Kitchen Cabinets, Oakland, CA June 2025

This kitchen was in a duplex off Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. A general contractor found us through our Craigslist ad and brought us in for the cabinets. The project was on a very restricted budget, and it was a straightforward, one-day job. The cabinets were sourced locally, and the work included the plywood underlayment for the stone countertop.

A one-day install still takes the same care as any cabinet job, because cabinets are the frame everything else in a kitchen hangs on. If they aren’t level, plumb, and aligned, the countertop won’t sit flat, the doors won’t hang evenly, and every problem shows up later in the trades that follow.

A few things we watch on every kitchen:

• What they sit on. Cabinets belong on a stable surface, ideally the subfloor rather than a finished floor that can compress or shift. Floors in older Oakland homes are rarely level, so we find the high point of the floor first and work from there, shimming each cabinet up to a common level.
• Alignment across the run. Base cabinets with counters on top almost always finish at 36 inches high, with the uppers 18 inches above the counter. Sight down the front edge of the run and any variation shows, so each cabinet is checked against its neighbors front to back and up and down.
• Solid mounting. Every cabinet is screwed into studs, with shims and adhesive where the wall or floor doesn’t meet it, so nothing rocks or shifts once the counter and dishes go in.
• Walls that aren’t straight. Where a cabinet meets an uneven wall, the edge is scribed to the wall so there’s no visible gap.

The countertop depends on all of that. Stone is heavy and rigid and won’t flex to follow cabinets that are out of level. The plywood underlayment gives the stone a flat, continuous, fully supported base, spreading its weight evenly across the cabinets so it doesn’t crack at a high spot or a seam.

On a tight budget, the way to save money isn’t to rush the install. It’s to keep the scope simple: locally sourced cabinets, no layout changes, and a crew that comes in and finishes in a day. For more on what can go wrong with cabinets, see our Berkeley kitchen cabinets write-up.