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Wellborn Home Additions & ADU: The West Palm Beach Owner’s Guide
A Wellborn home addition or ADU in West Palm Beach typically runs $45,000 – $130,000, and a full detached ADU starts around $90,000. We stock and install Wellborn-compatible cabinetry, trim, and millwork for these projects, and most supply runs take two to three business days when a specific Wellborn line item isn’t already on our shelf. The way owners usually find us is mid-project: a Wellborn cabinet door arrived warped from humidity, or a drawer glide failed two years in, or the original installer cut a filler piece short and now the gap is staring at them every morning. We fix the part, match the finish, and get the addition back on schedule.
Key takeaways:
- Wellborn cabinet and trim components are repairable and replaceable, not throwaway.
- Humidity is the #1 reason Wellborn doors and drawer fronts fail in South Florida.
- We give you a written price before any work starts, including the part number and labor line by line.
- Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach is an independent contractor, not a Wellborn dealer or affiliate. We work on Wellborn products because they’re solid and parts are available, not because they pay us to.
Which Wellborn Models This Applies To
Wellborn builds cabinetry across three main series: Estate, Premier, and Select. Most West Palm Beach additions and ADUs we walk through have the Premier line, which runs mid-price and carries a broad range of door profiles, finishes, and overlay options. The cabinet boxes are typically ½-inch plywood with hardwood face frames, and the hanging rails change between series. That matters if you’re ordering a replacement door or drawer front: an Estate door will not swap onto a Premier box without adjusting the hinge plate or drilling new cup holes. Before you order anything, pull one drawer and look for a white or silver label on the box interior with the cabinet code and finish number. If the label is gone, measure the door width to the 16th of an inch and the hinge spread in millimeters, then call us with those numbers.
For the finish, write down the door style name from the original quote if you kept it. Wellborn’s finish names like Toffee, Espresso, and Heirloom White sound generic but each one is a specific stain formula. A door refinished by a random shop in a “close enough” brown will catch light differently than the rest of the run. We order through Wellborn’s finish-matching process, including a sample door approval before the full order is cut. Down here in West Palm Beach, that extra step prevents the two-tone kitchen that drives homeowners crazy for years after.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Wellborn Home Additions & ADU Is Failing
- Doors that won’t stay closed or hang crooked after the first humid summer. This is almost always hinge fatigue plus wood movement, not a bad door. Florida’s wet season adds enough moisture to swell hardwood face frames by a few millimeters. When a door that fit in January rubs in August, the cabinet is moving, and the solution is hinge adjustment or replacement, plus checking the climate control in the space.
- Drawer fronts pulling away from the drawer box. Wellborn’s concealed drawer clips and screws hold well, but daily use in a high-traffic kitchen works them loose. If you feel the front flex when you pull the drawer open, stop using it and tighten the screws before the front splits.
- Soft-close drawers that start slamming. The damper inside a Wellborn soft-close glide wears out long before the glide itself. It is a replaceable part, and we stock a dozen of the common sizes in our West Palm Beach shop. The whole glide assembly does not need replacing when the damper is the only part that failed.
- Discoloration or peeling along the door bottom edge near the dishwasher. Steam from the dishwasher vent curls the finish over time. Once the finish lifts, the MDF or ply core underneath starts absorbing moisture. If the damage is a quarter-inch strip along the bottom, the door is usually refinishable. If it’s blistered more than halfway up, replace the door.
- Shelves sagging under normal load in the wall cabinets. A Wellborn shelf that bows with a load of plates was likely cut to the wrong length or the shelf support pins are not seated in the holes straight. This is a simple fix, but ignored, the sag becomes permanent and the shelf fails.
See the difference
Before
After
Before
After
Before
AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
For context on the full picture of what families spend in South Florida, a well-planned home addition in West Palm Beach generally lands between $45,000 and $130,000, while a separate ADU typically runs $90,000 to $220,000. But when we’re talking about a Wellborn-specific parts repair on an existing addition or ADU, the line items are far smaller. A single replacement door runs $180 – $400 installed. A drawer front is $120 – $300. A set of soft-close glides for a five-drawer base cabinet is $150 – $350 including the labor to pull and reset each drawer. A full cabinet hinge replacement on a kitchen’s worth of doors runs $250 – $600 depending on door count and hinge type.
Every one of those numbers is a written range. Before we start, Graham Stein puts the part number, the finish, the quantity, and the labor in front of you. Put it in writing, then do exactly that. The price you sign is the price you pay, and the 365-Day Done Right Promise stays on file for every part we touch.
DIY or Call Us?
You can safely tighten a loose drawer front, re-seat a shelf pin, or check the cabinet labels yourself. Those are all low-risk tasks, and doing them before calling often saves you a service trip. What you should not do is attempt to refinish a Wellborn door at home with a brush and hope, or drill new hinge holes freehand. Finish work is not paint, it is a chemical process with a stain base and a catalyzed topcoat, and it does not forgive rushed work. A botched refinish costs two or three times the price of a replacement door because the door usually has to be stripped or thrown out anyway. If the part involves cabinet hardware under spring tension, like a lift-up door mechanism, leave that to us too. Those springs can release hard enough to take a finger off if you slip.
If you have the Wellborn label codes and measurements, call (728) 203-3270. We will tell you over the phone whether the part is in our West Palm Beach shop or needs to be ordered, and we will give you a written price either way. No charge for the look-up.
FAQs
Wellborn cabinets last 20 – 30 years in normal South Florida conditions, but the finish typically needs attention every 7 – 10 years and hardware like glides and hinges every 5 – 8. The humid season is harder on cabinets than time is. Call (728) 203-3270 and we’ll tell you honestly whether your doors need replacing or simply adjusting.
Yes, if the damage is limited to the finish surface or the hinge mounting points, repair is usually cheaper than replacement. A cracked door stile or a delaminated core is not worth repairing and should be replaced. Send us a photo and the cabinet label code, and we’ll give you a straight answer.
A common part we stock in the shop is done within one visit, usually one to two hours. A special-order door or finish-matched front takes two to three weeks from order to install. We schedule around your family’s school and nap hours where we can, and we bring drop cloths and shoe covers on every visit.
We carry the most common soft-close glides, hinge plates, shelf pins, and touch-up kits on the service truck, plus a small shelf of in-shop Wellborn knobs and pulls in West Palm Beach. Specialty doors and custom fronts are ordered per job. If your part is not on the truck, we write the order while we’re at your house so nothing gets delayed by a follow-up call. Reach us at (728) 203-3270 for a free estimate.
Written by Graham Stein, Owner, Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach at Elmstead Remodeling West Palm Beach, serving West Palm Beach and nearby areas.
