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Wellborn Home Additions & ADU: The Fort Lauderdale Owner’s Guide
If you’re planning a home addition or ADU and want Wellborn cabinetry built into the plan, the installed cost in Fort Lauderdale typically runs $45,000 – $130,000 depending on size, scope, and whether you’re finishing a kitchen, bath, or full living space. We install Wellborn cabinets in additions and ADUs across Fort Lauderdale, and we’ll give you a written price before any work starts. Most owners reach out after realizing that a well-built addition needs cabinet runs that hold up to Florida humidity without warping, delaminating, or swelling, which is exactly where Wellborn’s plywood construction and catalyzed finishes earn their keep.
Here’s what you need to know before you commit: Wellborn produces multiple cabinet lines with different box materials, door profiles, and finish systems, and not every line is suited to a humid, salt-adjacent environment like Fort Lauderdale. We’ve pulled apart enough water-damaged cabinet boxes near Las Olas Boulevard to tell you which series holds up and which ones you should skip.
Which Wellborn Models This Applies To
Wellborn’s catalog splits into several series: Premier, Select, Estate, and the semi-custom Premier Custom. The compatibility question for a Fort Lauderdale addition or ADU comes down to the box material. Premier and Select use furniture-board (particleboard) sides, which swell fast if a shower in a small ADU bathroom raises interior humidity. Estate and Premier Custom use solid plywood boxes, and we recommend plywood boxes for any South Florida addition where air conditioning and humidity run hard year-round. If you already have cabinets and are matching existing Wellborn doors, look inside a drawer for the white or silver Wellborn label; if it’s gone, measure the door width in 3-inch increments. Wellborn door widths run 9, 12, 15, 18, 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, and 36 inches, which makes identifying a replacement door or drawer front straightforward once you know the overlay and hinge spacing.
One gotcha we see often: Wellborn changed hinge plates on several lines in 2020, so an older door from 2017 won’t hang correctly on a new hinge without a plate swap. We match OEM Wellborn doors for most replacement jobs; where OEM is backordered, we order RSI or similar quality aftermarket fronts and shim them to spec. We’re an independent service provider, not affiliated with Wellborn, which means we can tell you when a quality equivalent makes more sense than waiting six weeks for a factory door.
Styles & brands we work with
Signs Your Wellborn Home Additions & ADU Is Failing
- Doors are binding or scraping at the corners. In South Florida, this is usually humidity cycling, not sloppy installation. As interior humidity swings from 45% to 75%, wood-framed doors expand, and if the reveal was cut too tight, they’ll rub. It can also mean a hinge screw has loosened inside a stripped bore.
- Veneer peeling on door edges near the range or dishwasher. Steam and heat separate edge banding, and once the band lifts, that particleboard or MDF core soaks up moisture like a sponge. We see this most often on budget Wellborn lines installed in Fort Lauderdale rental ADUs where tenants run the range hood less than they should.
- Drawer boxes are racking or sides bowing outward. That’s a dovetail joint separating, usually from overloading or repeated slamming. Wellborn’s dovetailed maple drawers are good but not indestructible; once a front joint fails, the drawer itself is done.
- Soft-close hinges or slides no longer catch. The damping mechanism inside Blum or Grass hardware has a lifespan, and in coastal Fort Lauderdale air with its salt content, that lifespan shrinks. If two or three doors in the same run fail within months of each other, plan on replacing all hardware in that bank rather than chasing failures one hinge at a time.
- Cabinet box swelling at the toe kick or sink base. This is the one that tells you the box is furniture board, not plywood. A leak from a sink trap or a dishwasher supply line swells the box bottom, and by the time you see it, replacement is the only real fix.
See the difference
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AfterReplacement Cost & What’s Included
For a full home addition or ADU project in Fort Lauderdale where Wellborn cabinets are the cabinetry spec, you’re looking at $45,000 – $130,000 all in, a range that accounts for permitting, slab or pier foundation work, framing, electrical and plumbing rough-in, insulation, drywall, flooring, and the cabinet installation itself. If you’re pulling out a single damaged Wellborn cabinet run and reinstalling new boxes, expect $4,000 – $13,000 for the cabinet portion alone; a single replacement door or drawer front typically lands between $90 and $250 depending on the door width and finish. Every one of our quotes is a written number, not a range you’ll hear again changed at the door, and the 365-Day Done Right Promise covers the work in writing. If a drawer sticks or a door binds within a year, we come back and fix it at no charge, no service call fee.
We also carry KraftMaid, Cambria, and Silestone alongside Wellborn on jobs where a homeowner wants to mix cabinet lines or match existing countertops without compromising the guarantee behind any of it.
DIY or Call Us?
Some of this is safe to check yourself. If a door is binding, open the door and press upward on the handle; if the gap at the top closes and the door moves freely, it’s a hinge screw that needs tightening, and that’s a five-minute fix with the right #2 Phillips. If a soft-close mechanism isn’t catching, you can often replace the hinge-cup damper yourself while the door stays mounted.
What we’d rather you not do is start pulling toe kick panels, dropping sink bases, or restructuring a cabinet run on a load-bearing wall in a Fort Lauderdale addition. Subsidence and shifting soils are real here, and a cabinet run that’s carrying the weight of a granite or Cambria quartz top is not the place to learn how shims work. Call (754) 551-2922 and tell us what’s failing. We’ll give you a written number before we touch a single hinge.
FAQs
Plywood-box Wellborn cabinets (Estate and Premier Custom) should hold up for 20 to 30 years in South Florida with normal use; furniture-board lines in a humid or coastal environment realistically last 10 to 15 before edge banding and box swelling start showing. If you want a single number to plan around, plan on 20 years and know that door hardware may need replacing twice in that window.
In most cases, no. Once veneer lifts or a door frame separates, repair adhesive and clamping usually last weeks, not years. We can replace one door or drawer front with an OEM or quality-equivalent match, and we’ll price it so you’re not tossing a whole run for one bad door.
For a single cabinet bank in a finished Fort Lauderdale room, plan on one full day from tear-out to reinstalled trim, with careful dust control given that South Florida interiors collect dust on everything within two rooms of the cut. A full addition or ADU project runs whatever your permit and inspection schedule dictates, and we’ll give you that timeline in writing before the first permit is pulled.
No. Custom door widths and finishes can’t be carried as loose inventory, but we order OEM Wellborn doors in typical lead times of 5 – 6 weeks, and we carry common hinge plates, soft-close dampers, and matching hardware on trucks for same-visit hardware swaps. If the matching door has a six-week lead and you can’t wait, we’ll price a quality aftermarket equivalent and tell you the difference before you decide.
Written by Trevor Nash, Owner, Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale at Penhallow Remodeling Fort Lauderdale, serving Fort Lauderdale and nearby areas.
