What a full kitchen actually needs

People price the cabinets and then get a quote with a dozen other lines on it and assume something has gone wrong. Nothing has. These are the parts that make a run of boxes look like a kitchen.

Narrow pullout rack fitted between two base cabinets

The boxes are maybe three quarters of it

A 10 by 10 kitchen is usually around ten cabinets. The rest of the order is the parts that close the gaps, cover the ends, hide the legs and finish the top. There are 71 of them in the book beyond the cabinets themselves.

What gets added, and why

Fillers

Strips that absorb the difference between your wall and the cabinets. Your walls are not square and your run will not land exactly on a 3 inch multiple. Every kitchen needs some. Base and wall fillers are both stocked.

End panels and skins

Cabinet sides are finished on the ones you see and plain on the ones you do not. Where a run stops in the open, or a fridge sits beside a cabinet, you need a finished panel over the exposed side. This matters more on Marine Blue and Rustic Hickory, which ship with unfinished sides.

Toe kick

The recessed strip along the floor. Supplied colour matched, cut to your run.

Crown and light rail

Crown finishes the top of a wall run against the ceiling. Light rail finishes the bottom and hides under-cabinet lighting. Neither is structural and both are what makes a kitchen look fitted rather than placed.

Panels for appliances

Dishwasher and fridge panels, and island panels where an island is open to the room.

The inside of the drawers

Cutlery trays, utensil trays, spice inserts, tray dividers, rollout shelves, waste bins and lazy Susans. None are required. All are far cheaper ordered with the kitchen than retrofitted later.

The one people regret skippingRollout trays. They turn a base cabinet you already own into something you can actually see into, and they are among the cheapest lines in the book. Almost nobody orders enough of them the first time.

A rough shape of an order

For a typical 10 by 10: five wall cabinets, five base cabinets, a sink base, fillers at each end, toe kick across the run, crown along the top, a panel beside the fridge, and whatever goes inside the drawers. The cabinets are the big number. The rest is what stops it looking unfinished.