What integrated means
An integrated appliance is one built to disappear. A fridge that takes a door panel on its front, so it reads as a tall cupboard. A dishwasher with a panel and no visible controls. A rangehood that lives inside the upper cabinet with only a strip of extraction showing. The kitchen above has all three, and at a glance it is a wall of grey doors and a bench. That calm is the point.
It also solves the practical problem every open-plan kitchen has: the fridge is the biggest, shiniest object in the room, and it is in the line of sight from the couch. Put a panel on it and it is gone.
How we build it
Integration starts at the shopping list. A panel-ready appliance is built to carry a door; a freestanding one is not, and no amount of joinery will make a standard fridge disappear. We give you the models that work, in the sizes that fit the run, before you buy; then we size every cabinet to your model numbers before anything is cut, and the appliances need to be on site the day we name. We make the appliance panels in the same front as the kitchen, hang them on the appliance’s own door-on-door hinges or on our carcass, and set the gaps to match the rest of the run.
The fridge column needs air: a ventilation gap at the top and the bottom that we hide behind a kicker and a bulkhead. The dishwasher panel needs a handle you can pull hard on, so we fit the same bar as the drawers. The rangehood goes inside a purpose-made upper with the duct run through the cabinet to the outside, and we size the cabinet so the filters still come out for cleaning.
The half-way house: a fridge housing
If you already own a good fridge, or the budget will not stretch to a panel-ready model, we build a fridge housing: a full-height cabinet around it with matching side panels and a top, so it sits in a recess rather than against a wall. It is not invisible, but it is finished, and it is a fraction of the price of a new integrated unit.
Where it earns its money
Integration is worth most in an open-plan room and in a small kitchen, where a stainless fridge would dominate. It is worth least in a large kitchen with a separate scullery, where the appliances can simply live out of sight. If you are building a scullery, spend the integration money there instead.
What it costs
Integrating appliances adds between $1,200 and $6,000 to the cabinetry, depending on how many appliances and whether the fridge is a full column. That is our side only; a panel-ready fridge typically costs more than a freestanding one of the same size, and we will tell you by how much before you commit.
