Making sure your project is level is extremely important but not always easy. The state of being level is relative to the environment—to your floors, to your walls, and to the other line of sight items in your room. And that’s why at ARHTX, we always use a laser level for installation and a bubble level as backup.

At ARHTX we provide a warranty for the lifetime of the cabinets we install. We stand behind the quality of our products and we know that our cabinetry will be free from defects in material and workmanship under ordinary use for as long as you own your home. 

Mirrors are a great addition to cabinets. They add depth to a room and can serve as a visual centerpiece for collections and artwork. Paired with the right lighting, mirrors make cabinets a standout piece in your home.

The key to customer satisfaction in any construction project, whether residential or commercial, lies in proactive support. This means direct lines of communication that relay the progress already made and anticipate issues that might come up.

There are actual guidelines for the placement of hardware on cabinets. Deviating from this norm with your own personal preference can make it very difficult to resell a home. A lack of balance and symmetry on cabinets really messes with our mental appraisal of what’s right. We’ve moved knobs from the middle of cabinet doors that someone thought looked great at the time, but it’s just not a great place to have the right leverage for opening a door.

As a cabinet building company, we do a lot with countertops. With so many options out there, how do you choose the right countertop for your needs? Countertop materials provide different layers of protection from water, heat and surface scuffing. It’s important to select the right countertop for the right job.

Cabinets come in two varieties: Uppers and lowers or base cabinets. Upper cabinets are hung from the wall. Base cabinets are set on the floor and can create a foundation point for the room. Although, there are many situations where only uppers will be used as in a study above a counter work platform or a laundry room above the washer and dryer appliances. Each type of cabinet has a different method used for installation.

Recently we put together a bid package for a homeowner who wanted to make some major changes in her kitchen. She wanted to move the sink from the inside kitchen wall to the island in the center. To do this, we told her, she’d have to cut the concrete to run the plumbing from the exterior wall to a new location on the island and cap off the old water line. And that was something she wasn’t comfortable doing--cutting the concrete in the slab to reroute the plumbing to its new location. Let’s talk about what that means.

Cabinet pricing is usually estimated by linear foot. Upper cabinets and lower cabinets are frequently priced separately. The shallower upper cabinets, usually about 12 inches deep, are sometimes slightly less expensive than the deeper lower cabinets, usually about 24 inches deep, which run at a higher price. Sometimes with a full set of uppers and lowers, the pricing is amortized so that there is one averaged pricing estimate for the entire cabinet grouping.

When you’re heading into a remodel, if you manage the subcontractors yourself, you’ll save the 20-25% that remodeling companies tack on to the final price. Managing your remodel is straightforward and you can do the contractor’s job and pocket the money they make. Let’s walk through a kitchen remodel, one of the most common areas that needs repair after 10 or more years in a home.

A remodel doesn’t need to be expensive to be done right. At ARHTX the comfort of our clients is part of the quality that we include in everything we build. Done right and done well go hand in hand. Nonobtrusive, experienced in managing homeowner timelines, attention to every detail, and keeping your environment clean and healthy while you’re having your dream remodel completed is at the heart of the ARHTX commitment.

Cutting corners to save money. Builders use builder grade items to shave down their investment. We’re the ones that come in and tear out the builder grade to replace with custom or ultra-custom. The crazy thing is the homeowner isn’t paying that much more for the quality and unique buildouts we bring. But builders putting together a new home are going to cut corners any way they can. Here’s a few things we’ve seen: 

In the ballroom dance world, sharing the lead means both parts of the team are leading and following. Each half brings their skill set and vision and together the dance looks easy and polished. With our success plan laid out and construction milestones determined, your cabinet job will be everything you want it to be and more.

We abuse our drawers. We fill them to capacity. We pile and jam in as much as we can and shove it closed. Most drawers are only held by two guides that are either placed under the drawer or to the side of the drawer. The right guide and drawer construction can take almost anything you can ram into it. But the wrong guide can’t take much before it fails or breaks and leaves you with a collapsing mess. 

Like everything in the carpentry business, live edge construction is a multi-layer process. It’s fun when our clients bring in a special piece of wood that has a life message or value to them and their family. They entrust us with that sentimental piece knowing that it will be in our care as Aaron creates their one-of-a-kind artistic expression. I thought I’d share a little of how Aaron approaches his art of building the perfect blend of wood and the colors for the epoxy pour.

Buy. Use. Discard. It’s the journey almost everything takes in our lives. We buy cars. We buy phones. We buy cabinets. And just by virtue of both societal and technological norms, what we buy falls into disrepair or is no longer new enough or vital enough.

Buy. Use. Discard. How do we step out of this never-ending cycle? It’s not going to work with everything you buy, but your cabinets can be made to be handed down from one generation to the next.

You open the door and cross the hearth. You are home. Your own space that tells your story in so many ways. Certainly, the décor jumps out at you—the colors you’ve chosen, the special things you’ve collected, beautiful pictures smiling back at you. At ARHTX, we know that’s only part of your narrative. The world you want to live in needs to be organized, practical at a base level so that living is easy, clutter is low, and there’s a place for everything.

Custom built and refrigerator can be an expensive combination. Custom refrigerators that are built-in are pricier options than the regular free-standing fridge. Custom refrigerators are also narrower, providing less interior space than the free-standing refrigerator because the custom fridge lines up with the other cabinets and countertops in the kitchen. Free-standing refrigerators are a much cheaper and far more plentiful option than their custom counterparts.

The typical false front drawer on bathroom vanities of the past is no longer a relevant design. There are lots of options for using that under sink area in your bathroom vanity. Here are a few of the most common builds we use.

The value you get out of a local well-made custom cabinet, filled with your ideas, built of strong plywood, and made in America is a sound choice for your long-term investment in your home or office. We have replaced a large number of Chinese made cabinets that only lasted a couple of years. They start falling apart immediately and here’s why.