Petaling Jaya · Selangor
Built to fit PJ houses as they actually are, not as the original floor plan says they should be. From RM450 per running foot for bottom cabinets, delivered and installed.
Petaling Jaya is old, by Klang Valley standards. Large parts of it were built from the 1950s through the 1970s, and the houses in the older Sections and SS areas have been lived in, extended, re-tiled and patched by several owners since.
The practical result is simple. In PJ, almost nothing is square.
A ready made cabinet assumes a right angle. Two walls meeting at exactly 90 degrees, a floor that is flat, a ceiling that is level. In a PJ house built sixty years ago and modified twice, you often get none of the three.
What you see when someone forces standard units into a room like that is familiar: a wedge of gap behind the run that gets filled with a strip of trim, a countertop that reads crooked against the tiles, a door that fouls the wall as it opens.
Building to measure solves it, but only if the measuring is done honestly. We measure the room at several heights rather than once, because a wall that is 12 feet at skirting level is sometimes not 12 feet at counter height. Then the carcasses are made to the real numbers and any discrepancy is absorbed where it will not be seen, usually at an end panel against a wall rather than in the middle of the run.
Full plywood carcass with laminate doors and exposed faces. Plywood holds screws and tolerates damp far better than particle board, which matters in a kitchen that may well outlive the rest of the renovation. Laminate wipes down and never needs refinishing. We do not use veneer.
Resident Ruby is a condominium in Sea Park. The kitchen cabinets there are in a walnut-tone wood-grain laminate. We built an open recess under the wall cabinets for the cooker hood, so it sits inside the cabinet line instead of hanging off the wall on its own. The bottom run has an open slot for a built-in appliance, with a cut-out at the back for its power point, and a full-height tall unit closes off one end of the run. In the same unit we also built bedroom wardrobes and a dressing table in a matching laminate.
Per running foot, with delivery and installation already included.
| Item | Rate |
|---|---|
| Bottom cabinets, including a basic laminate countertop | RM450 per running foot |
| Top cabinets | RM225 per running foot |
| Bottom and top together | RM675 per running foot |
| Quartz countertop instead of laminate | add RM250 per running foot |
A 12 foot run with bottom and top cabinets is 12 by RM675, which is RM8,100 delivered and installed. Bottom cabinets only, if you want to keep the wall open, is 12 by RM450, so RM5,400.
In an older house we would usually rather you spent a little more on getting the fit right than on upgrading the countertop. A quartz top on a crooked run still looks like a crooked run.
PJ falls under Majlis Bandaraya Petaling Jaya. A cabinet job needs no council approval, because fitted carpentry is not structural work.
Knocking down a wall, for example to open the kitchen into the dining room, is a different job. That is a kitchen renovation, and whether it needs council approval has to be settled before any work starts. Our kitchen renovation page for Petaling Jaya and Desa ParkCity explains when approval is needed and how the renovation work is quoted.
Plenty of PJ houses are bought, lived in for a year, and fitted out properly only once the owners know how they actually use the place. That is a sensible way to do it, and cabinets phase well if the phasing is planned rather than improvised.
The usual split is bottom cabinets and the countertop first, then top cabinets and tall units later. It works because the bottom run carries the sink, the hob and most of the daily storage, so it delivers the majority of the benefit on its own.
What matters is telling us at the first measurement. If we know top cabinets are coming, we plan the wall preparation, keep the laminate reference so the second batch matches, and leave the run ready to extend. Coming back to a kitchen fitted two years ago by someone who assumed it was finished is a much worse starting point, and the colour match is rarely exact.
Yes. That is the main reason to build to measure. The discrepancy gets absorbed at the ends of the run where a filler is invisible, rather than showing as a gap in the middle.
Sometimes, if it is quartz or solid surface and in good condition. Laminate tops rarely survive removal intact, so it is usually not worth it.
Yes. If the kitchen needs wet works, wiring or tiling as well as cabinets, we quote it as a full kitchen renovation. Our PJ kitchen renovation page explains how that job runs. We also take on full-home renovations. We do not quote plumbing, wiring or tiling on their own.
Lead time is usually three to five weeks from confirmation and final site measurement, because everything is cut to your sizes in our workshop. Installation time depends on the size of the kitchen and is confirmed in your quotation.
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