Custom Cabinets in Colton, CA

Colton's housing stock is among the oldest in this service area. Its median housing unit was built in 1979, 51.4 percent of its 17,856 units were built in 1979 or earlier, and 29.7 percent predates 1960, which is second only to San Bernardino's 34.0 percent among the cities covered here.

That is a legacy of the city's history: Colton was an established rail town, sitting at one of the most significant railroad crossings in Southern California, long before the postwar development that produced most of the surrounding region's housing. The older parts of the city reflect that.

The other defining figure is the median owner occupied value of $443,800, the lowest of the fourteen cities on this site, with 52.8 percent owner occupancy, also the lowest here alongside San Bernardino. Old housing and constrained budgets together make the refacing and upgrade conversation the most important one on this page.

Refacing keeps the existing carcasses and replaces the doors, drawer fronts and visible faces. Where the boxes are sound and the layout works, it delivers most of the visual change of a new kitchen at a fraction of the cost, and in a city with Colton's value profile that difference matters more than it does elsewhere.

The published Riverside figures make the scale of the gap clear: $1,439 to $2,266 for a standard ten foot kitchen of twelve cabinets refaced in laminate in laminate, broken down on the same page into 26.2 labour hours at $893 to $1,579, materials at $498 to $623 and an equipment allowance of $48 to $64. That is $120 to $189 per cabinet, against $15,000 to $20,000 for custom made replacements.

The honest limits apply as everywhere. Refacing cannot fix a layout, a swollen sink base, water damage, sagging shelves or a schedule built for appliances you no longer own. Those are carcass and schedule problems. The only way to know which you have is an inspection of every cabinet, which is why that happens before a price rather than after it.

With 51.4 percent of the housing built in 1979 or earlier and 29.7 percent before 1960, the federal lead rule applies to a large share of the work in this city.

The Environmental Protection Agency states that approximately three quarters of homes built before 1978 still contain some lead based paint, and that anyone paid to disturb painted surfaces in such a home must be a certified firm whose employees are trained in lead safe work practices, including sole proprietorships. Covered activities include carpentry and painting preparation, which is exactly what refacing involves.

The minor repair exemption covers work disturbing six square feet or less of paint per room inside, which a kitchen refacing passes in the first cabinet. The EPA also notes that paint testing is not required by the rule, but that unless you hold documentation showing the paint is not lead based, the requirements apply. California is administered by the EPA directly. See the EPA renovation, repair and painting page→.

The practical version for a Colton homeowner: ask for the firm certification number alongside the contractor licence number. It is one question and a firm that holds it answers in a sentence.

With 52.8 percent owner occupancy, Colton has a higher share of rental housing than most of this service area, and work on a rental property has a different brief from work on an owner occupied kitchen. The governing variable is durability rather than appearance, and the right specification follows from that.

The useful published reference is ANSI and KCMA A161.1, which includes a Severe Use Certification that KCMA states was originally developed by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development for the wear seen in apartment kitchens. Asking for that specifically is more useful than asking generally for something hard wearing. Hardware selection matters for the same reason: cycle ratings in a rental kitchen are far higher than in a family home.

The lead rules apply to rental property exactly as they do to owner occupied housing, and arguably with more force, since the rule's purpose is the protection of occupants rather than owners.

It starts with opening every cabinet, because in this housing stock the condition of the carcasses is the decision. Bases are checked for swelling and water damage, shelves for sag, and boxes for square. That survey alone frequently changes the project from replacement to refacing or the other way round.

Then the room: walls checked for bow and plumb at three heights, floor measured for fall across each run, services recorded, and appliance openings measured against appliances that exist today. The lead question is settled at the same visit.

The output is an itemised written scope with the linear footage, materials named by location, hardware specified by manufacturer and rating, and a licence number you can check yourself. Nothing is committed and no deposit is taken at the visit.

The refacing job. Sound carcasses in a kitchen that looks its age. New doors and drawer fronts, the visible frames faced, new hardware, and pull-out conversions added while the doors are off because that is the cheapest moment in the life of a kitchen to change what is inside it. Lead safe certified preparation, because the house will almost certainly predate 1978.

The pre-1960 kitchen redraw. Where the complaint is the layout rather than the cabinets, which in housing this old it frequently is. A new cabinet schedule with a properly sized refrigerator opening, a designed waste position, a resolved corner and uppers that use the full ceiling height, built as scribed custom boxes because the walls will not be straight.

The rental turnaround. Durable specification, severe use rated construction where the budget allows, commercial grade hardware with stated cycle ratings, and a finish chosen for cleaning rather than for appearance. Lead safe practice applies in full, and the documentation matters more on a rental than it does on an owner occupied house.

With the lowest median owner occupied value of any city on this site, Colton deserves a plainer version of the advice than a cabinet shop usually gives, so here it is in order.

First, the interiors. Pull-out shelving in the base cupboards nearest the sink and hob, and a designed waste pull-out. Those two change what happens in the kitchen forty times a day, need no permit, and cost a fraction of anything else on this list.

Second, the hardware. Soft close across every door, which on many existing hinges is a swap into the same cup drilling rather than a rebuild, and full extension runners on the pan drawers.

Third, the doors. Refacing or new fronts, which is the point at which the kitchen starts to look different as well as work differently, and the point at which the cost steps up.

Last, the carcasses. Only where something has failed, or where the layout is being redrawn. A quote that starts at this step without having discussed the first three is a quote that has not asked what the budget is for.

The City of Colton publishes a handout titled “When Do I Need a Building Permit?” through its Development Services Department, and under the heading of work exempt from a building permit it says this:

That is clearer than the standard state list wording, because it names the category rather than only the items: cosmetic. The same handout is equally specific about the other side. It lists among work requiring a permit “Remodeling of a building requiring the addition or removal of all or any portion of a wall, window or door, or enlarging an opening for a window or door”, electrical work “including upgrade, repair or relocation of electrical panel, and including adding a new electrical circuit or extend existing”, and “Replacing water or sewer lines”. It also states plainly that “THIS IS NOT AN ALL-INCLUSIVE LIST.”

Applied to a Colton kitchen, the line falls in a very usable place. New fronts, new boxes in the same footprint, new interiors and new trim are cosmetic. Adding a circuit for an island, moving a sink waste, or taking out any part of a wall to widen a galley is not, and the City’s own handout names each of those three specifically. There is very little grey area left once both lists are read.

14.6percent of Colton’s housing units sit in buildings of twenty or more units, the highest share on this site and above Riverside’s 12.5 percent. Another 10.5 percent are in buildings of five to nineteen units and 9.6 percent in buildings of two to four. Single unit detached housing is 59.3 percent, the lowest share of the fourteen. Households average 3.16 people, with owner occupied at 3.28 and renter occupied at 3.02.

A market with that structure generates different cabinet work from a market of detached houses. More of it is specified by somebody who does not live in the unit, which shifts the priorities toward durability and repeatability rather than taste. More of it happens one unit at a time between tenancies, which rewards a specification that can be matched again in three years. More of it happens in rooms that are small, which makes drawer banks and shallow storage worth more than deep cupboards. And more of it sits behind a party wall, which rules out new duct routes for cooker hoods and makes the existing route the thing the cabinet above the hob has to live with.

There is a cost point worth naming. Colton has the second lowest median owner occupied home value of the San Bernardino County cities here at $443,800, and the lowest owner occupancy of the four at 52.8 percent. Recommending full custom replacement into that market as a default would be dishonest. Refacing sound carcasses, converting fixed shelves to full extension pull outs, and replacing only the boxes that have actually failed is frequently the correct answer rather than the cheap one.

The handout quoted above is the City of Colton’s own, so for a Colton address you are not relying on a neighbouring city’s publication. Confirm anything specific with the Building and Safety Division, not least because the handout itself says the list is not all inclusive.

The one thing to settle before any work starts in this city is lead. 29.7percent of Colton’s housing units were built in 1959 or earlier, the second highest share of the fourteen cities on this site, and 51.4 percent in 1979 or earlier. Anyone paid to disturb painted surfaces in a home built before 1978 has to be a certified firm using lead safe work practices, the requirement reaches sole proprietors, and the minor repair exemption of six square feet or less of paint per room inside is exceeded within minutes of a painted cabinet run coming off a wall. In a city with this age profile, that is a question for every job rather than an occasional one.

Colton’s Carnegie Public Library Building, at 380 North La Cadena Drive, was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 23 June 1988 and now houses the Colton Area Museum. It is the clearest single marker of how long this city has been built, and the housing data agrees with it: a median build year of 1979 with more than a quarter of all units predating 1960.

For cabinetry the practical consequence of an old, dense, mixed housing stock is that no two Colton quotes should look alike. A pre 1960 single storey house near the old centre, a nineteen seventies tract house, and a unit in a nineteen eighties apartment building are three different jobs with three different answers, and the thing that distinguishes them is the condition of what is already there rather than the postcode. The first question on any Colton job is therefore whether the existing carcasses are sound, because if they are, the honest recommendation is almost never to replace them.