Biz idea, wanting advice

[Redcabin]

Retired guy here that could use a few extra pesos as social security has become inadequate. I wish offer a particular home improvement service that I've done in my own home. I'm leaning on Blum Blumotion soft close, Movento Tip-On, and Servo applications.

A base cabinet in our suburb house contains pot lids, etc that often avalanche out upon opening the door. Our unused dishwasher could be replaced with a trash pullout setup. Our dinky pantry needs a system of pull out drawers to access all kinds of stuff therein.

I came across Rev A Shelf and was shocked at the prices there. Lowes is a retailer for them. I will go there to obtain prices including installation to confirm what I'm seeing online.

My plan would be to use similar pricing using my Festool setup to make drawers and perform the install using Blum hardware. It looks to me that there is a lot of slack on pricing which is what I've been looking for. I want to be a one man op offering specific tasks.

Am I an expert on this? No but I'm working on it. I don't know if Blum has any in house schooling but You Tube has lots of course. Any suggestions are very welcome.

Steve

 

[Duckler]

In what part of the country do you live? Pricing this kind of work is tricky IMO. Because people have varying expectations, etc.
Word of mouth referrals are golden.
You might do a few installs for cost of materials only, or for very small profit, to get established a refine the process. Don’t overthink it. But to underpromise and overdeliver is okay.

 

[Packard]

I’ve been thinking about this for the last half an hour while driving.

In some ways, my situation is similar.  I am retired.  I have time on my hands.  And I am a fairly avid woodworker.

My observations are based on my having recently refaced my older kitchen cabinets.  I replaced the doors, drawer-fronts and hinges.  I put in Blum soft close hinges.

I considered installing soft close drawers, but decided against it.  Installing soft close drawer slides is simple on new cabinet work.  But retrofitting them into existing (installed) cabinets is manifestly more difficult.

For example, on my face frame cabinets, the top drawers have a 5” x 15” - 18” opening.  Access is from the front only.  So installing the new sides means your have to reach your arm through that small opening to install the screws.  From my observations, that seemed like something this recently-retired body would object to.  If I was 25 years old, it would not seem too bad.  At 75, it looked like something I did not want to do.

On the other hand, installing soft close hinges is plug & play.

I might suggest tailoring your product line to the kind of work you feel you can easily accomplish.

Here are the points I would consider.

1.  What is the product line?
2.  Can you make it adjustable or modular?
3.  Marketing.  How do you get customers?
4.  Valuing your work.

I am a member of a professional painting forum.  I asked some of the painters who made a living painting kitchen cabinets, why they did not offer soft close hinges at the same time?  Or even, new doors and drawer faces.

Painters are intimidated by all the options out there for hinges.  They do not know about overlay measurements. 

If I were going after some extra business, I would contact the local painters of kitchen cabinets and offer them the service of soft-close hinge upgrades.

I would offer to accompany them when they go to make a quote.  While there, I would give them a price on the soft close hinge up-sell.

You would need to look at the cabinets and see if the doors could be used with Blum hinges.  My 25 year old cabinets had Amerock hinges.  The cup size was the same as Blum, but the screw location was different.  So an easy install.

I’m sure that many home owners would like to have soft close drawers too.  But try retrofitting one on a face frame base cabinet first.  It might be more work that you imagine.

I can usually spot a kitchen cabinet repaint job.  The face frame cabinets of the 1990s to 2010s revealed a lot more of the face frame than modern cabinets did.

My cabinets had 1/2” overlay hinges.  I replaced them with 1” overlay hinges.  For four of the doors that was an issue as they opened to a wall and the doors hit the wall.  In my opinion, a much improved look, but not one that I would do on a contractor basis as it was a lot more work, and I don’t know that most people would object to the larger face frame reveal of the older cabinets.

My main objection to your plan is that it is physically demanding, especially if you include drawer slides.  And it will get more demanding as you get older.

My back and hip are giving me problems now, so I am not doing any cabinet work until the orthopedic surgeon fixes things.  I am only making small children’s toys (as charity gifts).

I think your biggest obstacle will be finding customers.  Linking up with a few painting contractors might resolve that issue.

 

[woodbutcherbower]

[member=78514]Redcabin[/member] see Packard's post above. He's 100% on the money. Anything relating to kitchens/retrofitting hardware/making new drawers/anything involving time-consuming precision hardware is almost certainly going to be more trouble than it's worth. My suggestion to make a few extra $$$$$ ?? Buy a pile of scrap palletwood for pennies, and use your skills to fashion it into rustic, country-style, oddball 'art' furniture. Dream up an artsy name for yourself, and sell your wares on Etsy or eBay for 50 x your materials cost. The fashion-conscious, gullible world will beat a path to your door.

All done from the comfort of your own home shop. And no entitled Karens to deal with.

Good luck.

 

[squall_line]

From what I'm reading, the business idea is to turn shelves inside cabinets into pull-out drawers.  My parents had something similar done in some of their cabinets when they had the doors stained a bunch of years ago, and I believe the contractor used the Rev-a-Shelf product.

In any case, adding pull-outs to existing cabinets/shelves is likely significantly easier than changing out drawer hardware, so I can understand the appeal.

There are still a number of considerations to make with this sort of conversion, and crawling inside of cabinets is one of the things to consider from a physical standpoint in taking this on as a job.

Otherwise, I agree with Packard and Kevin.

I'll be a contrarian with Kevin on one point he made, though: "Entitled Karens" and "Etsy Shop buyers" aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as one might hope.

 

[woodbutcherbower]

"Entitled Karens" and "Etsy Shop buyers" aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as one might hope.

Quite probably. But when you've sold something for $250 which cost you $3 in materials and a coupla hours to throw together, a few downward hits is still a good return  [big grin]

 

[woodferret]

I'll be a contrarian with Kevin on one point he made, though: "Entitled Karens" and "Etsy Shop buyers" aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as one might hope.

The worst isn't the entitled Karen.  It's the ones that want something but don't know the lingo or are overloaded by the options.  Those you can't really just brush off as easy and have to hand hold which can be even more draining.  Especially if they break down crying in front of you.

The more RTA and technical you make this endeavor to avoid the above, the less competitiveness it has over the other off the shelf products like Rev-A-Shelf.  The limited options on Rev-A-Shelf products lends to it being an easy upgrade for those who need a quick fix without thinking too hard about it.

TLDR: Any custom stuff, especially retrofits, you're going to hand-hold.  You're going to have to explain (with tact) why something might not work, or be too expensive to try... etc.

 

[Crazyraceguy]

Agreed with the above. There is a big difference between "selling a product" and "providing a service".
Going into people's houses is not only a pain, but might get you into a liability situation too. (Insurance)

When you are in your shop, you are 100% in control of everything. In a client's house, you are not.
At home, every tool you own is available to you.....on the road, it likely is not.
I have done installs where I had to go down the road somewhere to buy a duplicate of a tool I already owned, just because the shop was too far away and the job needed to be done. Unless you are a full-time installer (and have the appropriate vehicle) you just can't keep everything with you.

Drawer hardware has a dizzying array of options, many of them are mutually exclusive. Unless you intend to be able to offer replacement drawer boxes too, this could be a problem.
Somewhere along the line, you are going to run into the need for some repairs. Matching the original is quite challenging. (time consuming)

I don't mean to be discouraging, just be aware of what you are getting into.

People that are very specific and picky are actually the easiest to deal with. The hard ones are those that are not really sure and are "test driving". This can be frustrating. Just nailing down the scope of the job at first is one thing, then being sure that everyone is on the same page, managing expectations.

Building a product that gets picked up/dropped off can cut out a lot of these steps, even if it is a "commissioned piece". They can see it up front.

 

[Packard]

From what I'm reading, the business idea is to turn shelves inside cabinets into pull-out drawers.  My parents had something similar done in some of their cabinets when they had the doors stained a bunch of years ago, and I believe the contractor used the Rev-a-Shelf product.

In any case, adding pull-outs to existing cabinets/shelves is likely significantly easier than changing out drawer hardware, so I can understand the appeal.

There are still a number of considerations to make with this sort of conversion, and crawling inside of cabinets is one of the things to consider from a physical standpoint in taking this on as a job.

Otherwise, I agree with Packard and Kevin.

I'll be a contrarian with Kevin on one point he made, though: "Entitled Karens" and "Etsy Shop buyers" aren't necessarily as mutually exclusive as one might hope.

I built all my pull-outs many years ago. They can effectively double the capacity of any base cabinet.  The gain is much less for wall cabinets.  Though my pantry cabinet got more pullouts than shelves they replaced.  So more than double the capacity for those shelves/pullouts.

I do recall that installing the pullouts was challenging from the body contortion point of view.  I’m pretty sure I would not tackle that again now.