Price: the number everyone starts with
Home Depot advertises low starting prices, and for a small kitchen with stock cabinets they can look competitive on the sticker. The number moves once you spec real construction and add the pieces the sticker leaves off.
- Home Depot stock kitchen: roughly $5,000 to $14,000 depending on line and size. The lower end is particle-board boxes, MDF or vinyl-wrap doors, and stapled drawers.
- STL Cabinetry (local dealer): around $8,000 for an average full kitchen, in plywood boxes, factory-finished wood or HDF doors, dovetail drawers, and soft-close hardware standard.
- High-end Saint Louis showroom: $40,000+ for that same plywood-and-dovetail construction, plus a designer and a project manager.
Construction: what you are actually buying
This is where the two paths separate. Big-box cabinets are built to hit a price point on a shelf. A dealer builds to a spec.
- Box: Home Depot stock lines are commonly particle board. Dealers spec plywood, which holds screws, survives a leak, and does not sag under a stone countertop.
- Doors: big-box budget lines use MDF or vinyl-wrap that can peel at the edges in 5 to 8 years. A dealer uses real wood for stained finishes and HDF for painted, which takes a smooth multi-coat finish.
- Drawers: stapled or pinned joints loosen over a decade. Dovetail joints lock the corners together and last for decades.
- Hardware: soft-close hinges and full-extension glides are standard at an honest dealer. On budget big-box lines they are often an upcharge or absent.
The part the sticker leaves off: countertops and flooring
This is the biggest reason the comparison is not close on a full kitchen. Home Depot sells you cabinets, then marks up the countertops and flooring like everyone else. A dealer that also supplies surfaces can pass them through at cost.
When you buy cabinets through STL Cabinetry, the countertops and flooring come through at our actual dealer cost with zero markup on those surfaces. That is not a discount gimmick; it is the fabricator and distributor invoice.
Delivery and damage: who owns the problem
Home Depot cabinets ship through a national logistics chain. If a box shows up damaged or a piece is missing, you are filing a claim and waiting for a replacement while your installer stands idle.
A local dealer that receives and assembles cabinets at its own facility owns the whole chain. At STL Cabinetry, every cabinet is assembled in our Saint Louis shop, inspected, and hand delivered in a one-hour window. If something is wrong, we fix it, and there is no freight carrier to argue with.
Design help: measuring and layout
Home Depot offers in-store design, and it is fine for a straightforward layout. It is built around the products on their shelves.
A dealer designs the whole kitchen with you, including the layout tricks that make a small kitchen work and the pieces that solve a dead corner. STL Cabinetry includes a free photorealistic 3D design so you can see the kitchen before you commit, and you work directly with a co-founder through the process.
When Home Depot is the right call
This is an honest comparison, so here is where big-box wins. If you need one or two stock cabinets today for a laundry room or a garage, Home Depot is faster and simpler. If you are a landlord outfitting a rental on the lowest possible budget and do not care about the 10-year outcome, the cheapest stock line will do.
For a real kitchen you plan to keep, the dealer path usually costs less for better construction once you count the surfaces, and it comes with a local team that owns the result.