Sponsored content
When you’re looking for new cabinets, there are three ways to go: stock, semi-custom, or custom. But to Tom Stumpff of Stumpff HomeWorks, the choice is clear.
“If you do custom cabinetry, anything’s attainable,” Stumpff says. “We can design and make anything that will fit any space. The sky is the limit.”
Good custom cabinetry takes no shortcuts, wastes no wood. Every part of the cabinetry is functional, unique to the space, and as the owner intended. It’s visually appealing—with clean sight lines, intentional materials, and a tight fit and finish—and most importantly, it makes life easier with personalized features.
Unfortunately, Stumpff sees some homeowners paying high dollar for less say about how their space is used. “There are people out there paying good money for product that’s really not custom,” he says, “and I think people would like to know what is truly custom.”
No Room For Compromise
Stumpff started working for a high-end home remodeler in 2001, at 23. He was “pretty green” when he started, but he grew with the company and cultivated his skills—and most importantly, his standards. In 2011, he started Stumpff HomeWorks with an ethic of never compromising on quality.
“I had to start over. I didn’t have a portfolio, didn’t have a website, didn’t have a client base. I kept pushing it to get to where it is, but I didn’t put the cart before the horse, and I didn’t compromise to get there,” he says.
To Stumpff, compromising means pulling a stock cabinet out of a box and wrestling it into a person’s home. It means including useless features to fill space or using a material that clashes with a home.
“But with custom cabinetry, I’m not spending time and effort hacking a stock cabinet up to make it work for the house,” he says. “We can just do it from the get-go, and you don’t have to worry about anything. We can make it whatever size we want, the right depth, the right material, the right style.”
“Semi-custom is more of a flipper mentality where you’re putting cabinets in just to fill space. It’s not a designer mentality. A designer mentality is going to the next level to make sure we design it properly the first time with narrow margins for error.”
There’s Custom Cabinetry, Then There’s Everything Else
It’s the small things that add up to a pleasing aesthetic and an optimized home.
Stumpff’s process starts with an in-home meeting, and his design stems from the dimensions of your home and the needs you express. The perfect fit—not how he’ll cover up the voids left between cabinetry with set dimensions—is the focus.
“If you want a cabinet that fits in a space and is pleasing and functional, custom really is the way to go,” he says. “With semi-custom cabinetry, on the other hand, you’re going to have to fill in more egregious voids with filler strips—maybe a three-inch here, maybe an inch and a half here.” Next level custom-built cabinets require “scribing the actual cabinet box to the wall and the toe kick to the floor.”
Stumpff talks the homeowners through all the details, from wood species to door overlays, door styles, and stains and paints.
“Sometimes people will go, ‘Oh my gosh, I had no idea of all the options.’ Well, of course, this is your one time to do it, and we want to make it special for you.”
Cabinet and Design. Photo courtesy of Stumpff HomeWorks
An A+ Remodel
Stumpff loves when things line up to perfection. Creating custom cabinetry in customers’ homes is an incredibly gratifying process.
“It’s the best thing in the remodel, when you get a nice kitchen layout—the cabinets are singing, they aesthetically fit the space and complement everything around them,” he says. “We’ve used the cabinets to get to the countertops, countertops to get to our backsplash—at the end of the day, when you see it all put together and it harmonizes, that’s the biggest payoff.”
“It’s very gratifying when a customer loves their cabinets,” he says. “We’re happy they’re happy.”
To schedule a consultation with Stumpff HomeWorks, contact them on their website, by email at tom@stumpffhomworks.com, or by phone at 913-488-3645.