New Orleans Elite Cabinets: Custom Kitchen Cabinets, Vanities, Closets and Millwork
Custom cabinetry designed, built, and installed for Greater New Orleans homes and businesses. Moisture-resistant plywood boxes, dovetail drawers, and Blum soft-close hardware from a licensed, insured shop with its own finishing booth.
- ✓Licensed & Insured
- ✓15+ Years in Greater New Orleans
- ✓Free In-Home Design
- ✓Written Workmanship Warranty
New Orleans Elite Cabinets is a licensed and insured custom cabinet maker with over 15 years of experience designing, building, and installing cabinetry for homes and businesses across New Orleans, LA.
Our work covers custom kitchen cabinets in white oak, maple, cherry, and walnut, bathroom vanities, walk-in closets and wardrobe systems, garage cabinets, home office and living room built-ins, entertainment centers and media walls, laundry rooms, pantry systems, kitchen islands and breakfast bars, wine and bar cabinets, mudroom and entryway storage, cabinet refacing, refinishing and painting, quartz and granite countertops, and commercial cabinetry and millwork for offices, medical suites, retail, hotels, and restaurants.
Every box we build starts as 3/4-inch moisture-resistant furniture-grade plywood rather than particleboard, which matters more on the Gulf Coast than almost anywhere: particleboard swells and crumbles once humidity reaches a cut edge, and around here it always finds one.
Drawers are solid maple with dovetail joinery on full-extension Blum undermount slides, doors are full-overlay or inset depending on the design, hinges are Blum or Grass soft-close, and painted work is sprayed in catalyzed conversion varnish rather than brushed with an enamel that chips at the first fingernail.
We build to KCMA and ANSI A161.1 standards, use CARB Phase 2 compliant panels, and can source FSC-certified material on request. Licensed, insured and bonded, members of the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, and every kitchen, vanity, built-in and commercial job carries a written workmanship warranty. The in-home design visit and the itemized quote are free.
Why New Orleans Chooses New Orleans Elite Cabinets
- ✓Over 15 years building custom cabinetry across Greater New Orleans
- ✓3/4-inch moisture-resistant furniture-grade plywood boxes, never particleboard
- ✓Solid maple dovetail drawers on full-extension Blum undermount slides
- ✓Catalyzed conversion varnish sprayed in our own booth, not brushed on site
- ✓Built to KCMA and ANSI A161.1 standards on CARB Phase 2 compliant panels
- ✓Cabinets shimmed, scribed and re-adjusted for floors and walls that are not level
- ✓Our own shop and our own install crews from measure to walkthrough
- ✓Free in-home design and a written workmanship warranty on every job
About New Orleans Elite Cabinets in New Orleans, LA
New Orleans Elite Cabinets has spent over 15 years designing, building and installing custom cabinetry across New Orleans and Greater New Orleans.
We are a shop first and a sales operation second, which means the person who measures your kitchen has actually built one, and the boxes going into your house were cut and assembled by people whose names we know.
The work runs from kitchens, vanities, closets and garage storage to built-ins, entertainment centers, pantries, laundry rooms, islands, bar cabinets, mudrooms, countertops, refacing and commercial casework.
What separates cabinetry that lasts in this city from cabinetry that does not is material and installation, and both are easy places for a low bid to hide.
We build 3/4-inch moisture-resistant plywood carcasses with dado-and-glue joinery, solid maple dovetail drawers on full-extension Blum undermount slides, Blum or Grass soft-close hinges, and painted finishes in catalyzed conversion varnish sprayed in our own booth. We build to KCMA and ANSI A161.1 standards on CARB Phase 2 compliant panels, with FSC-certified material available on request.
Then we install properly: shimmed off the high point, scribed to walls that are rarely plumb, and re-adjusted a few weeks later once the house has moved.
A good deal of the housing stock here is old, some of it is raised, some of it was rebuilt from 2006 onward, and each of those tells us something different about what your kitchen needs.
Whether it is a full custom kitchen in a century-old Uptown house, closets and a laundry in Terrytown, exam-room casework for a clinic on Veterans, or refacing a sound 1990s kitchen in Kenner, we design it, build it here and install it with our own crews.
Free in-home design, an itemized quote, and a written workmanship warranty on everything we make.
Our Cabinet Services in New Orleans, LA
Custom Kitchen Cabinets
Custom kitchen cabinets in a New Orleans house have to solve two problems at once: the humidity, and the fact that very little in an older house here is level. We design, build, and install full custom kitchens from 3/4-inch moisture-resistant furniture-grade plywood, then shim and scribe them into rooms that have been quietly settling on soft ground for a century.
Bathroom Vanities
A custom bathroom vanity is the one piece of cabinetry in the house that lives under a water supply in a room that turns into a steam bath twice a day, which is why it usually fails first. We build vanities with sealed interiors, a solid plywood floor in the sink base, and hardware picked for a wet room instead of a dry one.
Walk-In Closets & Wardrobes
Walk-in closets and wardrobe systems return more per dollar than anything else we build, because the room already exists and hardly anybody is using it properly. A single rod with one shelf above it wastes roughly half the volume of a typical closet, and replacing it with a designed layout usually doubles what the same footprint holds.
Garage Cabinets & Storage
Garage cabinets turn the least organized room on the property into the most useful one, and around here they have to survive conditions no interior cabinet ever meets. We build garage storage in moisture-resistant plywood or powder-coated steel, wall-hung wherever the framing allows, with finishes and hardware chosen for a space that is hot, damp, and occasionally underwater.
Home Office & Built-Ins
Home office and built-in cabinetry is what turns an awkward spare bedroom, a dead corner, or a blank parlor wall into the part of the house people comment on. Built-ins are a different product from furniture pushed against a wall: they use the full depth and height available, scribe tight to the plaster, and lose the dust gap and the wobble.
Entertainment Centers & Media Walls
Entertainment centers and media walls are the built-in most likely to be designed around a television that will be replaced in four years, which is the one mistake worth planning against. We build media walls that hide the equipment, handle the heat and cabling properly, and are dimensioned so the next screen still fits without a rebuild.
Laundry Room Cabinets
Laundry room cabinets are the fastest and cheapest room in the house to fix, and most laundry rooms around here are one wire shelf away from being a genuinely good workspace. We build laundry cabinetry with a folding counter, real detergent storage, somewhere to hang things, and hampers that live inside the casework instead of on the floor.
Pantry Systems
Pantry systems decide whether a kitchen gains or loses about a third of its practical capacity, and most builder pantries are deep fixed shelves where groceries go to be forgotten. We design pantry storage around one principle: if you cannot see it without moving something else, you do not really own it.
Cabinet Refacing, Refinishing & Painting
Cabinet refacing, refinishing, and painting are three routes to the same destination, and which one suits your kitchen depends on the condition of the boxes rather than on how tired the doors look. We assess the carcasses first and tell you honestly which route makes sense, including the times when the answer is none of them.
Cabinet Hardware & Organizers
Cabinet hardware and interior organizers are the cheapest upgrade in a kitchen and the one that changes daily life the most, which is a strange pairing most people only discover after spending thirty thousand dollars on the cabinets themselves. We install and retrofit hardware and organizers across Greater New Orleans, including on cabinetry we did not build.
Soft-Close & Pull-Out Systems
Soft-close and pull-out systems are the mechanical difference between cabinetry that feels expensive and cabinetry that only looks it. They are also the difference between hardware that still works in twenty years and hardware that gets sloppy in three.
Countertops
Countertops are the surface you touch more than any other in the house, and picking one is mostly a question of how much maintenance you are honestly willing to do. We template, fabricate, and install quartz, granite, solid surface, and butcher block, and we set them on cabinetry that has been leveled properly so the seams stay tight instead of opening up by Christmas.
Islands & Breakfast Bars
Kitchen islands and breakfast bars are the piece everyone gathers around and the piece most often sized wrong, because it is the one element people specify by how it looks instead of by how the room moves. We design islands starting from clearances and traffic flow, then work outward to storage and seating.
Wine & Bar Cabinets
Wine and bar cabinets are the smallest thing we build that collects the most compliments, and in this climate the wine half of that comes with a technical warning most shops will not give you. We build wine storage, wet bars, dry bars, beverage centers, and coffee stations, and we will tell you plainly what a cabinet can and cannot do for a bottle.
Mudroom & Entryway Storage
Mudroom and entryway storage decides whether the first ten seconds of coming home are pleasant or aggravating, and it is almost always the last thing anybody thinks about. We build drop zones from a full wall of lockers down to a single well-made bench in a back hall that is only four feet wide.
Commercial Cabinetry & Millwork
Commercial cabinetry and millwork is a different trade from residential work, built to different standards and expected to survive use no home kitchen ever sees. We design, build, and install commercial casework for offices, medical and dental practices, clinics, retail, restaurants, hotels, schools, and churches across Greater New Orleans.
Commercial Cabinetry & Millwork in New Orleans & the Metro Area
We design, build and install commercial casework for offices, medical and dental practices, clinics, retail, restaurants, hotels, schools and churches across Greater New Orleans.
Reception and transaction counters, break rooms, exam-room cabinetry with sealed seams and cleanable surfaces, file and supply storage, retail displays, hotel casegoods, and bar and back-bar millwork — specified in plywood, high-pressure laminate or solid surface to take commercial traffic rather than residential use, built to AWI standards with ADA-compliant heights and clearances where required.
Hospitality work here often means a historic shell with tight access and nothing square, so we field-verify before fabrication and build to the opening we measured. Shop drawings, a real schedule, and coordination with your trades.
- ✓Office reception & transaction counters
- ✓Medical & dental exam room casework
- ✓Break rooms & employee kitchens
- ✓Retail displays & checkout counters
- ✓Restaurant, bar & back-bar millwork
- ✓Hotel casegoods & hospitality millwork
- ✓High-pressure laminate & solid surface tops
- ✓ADA clearances, built to AWI standards
Recent Projects Across Greater New Orleans
How It Works
- 1. In-home design. We measure the room ourselves, talk through how you actually cook and store things, and produce a layout with elevations. In an older house we check the floor and the walls at this stage, because what we find there changes the price and you should hear it now rather than on install day.
- 2. Materials & finish. You choose species, door style and finish from real samples in your own light rather than off a screen. We put plywood and particleboard side by side and let you decide with the facts in hand, and we tell you which finishes hold up in a humid house.
- 3. Build in our shop. Everything is cut, assembled and sprayed in our own shop: plywood carcasses with dado-and-glue joinery, dovetailed solid maple drawers, and conversion varnish laid down in a controlled booth where the cure is not at the mercy of the weather outside.
- 4. Install, scribe & adjust. We shim off the high point, scribe the finished ends to the wall as it really is, hang and align every door, and fit the hardware. Then we come back after a few weeks and re-adjust once the house and the cabinets have settled on terms.
What New Orleans Customers Say
Full kitchen in an 1890s house where nothing was square or level. They shimmed and scribed everything, ran the cabinets to the ceiling, and came back a month later to re-align the doors without being asked.
Three quotes for new cabinets and these were the only people who explained the difference between plywood and particleboard instead of just handing me a number. The dovetail drawers feel like furniture.
They told us refacing was the smarter spend and rebuilt the one base cabinet under the sink that had gone soft. New doors, fronts and hardware in about a week and it looks like a new kitchen.
Reception desk and break-room casework for our office, hit the schedule exactly, and the lowered ADA section at the counter was right the first time. We will use them for the next buildout.
Our kitchen was put in after 2006 and the boxes were fine, so they converted the slides and hinges to soft-close, added roll-outs and a pull-out beside the fridge. Feels like a different kitchen for a fraction of the cost.
Garage cabinets hung on a ledger well off the slab, moisture-resistant plywood, and a workbench top that takes abuse. They measured around the truck doors so we can still park in there.
Service Areas
New Orleans Elite Cabinets serves New Orleans, LA and surrounding communities including:
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do custom cabinets cost in New Orleans?
A full custom kitchen in furniture-grade plywood with dovetail drawers and soft-close hardware generally runs from the mid-teens into the $40,000s depending on size, door style, finish and how much specialty storage goes in. Refacing a kitchen with sound boxes usually lands between $4,000 and $10,000. You get an itemized quote after a free in-home measure, so you can see what each choice costs rather than one number at the bottom.
Does the humidity here really change how cabinets should be built?
Yes, and it is the main reason we will not build a box out of particleboard. Particleboard is wood fiber and glue pressed into a panel, and once moisture reaches an unsealed edge it swells and never recovers. Between Gulf humidity, condensation under a sink and the dishwasher that leaks for a month before anybody notices, that happens far more often here. Plywood holds a screw, holds its shape, and can be re-hung twenty years from now.
My floors and walls are not level. Is that a problem?
It is normal, not a problem, but it has to be priced and planned. Plenty of houses here sit on piers over soft ground, so floors slope and plaster walls bow. Cabinets set straight against a wall like that will show a gap at eye level forever. We laser-level, shim off the high point, cut fillers and scribe the finished ends to the actual wall profile, and we build in adjustment so a drawer front can be trued up later.
How long does a custom kitchen take?
Design and measure takes a week or two, fabrication usually four to six weeks depending on the finish, and installation runs three to five days for a standard kitchen. Painted conversion varnish takes longer than stained work because of cure time. You get a schedule before you commit, and if something slips we tell you.
Should I reface or replace?
It depends entirely on the boxes, not on how tired the doors look. If the carcasses are plywood, square and the layout already works, refacing with new doors, drawer fronts, veneer and hardware gets you a new-looking kitchen for a third to a half of replacement.
If a sink base has been quietly wet for years, which we find often here, refacing puts expensive doors on a failing structure. Sometimes the right answer is to rebuild two base cabinets and reface the other fourteen.
Do you build for offices, clinics and restaurants?
We do, and commercial casework is a large part of the work. Reception desks, break rooms, exam-room cabinetry with sealed seams, retail fixtures, hotel casegoods and bar and back-bar millwork, specified to AWI standards in laminate or solid surface and built to take commercial traffic. ADA clearances get designed in from the start rather than discovered at inspection.