Remove cabinets to save on renos
- Designers and DIY outlets keep pushing one cheap kitchen trick: remove some upper cabinets or just the doors to make old rooms feel bigger. - The money angle is real. Swapping a few uppers for shelves can cost far less than replacement, and even full removal runs about $29-$59 per linear foot. - But the tradeoff is storage and visual clutter, so the smartest version is partial—keep closed cabinets where you hide the ugly stuff.
Kitchen-reno advice is having a very specific moment. Not a full gut job. Not “take it to the studs.” Basically the opposite. The idea getting traction is to remove upper cabinets — or sometimes just the doors — and use the empty wall for open shelves, tile, paint, or nothing at all. The appeal is obvious: kitchens look bigger fast, and you can dodge one of the most expensive parts of a remodel. ### Why are upper cabinets the target? Upper cabinets do useful work, but they also dominate a room at eye level. That means they’re often the first thing making an older kitchen feel dark, cramped, or dated. Strip some of that bulk away and the room reads as lighter and more open even if the footprint never changes. That’s why designers keep framing uppers as the easiest thing to subtract when the goal is visual lift, not maximum storage. ### Is this actually cheaper? Usually, yes. New cabinetry is one of the big-ticket items in a kitchen remodel, so “don’t replace what you can remove” is a strong budget move. Family Handyman says converting some uppers to open shelving can run about $100 to $500 as a DIY update, depending on materials. If you hire out remodeling or follow-on work. ### Why does it look like a bigger upgrade than it is? Because this is an eye-level trick. You are changing mass, sightlines, and brightness more than function. Apartment Therapy’s rental examples show why it spreads so easily online — one version is literally just taking doors off upper cabinets, which gives a similar “open shelving” effect for zero cost and is a way to refresh a depressing kitchen without a $40,000 budget. ### So why not remove all of them? Storage. And dust. And because real kitchens are messy. Open shelves work best for things that are used often and look decent on display — plates, glasses, jars, a few bowls. They work badly for half-open snack boxes, mismatched plastic cups, and all the awkward stuff people actually own. That’s why even pro-open-shelfers depend on constant editing. ### What’s the low-risk version? Partial removal. Houzz suggests a smart trial run: take off the cabinet doors before tearing anything down. That lets you see whether you like the look and whether you can live with the visibility. Another practical version is to remove only one bank of uppers — near a window, around the fridge, or on the shortest wall — while keeping closed storage elsewhere for clutter control. ### Does this work only in trendy kitchens? No — turns out it often works best in ordinary, slightly tired kitchens. One Apartment Therapy makeover replaced upper cabinets with a long run of shelves and kept the total kitchen refresh to about $542. Another makeover used the same move to make a dull kitchen feel less boxed in. The common thread is not luxury. It’s selective subtraction. ### What’s the real lesson here? The bigger reno lesson is that subtraction can be cheaper than replacement and still read as transformation. Remove visual weight. Refinish what’s still sound. Spend on the surfaces people actually notice first. That won’t give you more storage. But it can absolutely make an old kitchen feel newer without the full-remodel bill.
