Like you said, it's awful hard to reply to all posts.
1)I have been cursed. As a child in the late '60s Mom dragged us to Williamsburg on most of our vacations. I figured there were better places to go. But it had it's effect. From childhood I've pretty much known what is and isn't junk. 2) Before building be very very careful, Think about it Man!! You say you have little experience and I'm guessing very little tooling. You are staring an addiction square in the face. Even if you get by with the minimum of tooling when the projects done you'll still have those tools. What are you going to do with them? Let them Rot? You'll probably start another project and need just one more tool, then another project and another tool, then another and another .... 3) My brother in law built some shelves in a closet. I went over to see, they looked fine. Then he starts pointing out stuff .... I told him!What I told him was: When you build something you know where every breakout, every splinter and miss drilled hole is, you know every flaw. And you see them all. Your friends will be impressed, your wife will be ecstatic, you'll wonder how that splinter in the lower left corner doesn't scream to be seen.
It doesn't, get over it. Eventually you wont see it either.
4) a) My wife is 4' 11", standard countertop height is too tall for her to work comfortably. It hurt me to see her wash dishes while holding her elbows away from her sides.b) I have never liked standard width countertops in the sink area. It has always crowded the sink too close to the wall making it difficult to clean behind.
c) I'm going to build a set of 'L' cabinets. One legs wall is 89 1/2" from the crotch to the doorway/ passage. I set up a temporary counter to live with to see if a counter close to the door will be a problem. After a year, it isn't (kitchen layout and traffic patterns).
Think the BORG will have something 88" long?
d) When we moved here the kitchen sucked, for real. I lived with it long enough I don't want to think about it. Suffice it to say it was not a work area. It was done with standard cabinets.
Conclusion: Standard kitchen cabinets don't always work. Fact they can be a hindrance. If your building them yourself you can make what you want.
5) Tools. Specifically the cost of tooling. Go to Borg, total what a set of cabinets you could get by with will set you back. Contact a cabinetmaker, see how much it will cost to get just what you want. Now price what tools and materials will cost for you to build them.Guess will cost the least. Probably by a substantial amount.
6) Satisfaction. No matter how many splinters I see I still smile because it's my creation, I built these things.Mayhaps I will write on this more later, SWMBO wants to go to BORG, put a few more pennies on the bill,
she just asked if I was going to get ready.
Later