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Wellborn Kitchen Remodeling: The Fort Lauderdale Owner’s Guide
Wellborn kitchen remodeling in Fort Lauderdale typically runs $14,000 to $45,000 installed, depending on cabinet line, kitchen size, and what’s behind the walls once we open them up. We stock Wellborn-compatible cabinet components, hinges, drawer slides, and door fronts, and we can usually match your existing finish within a week. Most homeowners call us because a drawer has started sticking, a door no longer closes square, or a hinge has stripped its screw holes after years of salt air and humidity working on the cabinetry.
Here’s what you need to know if your Wellborn cabinets are failing in a Fort Lauderdale kitchen: we’re an independent remodeling company, not affiliated with Wellborn, which means we can give you straight answers about OEM parts versus what we stock on the truck. Isaac Pruett and our crew have spent nearly two decades opening up Florida kitchens, and Wellborn cabinetry shows up often enough that we know the product line cold.
Which Wellborn Models This Applies To
Wellborn builds cabinets across three main series lines: Estate, Premier, and Select. Each uses different door construction, box materials, and hinge hardware, and the compatibility gotcha is real: a drawer slide from the Select line will not mount cleanly into an Estate cabinet without drilling new holes and shimming. We’ve seen handymen force it anyway, and the drawer binds within a month.
To match parts correctly, look for the Wellborn label inside the cabinet door or on the back of the drawer box. It lists the cabinet’s series, door style name, and the finish code. If the label is gone, measure the hinge cup diameter: Wellborn uses 35mm hinge cups across most lines, but older Estate models from before 2010 occasionally run 26mm. We carry both, plus the mounting plates for face-frame and frameless boxes. For finishes, Wellborn’s Cherry Spice, Maple Mocha, and White Alpine are the three most common we match in Fort Lauderdale kitchens, and aftermarket color-matched door fronts from reputable suppliers run about 60% of OEM cost with a good visual match. We’ll tell you when a low-cost aftermarket hinge makes sense and when it doesn’t. Blowouts on the hinge cup are where cheap parts fail first in South Florida humidity.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Wellborn Kitchen Remodeling Is Failing
- Drawer slides grinding or popping. Salt air corrosion builds up on the ball bearings, especially on the bottom-mount slides. You’ll hear a gritty sound, then feel a catch, then the drawer stops closing flush. That’s corrosion, not a broken drawer, and it means slide replacement.
- Cabinet door sagging at the top corner. The hinge plate screws have likely stripped in the particleboard side panel. Fort Lauderdale’s humidity cycles swell and shrink that board seasonally. You can’t just tighten the screw; the hole has to be filled and redrilled or the plate moved.
- Finish peeling or bubbling along the bottom edge. This is moisture wicking up from the toe kick, usually from mopping or a slow dishwasher drip. Once the MDF core swells, the door is beyond touch-up. We replace the door and seal the raw edge before it spreads.
- Soft-close dampener no longer catching. Wellborn soft-close hardware uses a small hydraulic piston inside the hinge cup. When it fails, the door slams. That piston is replaceable by itself on most Premier and Estate hinges, and it’s a $20 part instead of a $60 hinge.
- Cabinet box separating from the wall. If you can slide a putty knife behind the upper cabinet rail, the screws have sheared or pulled loose, usually from heat expansion against a hot Fort Lauderdale attic. This is a structural call: the box has to come down, get re-shimmed, and remount with longer screw anchors into studs.
See the difference
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AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
A full Wellborn kitchen remodel in Fort Lauderdale runs $14,000 to $45,000. At the lower end, you’re replacing door fronts, hinges, and drawer slides in a small galley kitchen while keeping the existing boxes. At the upper end, it’s a full gut-out with new Estate-series cabinetry, countertops, backsplash, and island construction. Cabinet installation alone lands between $4,000 and $13,000, and countertop installation sits at $2,000 to $6,500.
What drives the range more than anything is what we find when cabinets come off: rotted drywall from an old leak, unlevel floors that need shimming before new base cabinets go in, or electrical that has to move for a new hood. We tell you what we found, what it takes to fix it, and what it will cost – before we touch a thing. Every project gets a written price before any work starts, and every completed job carries our 365-Day Done Right Promise: if the work is not right within a year of completion, we make it right at no cost to you.
DIY or Call Us?
You can safely handle two things without calling anyone: swapping a soft-close dampener cartridge inside a hinge cup, and tightening a drawer slide that’s come slightly loose in its bracket. Both are five-minute fixes with a Phillips screwdriver. If the hinge cup itself is cracked, the hinge plate screws are stripped, or the drawer slide bearings are corroded, stop. At that point you’re drilling into cabinet boxes, and one wrong move on a face-frame cabinet splinters the stile.
For anything involving cabinet removal from the wall, call us at (754) 354-3720. Freeing a loaded upper cabinet without damaging the backsplash or the crown molding is a two-person job with a brace that holds the box level. We’ve seen the aftermath of homeowners and unqualified handymen who skipped that step. Schedule a free estimate and one of our background-checked, uniformed technicians, with a name and photo sent to you before arrival, will come out and give you a straight answer on what your Wellborn kitchen needs.
FAQs
Wellborn boxes will last 20 to 25 years in Fort Lauderdale’s humidity if they were hung level and kept dry. Hinges and drawer slides are the first parts to fail, usually at the 8- to 12-year mark, and replacing them extends cabinet life without a full remodel. Door fronts near the sink and dishwasher typically need replacement sooner than the boxes behind them. Call (754) 354-3720 for an honest assessment before you rip anything out.
Warped or water-swollen Wellborn doors cannot be unswollen. Once the MDF core has expanded, the door is permanently altered and needs replacement. Finish scratches and small dents can be repaired with color-matched fill and touch-up. If the damage is a stripped hinge, that’s repairable at the cabinet box level. Call (754) 354-3720 and we’ll tell you which category yours falls into.
A full Wellborn kitchen remodel in Fort Lauderdale takes 4 to 8 weeks from demo to final walkthrough, depending on countertop fabrication lead times. If you’re replacing doors and hardware only, that’s 1 to 2 weeks. If we’re matching an existing Wellborn finish on new door fronts, add a week for the finish shop. Call (754) 354-3720 to schedule your free estimate and we’ll give you a written timeline with the written price.
We stock the most common Wellborn-compatible hinge plates, cup hinges, drawer slides, and soft-close dampeners on our trucks for Fort Lauderdale service calls. Oddball finishes and older 26mm hinge cups may take 3 to 5 days to source from our suppliers. We also handle KraftMaid, Cambria, and Silestone lines if you have mixed brands in your kitchen. Call (754) 354-3720 with your cabinet label info and we’ll confirm stock before you schedule.
Written by Isaac Pruett, Owner, Mason Remodeling Co Fort Lauderdale at Mason Remodeling Co Fort Lauderdale, serving Fort Lauderdale and nearby areas.
