Custom Cabinets in Marshall, TX

Kitchen cabinets, built-ins and shop fittings for Marshall — for houses built when the town was one of the biggest in Texas, and for the storefronts around the courthouse square.

Period houses, and joinery cut on site

Marshall's older housing came out of its cotton and railroad years, and the joinery in it was made by hand on the job — moldings with deeper profiles than anything sold today, cupboards built into chimney alcoves, window seats, stair rails cut to fit that stair and no other. When a piece of that has to be replaced or extended, stock trim from a lumber yard is obvious from across the room.

Matching it means taking a section, working out the profile, cutting to it, and picking a timber that will age toward what is already there. Slower than fitting standard trim, and more expensive. In a house of that age it is the only version worth paying for.

Kitchens that were never laid out for fitted units

Factory cabinets come in fixed widths, in three-inch steps. Marshall's older kitchens do not oblige — you end up with filler strips down the run, a corner nobody can reach, and inches of wall doing nothing. Building to the actual opening removes all of that, and in a period house it also means working around the chimney, the ceiling height and the window that sits off center.

A lot of these kitchens do not need tearing out. The carcasses are often solid and sound and it is the doors, drawer 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 for yours.

The square, and a season that has to be ready by November

Wonderland of Lights wraps the 1901 Harrison County courthouse and the whole downtown square in lights from late November to New Year's Day, and the businesses round that square make a serious part of their year in those weeks. It started in 1987, when local unemployment had hit twenty percent and the editor of the Marshall News Messenger pictured the courthouse strung with lights and wrote it up.

If you trade on the square, the practical consequence is a deadline. Counters, display joinery and back-of-house fitting want doing in spring or summer, not in October when every trade in town is booked. Buildings that age are never plumb, so the work gets scribed to the building rather than packed out — and that takes longer than people expect. Book it early and it is straightforward.

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 putting back 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 Marshall