City of Guelph
Custom cabinetry and remodeling in Guelph.
- Region
- City of Guelph
- From our office
- Guelph is about forty-five minutes from the Ancaster office, almost all of it north on Highway 6 through Morriston and onto the Hanlon. No travel charge applies and there is no minimum project size. Appointments here are grouped with the rest of the week's work north and west, so the first open slot is often mid-week.
- Consultation
- Free, in your home
- Travel charge
- None
What we're usually asked for here.
- 01Limestone houses near the old core
- Rubble limestone walls better than a foot thick, deep window reveals, and a kitchen at the back that was never meant to hold two people. Openings in solid masonry do not move cheaply, so the plan works with the ones already there: a scribed filler at each end of the run, drawers rather than doors below the counter, and the reveal held at 3mm across fronts meeting a wall that is not straight.
- 02Rooms that are not square, near the old core
- Guelph was laid out in 1827 on a radial plan, streets running out from the Church of Our Lady rather than on a grid, and the blocks closest to that centre still carry lots that come to a point. A kitchen in one of those houses usually has one wall out of parallel with the others. It is not a problem to design around, but it has to be measured rather than assumed: the run gets set out from the longest true wall, the out-of-square is taken up in a scribed filler at the short end, and the reveal between fronts is held at 3mm so the eye never finds the discrepancy.
- 03Old University and the houses the campus rents
- A good part of the stock near the campus is tenanted, and cabinetry for a rental is a different specification: a textured laminate front on an engineered core, PUR edgebanding with no joint for water to sit in, and runners with a weight rating that means something. The work is booked for the quiet stretch between leases rather than mid-term.
- 04Kortright Hills, Westminster Woods and the south end
- Two generations of builder kitchen out here. The 1980s and 90s houses have oak raised-panel doors and a bulkhead above the uppers; the newer subdivisions have thermofoil on particleboard and a pantry on fixed shelves. Both come out for the same thing — frameless boxes, 2400mm tall units, a gola channel in place of handles — and the walls are plumb enough that installation runs clean.
- 01Explore
Custom Cabinetry
Frameless European cabinetry drawn to the millimetre — slab fronts, tall units to the ceiling, and finishes from super-matte lacquer to book-matched veneer.
- 02Explore
Home Renovations
A room stripped back and rebuilt in one planned sequence, with a frameless European kitchen at the centre of it and the footprint left where it is.
- 03Explore
Home Remodeling
Walls, openings and rooms rearranged so the floor plan suits how you live, with a frameless European kitchen sitting at the centre of the new plan.
Six steps, and you only have to be home for one.
- 01
Book a Consultation
Call the Ancaster office or send a note through the site and we will find a time that suits your week, evenings and Saturdays included. Before the appointment we ask a few questions about the room, the budget range you have in mind and how the space is actually used day to day.
You receive a confirmed appointment window and the name of the consultant coming to your door.
- 02
We Come to You
A design consultant arrives at your home with a case of slab door samples in super-matte, gloss, textured melamine and veneer, plus gola and finger-pull sections you can put your hand into, hinges and runners to work, edge profiles and finish boards. We walk the room together, talk through what is not working now, and hold finishes up against your own floors, counters and light.
You see every finish and opening system in the room it is meant for, with no drive and no showroom floor.
- 03
Design & Estimate
If you want to take it further, we measure the room before the consultant leaves. The drawing is done back at the studio, not at your table: a computerized design with plan, elevations and 3D views to your room's real dimensions takes a couple of days to do properly. The estimate that comes with it itemizes cabinetry, surfaces, hardware and labour, so you can see exactly where the money goes.
Drawings and a detailed written estimate reach you within a couple of days of the visit — free, with absolutely no obligation.
- 04
Production & Coordination
Once the drawings are signed off, doors, boxes and drawer fronts go into production and the countertop template is booked. Deliveries and trades are sequenced so material does not sit in your garage for six weeks waiting on something else to arrive.
You get a production schedule with the dates that affect your household marked on it.
- 05
Professional Installation
Installers protect floors and stair runs before anything comes through the door, then set and shim the frameless boxes dead level and scribe the end panels to the wall. Fronts are adjusted at the end of the install until the reveals read consistently at 3mm across the run and the gola channel lines through from one end of the kitchen to the other.
You get a swept site each evening and one point of contact for the length of the installation.
- 06
Final Inspection & Completion
We walk the finished room with you and write down anything that is not right, from a hinge that wants a quarter turn to a filler that needs trimming. Nothing is called complete until that list is empty and you have signed off on it.
You receive care instructions, spare hardware and the warranty in writing.
Working in Guelph.
No. A consultant comes to you with cabinet samples, door styles, colour samples and hardware, walks the room, talks the project through and takes measurements if you want to take it further. The computerized design and the detailed written estimate follow within a couple of days. All of it is free, and none of it obliges you to go ahead.
The City of Guelph does. Guelph runs its own building department rather than going through the County of Wellington, so a Guelph address deals with one office. Cabinetry replaced in the existing layout needs no permit at all. Structural openings, plumbing relocation, a new bathroom and basement finishing do, and a property near the Speed or the Eramosa may also need Grand River Conservation Authority approval.
Sometimes, and we will tell you plainly when it cannot. Coring a solid limestone wall is a specialist job rather than an afternoon with a hole saw, and on some walls the answer is no. Where there is a joist bay or a ceiling route out to the soffit we take it. Where there is not, the fallback is a recirculating hood on a carbon filter, which is not as good — you get the noise without the extraction, and the filters need changing.
That is usually the sensible window. The scope, the finishes and the dates are agreed in writing before the last tenant leaves, the work is sequenced to finish ahead of the new lease, and photographs follow at each stage if you are not local. We will say at the design visit whether the window is genuinely long enough, rather than finding out halfway through.
Other communities we travel to.
We can be at your Guelph home this week.
Choose an hour that suits you. Your consultant brings door styles, colour and finish samples, hardware and design ideas — then follows up within a couple of days with a computerized design and a detailed estimate. Free, with no obligation.