Custom Cabinets in Henderson, TX

Kitchen cabinets and built-ins for Henderson — including work in houses and downtown buildings where the original joinery has to be matched rather than replaced.

Matching joinery somebody cut by hand in 1885

This is the work that makes Henderson different. A house from the 1880s has moldings with deeper profiles than anything sold today, built-in cupboards either side of a chimney breast, window seats, and a stair rail that was cut on site by a joiner who has been dead a century. When part of that needs replacing or extending, an off-the-shelf profile is visible from across the room.

Matching it means taking a section, working out the profile and cutting to it, in a timber that will age toward what is already there rather than away from it. It is slower and it costs more than fitting stock trim. In a house carrying a historical marker it is also the only version worth doing, because approximate replacement takes value out of the building.

Kitchens in houses that predate kitchens as we know them

Factory cabinets come in fixed widths in three-inch steps, and no house in old Henderson was built to that grid. You get filler strips down the run, a corner nobody can reach, and inches of wall doing nothing. Building to the actual opening removes it — and in an old house it also means working around the things that cannot move: the chimney, the odd ceiling height, the window sitting eleven inches off center.

Plenty of the kitchens we look at do not need tearing out at all. The carcasses are often solid and sound and it is the doors, runners, handles and finish that are done. New fronts and hardware with the run refinished gets a different kitchen for a fraction of a rebuild, and we say so when that is the honest answer.

The downtown buildings

Henderson's commercial historic district has been on the National Register since 1986, and the ornate brick buildings under those colorful canvas awnings now hold antique dealers, clothing shops and restaurants. Fitting out a space in a building of that age is scribing work — nothing is plumb, nothing is square, and the joinery has to be cut to the building rather than the building packed out to suit the joinery.

Counters, back-of-house storage, display fitments and checkout runs. We would rather quote that standing in the shop than off a drawing.

Built-ins for the rest of the house

Office built-ins with a desk run and cupboards over. Mudroom benches with hooks and cubbies. Laundry cabinetry. Window seats with storage under — which in an older house is often restoring something that was there originally. Bookcases fitted into an alcove so they read as part of the house. Garage and workshop storage.

Questions we get from Henderson