Tempe Elite Cabinets: Refacing, Custom Kitchens, Vanities, Closets and Commercial Casework

Tempe Elite Cabinets refaces, builds, and installs cabinetry for houses, condos, and businesses across Tempe, AZ, and has been doing it for more than 15 years.

The work covers cabinet refacing, refinishing, and painting; custom kitchen cabinets in painted maple, quartersawn white oak, hickory, and walnut; bathroom vanities and linen towers; walk-in and reach-in closet systems; garage cabinets and overhead storage; home office built-ins; entertainment centers and media walls; laundry rooms; pantry cabinets and pull-out storage; islands and breakfast bars; wine and bar cabinets; mudroom and entryway storage; hardware, soft-close conversions, and organizers; quartz, granite, and butcher block countertops; and commercial casework for offices, clinics, retail, and restaurants.

Boxes are 3/4-inch furniture-grade plywood rather than particleboard, drawers are solid maple with dovetail corners on full-extension Blum undermount slides, and frameless European construction is our default here because it buys real interior width in a small kitchen.

Tempe was built out decades ago, which shapes almost everything we do.

The core neighborhoods are 1950s through 1970s ranch houses with eight-foot ceilings, a soffit boxed in above the wall cabinets, and a galley kitchen laid out when a refrigerator was 28 inches wide, and around them sit condos, townhomes, and rentals where the kitchen is nine feet across and the plumbing is not moving.

In houses like that, refacing sound boxes and rebuilding the interiors with roll-outs beats a teardown far more often than a cabinet shop likes to say out loud.

The desert adds its own rules: at 12 percent relative humidity a solid raised panel shrinks and opens a hairline at the edge, so panels are floated and finished on all six sides and material acclimates in the house first, and painted work is sprayed in catalyzed conversion varnish rather than brushed enamel.

We build to KCMA and ANSI A161.1 standards, use CARB Phase 2 compliant panels, and can source FSC-certified material. Licensed, insured, and bonded, a member of the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, with a written workmanship warranty and free in-home design.

About Tempe Elite Cabinets in Tempe, AZ

Tempe Elite Cabinets has spent more than 15 years refacing, building, and installing cabinetry across Tempe and the Salt River Valley. We are a shop first and a sales operation second, which means the person who measures your kitchen has built one. Refacing and small-kitchen work is the core of what we do, and around it we build custom kitchens, vanities, closets, garage storage, pantries, laundry rooms, islands, office built-ins, media walls, mudrooms, countertops, and commercial casework.

Tempe is 40 square miles with nowhere left to expand, so almost nothing here is new.

The neighborhoods around the university and off Southern and Broadway are 1950s to 1970s ranch and Haver-style houses: eight-foot ceilings, plaster or early drywall, a soffit framed in above the uppers, and a galley kitchen sized for a household that owned far fewer appliances than yours does. The condos and townhomes near Mill Avenue and the lake are tighter still.

That housing stock is why our default answer is different from a suburban shop's. We go frameless to recover interior width, take the soffit out where the framing allows and run cabinets to the ceiling, convert low shelves to deep drawers, and reface sound plywood boxes rather than selling a teardown.

It costs us bigger jobs and it is still the right advice.

The construction details are chosen for the desert.

Boxes are 3/4-inch furniture-grade plywood with dado-and-glue joinery and a full plywood back, panels are floated and finished on all six faces so a dry June does not open a hairline at the panel edge, material acclimates in your house before install, and painted work is sprayed in catalyzed conversion varnish rather than brushed enamel because a west-facing run in July is genuinely hard on a coating.

Hardware is Blum or Grass, since fine monsoon dust is what actually kills a cheap slide. We build to KCMA and ANSI A161.1 standards and use CARB Phase 2 compliant panels. Licensed, insured, and bonded, a member of the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, with a written workmanship warranty on every job and a free in-home design consultation.

How It Works

1. 1. Measure and assess. We measure the room, then look at what you already have. If the boxes are plywood and square we will tell you refacing is the better spend, even though it is the smaller job. The visit and the quote cost nothing.
2. 2. Doors, finish, storage. You pick door style and finish from real samples in your own kitchen light, and we plan the interiors: roll-outs, drawer conversions, and where the things you use daily should actually live.
3. 3. Built and sprayed in our shop. Doors, drawers, and boxes are made here and finished in a controlled booth. Painted work gets catalyzed conversion varnish, stained work gets sealed on every face. Your kitchen stays usable while it happens.
4. 4. Install and adjust. Material acclimates in the house first, then we scribe to walls that are eighty years past plumb, hang and align every door, and come back once everything has settled.