leaving in most instances a 1/8” space between door pairs or stacks of drawers. All doors are installed with an adjustable hidden Blum or equal hinge. The finished cabinet is plumb, level, tight and crisp.

The vanity cabinet “boxes” are made of ¾” wood of a type you select. The face frames are made of solid wood of a type you select—no veneered plywood. Each piece is cut to fit the vanity cabinets. The top surface of the cabinet is covered with BC plywood. Cabinet door and drawer faces are made by a door manufacturer, Evans Cabinets and Doors in Brenham , Texas , to specially accommodate the measurements of the created cabinet and are made of a matching wood in a style chosen by you. They are installed to cover almost the entire face of the vanity cabinets leaving in most instances a 1/8” space between door pairs or drawer stacks. All doors are installed with an adjustable hidden Blum or equal hinge. The finished vanity cabinet is plumb, level, tight and crisp.

The height of your cabinets can be of your choosing. With job built cabinets there is no additional cost or inconvenience in building any height. The height you prefer is built by the cabinetmaker and cabinet doors are purchased to fit the size it is built. In years past bathroom cabinets have normally had a very low finished height. But in recent years bath vanity cabinets have been raised to at least 32” or 34” and even to 37”, 38” or more above the finished floor. It is entirely up to you.

Cabinet doors are made such that they appear to be one solid piece of wood but in reality include a picture frame with solid wood in center that is allowed to move within the frame to prevent warping.

Storage within vanity cabinet drawers created by Woodmark is optimum. Each drawer in a drawer stack is constructed such that it is stacked one on top of the other with no space in between. Also all drawers have full extension drawer slides such that all contents in the back of each drawer are easily accessible. If you calculate the difference in storage volume between this method and the more common one where each 21” drawer had a divider as much as 2” wide above and below and extended only two-thirds of the way out, you will come up will an increased storage volume of our 24” drawers of almost double the common one.

All types of available wood are allowed with generally no difference in price on stained cabinets. We generally use cherry, alder, maple and birch.

Rubber bumpers 1/16” thick are installed on all cabinet drawers and rubber bumpers 1/8” thick are installed on all cabinet doors to reduce noise and damage to door facings.

When raw doors are delivered to the job site they are put inside the home and then stacked flat so as to reduce the risk of moisture from Houston ’s humid climate causing them to warp. We then prime them within a day or two to protect them completely.

The size and appearance of wood trim around your bath windows and doors can vary substantially from what is manufactured today. The trim profiles in prior years were manufactured with cutting knives different from today so trim material available today is usually different than that which exists in your home. So we try hard to reuse existing trim material because it allows all the trim material in your bath and the rest of your home to all look the same. To reduce the remodeled look of your kitchen we try hard to keep as many details in it the same as your entire home.

Please call for free advice and assistance regarding your cabinet choices!