Custom Cabinets in Redlands, CA

Redlands has a housing profile that very few cities in this region share. Its median housing unit was built in 1976, 57.7 percent of its 26,256 units were built in 1979 or earlier and 26.3 percent before 1960. At the same time the median owner occupied value is $618,900, which is above Riverside, Moreno Valley, Perris, Colton, Rialto and San Bernardino.

Those two facts together describe a particular market: old houses that people are investing in. Owner occupancy is 56.8 percent and 61.8 percent of the stock is one unit detached. In practice that means kitchen projects where the brief is to do it properly rather than cheaply, and where what is already in the house matters.

It also means that this is the city in this service area where the case for custom cabinetry is strongest. Old framing is not straight, period houses have rooms that no catalogue fits, and a house with original joinery sets a standard that a catalogue door will not meet.

New joinery in a period house succeeds or fails on whether it agrees with what is already there, and that is a drawing problem rather than a making problem. Three things get read before anything is designed.

The trim language. Skirting height and profile, door casing width, the proportions of any existing panelling. New cabinetry that picks up those proportions reads as part of the house; cabinetry that ignores them reads as furniture pushed against a wall, even when the joinery is better.

The reveal. How much of a frame the existing doors cover, and how wide the gaps are. A kitchen built to a modern full overlay standard in a house whose every other door is inset will look wrong in a way most people cannot name but can see.

Any original casework. Built-in cupboards, a butler's pantry, an original linen press. These are worth repairing rather than replacing in most cases, and they are the best available reference for how new work in the same house should be proportioned.

None of that means a period house has to have a period kitchen. A deliberately contemporary kitchen in an old house can work extremely well. What does not work is a kitchen that is trying to look traditional and getting the proportions wrong, which is the most common failure in this category.

With 57.7 percent of Redlands housing built in 1979 or earlier and 26.3 percent before 1960, the federal lead rule applies to the majority of work in this city rather than to an unusual fraction of it.

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 perform work disturbing painted surfaces in such a home must be a certified firm whose employees are trained in lead safe work practices, a requirement that expressly includes sole proprietorships. Covered activities include carpentry, painting preparation, electrical and plumbing work.

The minor repair exemption covers work disturbing six square feet or less of paint per room inside, which a kitchen strip out passes within minutes, and the exemption never applies to window replacement or to demolition of painted surfaces regardless of area. California is not among the states authorised to administer their own programme, so the EPA runs it here directly. See the EPA renovation, repair and painting page for contractors→.

On a period house the species decision starts with what is already in the building and then gets checked against the movement figures, because a visually perfect match that opens a gap in its second winter is not a match.

More reading and less assuming than a visit to a newer house. Walls checked for bow and plumb at three heights, floors measured for fall, existing services recorded, and every original trim profile and reveal in the room photographed and measured so the new work can agree with them.

The lead question is settled at the same visit, because it decides who may carry out the removal and because in this city it will usually apply. If the property sits in a designated historic area, the City is the right source on whether any additional review applies separately from a building permit.

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

The period kitchen, done properly. A house with original trim and proportions worth working to, and a kitchen that has been replaced badly at least once since. The work is a cabinet schedule drawn to the existing language of the house, built as scribed custom boxes in a species and panel construction chosen for longevity, with lead safe certified removal of whatever is there now.

Built-ins and alcove joinery. Period houses are full of the spaces built-ins solve: alcoves beside chimney breasts, deep window reveals, under stair voids and narrow hallway walls. These are among the highest value pieces of work available in this city, because they convert dead wall into storage without taking floor area, and because they read as part of the house rather than as furniture.

Repair and refinish of original casework. Where a house retains an original butler's pantry, linen press or built-in cupboard, repairing, re-hanging and refinishing it is usually better than replacing it, and it sets the standard for whatever new work goes in alongside.

The usual four numbers and one licence, plus two more that matter specifically on a period house.

The standard list is the linear footage of every run measured on site; box material named location by location with plywood at the sink base; door style, overlay and the finish system; hardware by manufacturer, hinge type, slide extension and weight rating; and the CSLB licence number, checkable at the CSLB licence lookup→.

The two additions are the species and panel construction stated explicitly, because on stained work in an older house that is where longevity lives, and the firm lead certification number, because in a city where 57.7 percent of housing predates 1980 the removal is almost certainly covered work. Both are single questions with single sentence answers.

The City of Redlands publishes a residential kitchen renovations handout through its Development Services Department, revised 6 January 2020, and its first sentence is this: “Kitchen additions, alterations or renovations require a Building Permit.” It adds that “At a minimum, a legible floor plan drawing is required for permitting.”

That is a materially different default from the one most homeowners are working with. Cabinets appear on the state list of work exempt from permit, and that list is accurate, but the City of Redlands frames a kitchen renovation as a permitted alteration rather than as finish work. Its own definition of the scope is broad: “A kitchen renovation includes, but is not limited to, the removal and/or relocation of base cabinets, counter tops, sinks, dishwasher, installed appliances, changes to the lighting, removal & replacement of any wall board, modifications to the structural elements of the dwelling and changes to the electrical, mechanical and plumbing systems.”

Read that definition carefully and the reason becomes clear. A cabinet swap in the strictest sense, doors and fronts only, changes nothing on that list. A kitchen renovation as actually performed almost always removes or relocates base cabinets and countertops, touches the lighting and pulls at least some wall board, and every one of those appears in the City’s definition. This site does not resolve that tension on the City’s behalf. For a Redlands address, take the actual scope to the Building and Safety Division and ask.

The most useful part of the same handout is the sentence that explains why this matters even on a modest job: “Removal and replacement of the base cabinets and counter top will require compliance with the electrical outlet location requirements of the code.” In other words the trigger is not the cabinet, it is the countertop and the base run coming off the wall, after which the outlet layout has to comply with current rules rather than with whatever was there in 1976.

The handout then cites the clauses, which is unusually specific for a city handout and makes it the single best published document in this service area for anyone planning a kitchen. The table below lists them with what each one actually does to a cabinet drawing. These are the City’s cited clause numbers, not our interpretation of which code applies.

The mechanical and plumbing items on the same handout bear just as directly on the joinery. The minimum thirty inch vertical clearance above a cooktop to combustibles or metal cabinets is the single most common reason a drawn elevation has to change, because the cabinet or hood above the hob cannot simply sit at the same height as the rest of the run. A ducted metal exhaust hood with a smooth interior and back draft protection means the duct route, not the cabinet, decides what the box above the hob can hold. And the requirement that undercabinet lighting be switched separately from other lighting means a second switch leg has to reach the run, which is trivial during a cabinet job and expensive afterwards.

Redlands averages 2.81people per occupied household, the lowest figure on this site and well below Riverside’s 3.21. Owner occupied households average 2.93 and renter occupied ones 2.66. The city also has one of the more mixed housing stocks here: 61.8 percent single unit detached, 4.8 percent attached, 9.0 percent in buildings of two to four units, 9.6 percent in five to nineteen and 11.7 percent in buildings of twenty or more.

Small households in an old, varied housing stock produce a specific kind of brief. Capacity is rarely the binding constraint, so the arguments for maximum volume that make sense in Perris or Eastvale carry much less weight here. What does carry weight is fit and quality: a kitchen in a house where 26.3percent of the city’s stock predates 1960 has walls that need scribing rather than filling, and a smaller household is far more likely to be spending on a kitchen it intends to keep for twenty years than on one specified for resale.

That is the honest Redlands recommendation. Fewer, better cabinets, scribed properly, in a species chosen on the published movement coefficients rather than on the sample door, with the outlet and hood requirements resolved on the drawing rather than discovered on site.

The handout quoted throughout this section is the City of Redlands’ own, which makes Redlands the one city on this site where we are not relying on a neighbouring jurisdiction’s publication for the permit answer. Confirm the current code cycle, because the handout cites the 2019 editions of the residential, plumbing, mechanical, electrical, energy and green building codes, and those cycles advance.

The Smiley Park Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on 29 December 1994, and Redlands has one of the densest concentrations of listings in San Bernardino County, including the A. K. Smiley Public Library, Kimberly Crest, Barton Villa and the Redlands Santa Fe Depot District. For a cabinet project the relevance is direct rather than decorative: houses inside and around a district of that age are old enough that original built in casework, a pantry cupboard, a plate rail, a built in sideboard, is frequently present and frequently worth repairing rather than removing. A quote that proposes to strip all of it has not looked at the house carefully.