06 / Larimer County / Cache la Poudre
Cabinets911 designs, builds and installs custom cabinets in Fort Collins, and the work here splits three ways. Owners restoring older houses near Old Town. Landlords near Colorado State University who need cabinets that survive tenants. Families on the south side who have outgrown a builder kitchen. Same tape measure, three different answers.
The rental side changed in 2024. A state law ended the city's long-running U+2 occupancy limit that July, and since January 2025 most long-term rentals have to be registered with the city each year. More unrelated adults can now share one house. That means more hands on one kitchen, and a cabinet that held up for a family of four may not hold up for five roommates.
Brief 01 / Fort Collins
Campus West and the streets around the university are full of ranch, Cape Cod and split-level houses built between the late 1950s and early 1970s, many of them long-term rentals. Their kitchens have usually been patched more than remodeled: a replacement door here, a new laminate top there, a sink base that has been wet more than once.
For a rental we build for turnover, not for listing photos. Plywood boxes at least under the sink and dishwasher. Finishes that can be touched up. Standard door sizes and hardware you can buy again years from now. Soft-close hinges earn their place for a less obvious reason: they stop the slam that slowly loosens screws in the box.
Sink bases, then drawer slides, then the hinges on the doors people open most: trash, dishes, pantry. Every one of those is a box or hardware problem, and no door style fixes it. A plain shaker or slab door on a solid box, with a toe kick you can replace, turns the next turnover into a repair.
Around a university, lease dates bunch up, so the gap between tenants is short and predictable. We measure well before move-out and order so the install fits inside the vacancy. You get a schedule after the site visit, not a guess before it.
Brief 02 / Fort Collins
South of downtown, the Laurel School Historic District holds hundreds of houses built from the mid-1870s into the 1930s: simple Victorian cottages, some Queen Anne and Italianate homes, and later bungalows. Old Town itself became a local historic district in 1979. None of these houses were built with a fitted kitchen in mind.
Walls lean. Plaster bows between studs, and floors slope toward whatever settled first. We scribe end panels to the wall, level base cabinets off the high point, and plan a reveal at the ceiling where crown would expose a gap that changes across the room. Inset doors suit these houses, but they need a square face frame to keep their reveals even. That's why cabinet installation in Fort Collins' older houses runs slower than in new ones.
Planning a new window over the sink, or a hood vented through a street-facing wall? Ask the city's historic preservation office first.
Brief 03 / Fort Collins
Along the Harmony corridor and in neighborhoods like Rigden Farm and Fossil Creek, kitchens are bigger and the walls are straight. The trouble is cabinets specified to a price: particleboard boxes, stapled drawers, uppers that stop well short of the ceiling. Before replacing anything, we check whether refacing the sound boxes would do, or whether the layout itself is the problem. Our kitchen cabinet design starts from that question.
Full cabinet replacement isn't the only move in a Fort Collins kitchen like this. Targeted changes often go further:
Response units / Fort Collins
How each service applies to Fort Collins houses, rentals and newer builds.
Compact layouts for Old Town kitchens and storage-heavy plans for south-side family homes.
Moisture-tolerant bathroom vanities for shared Fort Collins rentals and fitted pieces for older baths with odd dimensions.
Bookcases, window seats and mudroom lockers, scribed to older walls where needed.
Targeted replacement in rentals between tenants, and full runs where the boxes have failed.
Level, scribed installs in houses that haven't been square for a century.
Repeatable cabinet packages for multi-unit rentals and builders working around Fort Collins.
Routing
IfYou own a rental near CSU
ThenReplace the sink base and hardware first. Restyle only if the boxes are gone.
IfYour house is in or near Old Town
ThenCheck walls for plumb and floors for level before choosing doors.
IfYou have a dated builder kitchen on the south side
ThenInspect the boxes. Sound boxes can be refaced; a bad layout needs a redesign.
IfYou're finishing a basement
ThenBring us in before drywall so the sink drain lands where the cabinets need it.
Coverage / Larimer County
Fort Collins runs from Old Town and the CSU campus south along College Avenue toward Harmony Road, with newer neighborhoods to the southeast. Laporte sits northwest along the Poudre, Wellington is north on I-25, and Timnath is to the east.
Call transcript / Fort Collins
Plywood or water-resistant boxes, especially at the sink, with durable painted or melamine finishes in standard sizes. Skip delicate glazes and fussy profiles that chip. Pick hardware you can replace without hunting for it. The goal is a kitchen you can fix piece by piece between tenants, and cabinet replacement in a rental can start with the sink base alone.
Registration asks owners to certify that the unit meets the city's minimum housing standards. Whether your kitchen does is for the city to judge against those standards. As a Fort Collins cabinet contractor, what we can tell you plainly is which cabinets are failing, which are only tired, and what replacing just the failed parts would involve.
Yes, if they're designed for it. Inset or simple shaker doors, painted finishes, period-appropriate hardware and face frames sized like the originals all help. We don't pretend new cabinets are old. We scribe them to the real walls so they look like they belong. Our project process shows how the measuring and drawings work.
Yes. Timnath, Wellington and Laporte are part of how we schedule Fort Collins work. Loveland has its own page on custom cabinets in Loveland. Wherever you are, start with photos and rough measurements; we confirm everything on site.
Open a case / 06
Send photos, rough sizes and whether it's a rental or your own home. We'll tell you what the cabinets actually need.
Accessibility / Language
