A cabinet maker's quote needs seven blocks of lines: carcasses, doors and drawer fronts, hardware, worktops, delivery, fitting and written exclusions. AI can draft them from a kitchen drawing if you make it list every unit first, then price those units only from your own rate sheet. You check each count before the quote goes out.
The drawing is the weak link. Image models give approximate counts and can shrink an image before reading it, so a blurred 1,000 comes back as 1,100 and a pair of larder doors as one. AI also knows nothing about your rates, supplier discounts or lead times. Use it for structure and arithmetic, and keep every price your own.
A common source of argument over a cabinet quote is a missing line rather than a wrong one: the third end panel, the scribing, the old kitchen's removal, the second visit to template the worktop. A quote that names each one is easier to defend and easier for a client to compare with another maker's.
Take a mid-range job: fourteen units (eight base, five wall and a tall larder), a laminate worktop, painted shaker doors and soft-close hardware. The rates and sizes are invented for illustration, and your own rate sheet and construction standard replace them.
The seven blocks of a cabinet quote, and the line each one forgets
| Block | Lines it should carry | The line most often forgotten |
|---|---|---|
| Carcasses | Board thickness and finish, edging, backs, shelves, plinth, end panels, fillers | Exposed end panels and fillers, which never show up in a unit count |
| Doors and drawer fronts | Style, material, finish and colour, sizes by band, drawer fronts, tall or glazed doors | The colour match between the doors and the end panels |
| Hardware | Hinges, drawer boxes or runners, handles, lift-ups, bin systems, shelf pegs, plinth legs, lighting drivers | Hinge count on tall doors, and the drilling for handles |
| Worktops | Material, thickness, length, edge, joints, cut-outs, upstands | The templating visit and when it happens |
| Delivery | Vehicle, access, unloading, storage on site | Stairs, no lift, or a second delivery for the worktop |
| Fitting | Days by crew size, worktop fitting, appliance housings, scribing, handles, cleaning, waste | Scribing to uneven walls and removing the old kitchen |
| Exclusions and terms | Services, making good, decoration, appliances, flooring; validity, deposit, stages, lead time | Who connects the appliances, which clients assume is you |
Read down the right-hand column and you have the test every AI draft must pass. If the draft has no line for one of those items, either the drawing didn't show it or the AI skipped it, and in both cases you want to find out before the client does.
Grouping matters more than order. Make it easy for a client to compare quotes block by block: doors and finish first, because that is what they see, then the price per unit, then fitting. Keeping the same seven blocks on every quote also lets you compare your own jobs from one month to the next.
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Buy nowFeeding the drawing in, and what the AI misreads
Crop before you upload. Send the plan and each wall elevation as its own image, cropped tight, with the dimension text big enough to read at a glance. OpenAI's image guide says images may be resized before analysis and advises enlarging text within the image. Anthropic's vision guide warns that low-quality, rotated or very small images lead to mistakes and that counts of objects are approximate. In practice that means one elevation per image, upright, never a photo of a screen taken at an angle.
The limits are generous for this job. On claude.ai you can attach 20 images to a message at up to 10 MB each, and Claude analyses the visuals in PDFs of up to 100 pages. ChatGPT takes images up to 20 MB each and can read the images inside a PDF. Put the drawings in the chat itself: ChatGPT's help page says images embedded in project files may not be read automatically, and Claude's Project files are text-extracted apart from multimodal PDFs. Keep the Project for text, meaning your rates, rules and template.
Start with a prompt that forces a unit schedule and bans guessing:
You are helping a cabinet maker price a kitchen. I've attached the plan and one image per wall elevation.
1. List every cabinet unit as a table: quantity (group identical units), type (base, wall, tall, corner, appliance housing), width x height x depth in mm exactly as printed on the drawing, number of doors, number of drawers.
2. Use only dimensions that are printed. If a figure is blurred, missing or estimated, write UNCLEAR in that cell and name the figure.
3. Then list loose items separately: exposed end panels, filler strips, plinth length, cornice or pelmet, and the appliances and worktop runs the drawing shows.
4. Finish with the questions you need answered before anything is priced: door style and finish, handles, worktop material, who supplies the appliances.
Do not give prices. Do not assume anything the drawing doesn't show.A typical reply, grouped by type, looks like this (illustrative):
| Qty | Type | W × H × D (mm) | Doors | Drawers |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | Base, single door | 600 × 720 × 560 | 1 | 0 |
| 2 | Base, drawer pack | 600 × 720 × 560 | 0 | 3 |
| 2 | Base, double door | 800 × 720 × 560 | 2 | 0 |
| 1 | Sink base | 1,100 × 720 × 560 | 2 | 0 |
| 3 | Wall, double door | 800 × 720 × 300 | 2 | 0 |
| 2 | Wall, single door | 400 × 720 × 300 | 1 | 0 |
| 1 | Tall larder | 600 × 2,150 × 560 | 1 | 0 |
Under the table the AI lists two end panels, three fillers, about 6 m of plinth and no cornice, then asks about door style, handles, worktop material and appliances. It reads well, and it contains three errors that are typical of the real thing.
- The sink base is 1,000 mm on the drawing. The AI read 1,100 from a blurred figure and did not flag it, so the carcass rate and the worktop cut-out position would both have been wrong.
- The larder has an upper and a lower door, so the door count is 2, not 1. That changes the hinge count and the door price.
- The drawing shows three exposed ends, not two, because the run finishes beside the window. The AI counted the lines on the plan and missed the one on the elevation.
Catch all three the same way. Add the printed widths along each run and compare the total with the wall length on the plan, then count door and drawer symbols yourself on a printout with a highlighter. It takes five minutes and it protects every line that follows. An UNCLEAR flag helps, but a model can be confidently wrong, so the absence of a flag proves nothing.
Carcass lines: a rate per unit, cross-checked by sheets
Carcass pricing works two ways, and a good draft shows both. The first is a rate per carcass by size from your sheet, which is quick and matches how you think about the job. The second is a sheet count from panel area, which tells you whether the first is sane.
Here is the sheet sum for the fourteen units. With 18 mm board, 100 mm top rails and one shelf in each door unit, the carcasses plus three exposed end panels come to about 22.2 m² of panel. An 8 x 4 ft sheet (2,440 × 1,220 mm) is 2.977 m², so the job needs 7.5 sheets. Add 15% for cutting waste and you order nine. Back panels in 3 mm board and edging tape are separate lines, because they are bought differently.
Ask the AI to show that sum panel by panel and to state the construction standard it assumed. Left alone it will quietly choose its own, perhaps 16 mm sides, 150 mm rails and no shelves, and the total moves by a sheet or two. If your cutting software nests the sheets, its count beats this sum; keep the AI's figure as a cross-check and query any gap bigger than about 10%.
Three kinds of line sit outside the unit schedule and are counted from the drawing instead. End panels are exposed sides that need a finish matching the doors. Fillers close the gap between a run and a wall, or between a unit and an appliance, and the AI should list each with its width. Plinth is the base run less appliance gaps, 6.2 m on this job. Give each its own line on the quote, because they are the ones clients and fitters ask about at the end.
The checks that matter at the saw, meaning box sizes, reveals and hardware clearances, are a separate routine. They are set out in the tutorial on cabinet shop drawings with AI, and they only start once the client has accepted a quote like this one.
Doors and hardware: counts from the schedule, rules from the supplier
Doors are priced by size band with the finish included. In the worked quote a standard door up to 720 mm high is $96, a larder door $150 and a drawer front $88. The counts come straight from the schedule: 9 standard doors on the base units (three singles, two pairs and the sink base's pair), 8 on the wall units (three pairs and two singles), 2 larder doors and 6 drawer fronts.
Hinge numbers depend on door height, width and weight, and the hinge maker publishes a chart for it. Put yours in the Project. The chart used here is an example only: two hinges up to 900 mm high, three from 901 to 1,600 mm and four above that. With it the AI should count 34 hinges for the 17 standard doors and 5 for the larder (three on the 1,300 mm lower door, two on the 850 mm upper one), which makes 39.
The rule that makes the pricing step safe is no rate, no price:
Price the attached unit schedule using only the rate sheet in this project (rates.csv). For every line give: code, description, quantity, unit, rate, amount.
If an item has no matching code, write NO RATE in the rate column and leave the amount blank. Never estimate a rate.
Use hinge-chart.txt for hinge counts and show the count per door type.
Count handles as doors plus drawer fronts unless the schedule says push-to-open.
End with a list of every NO RATE line and every assumption you made.The hardware block of a reply might look like this (illustrative):
| Code | Description | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| H-SC | Soft-close hinge | 39 | $5.40 | $210.60 |
| DB-500 | Drawer box set, 500 mm | 6 | $62.00 | $372.00 |
| HND | Handle, client's choice (allowance) | 19 | $7.50 | $142.50 |
| FIX | Fixings and fittings allowance | 1 | $95.00 | $95.00 |
| LED | Under-cabinet lighting driver | 1 | NO RATE | |
| CRN | Cornice, 3.4 m | 3.4 | NO RATE |
The two NO RATE lines are the system working. The client's notes mentioned lighting and a cornice, you hold no rates for either, and the AI said so instead of inventing figures. Add rates, or move both onto the exclusions list.
The handle line holds a quieter error. Nineteen handles were priced, one per door, and the six drawer fronts were forgotten. Twenty-five are needed, which adds $45 to the block. It surfaced only because the handle count was reconciled against doors plus drawer fronts, which is why that rule sits in the prompt.
Worktops: price what you can, mark the rest provisional
Worktops are the block most likely to change after the quote, because the final length, cut-outs and joints depend on a template taken once the units are in. The honest way to quote them is with provisional lines: price what the drawing supports and say plainly what can move.
On the worked job that means 5.8 linear metres of 38 mm laminate at $124 a metre ($719.20), a sink cut-out and a hob cut-out at $48 each, one mitred joint at $65 and one templating visit at $85. The block comes to $965.20. Ask the AI to write the wording, then read it the way the client will.
A lazy draft says: "Worktops supplied and fitted: $965.20." A better one says:
Worktop (provisional): 5.8 linear metres of 38 mm laminate at $124 per metre, with sink and hob cut-outs and one mitred joint. Length, cut-outs and joints are confirmed at templating, and the price moves by the metre if the length changes.
The second version costs the client nothing extra and removes the argument before it starts. It also tells you which lines to revisit after the templating visit, which is a step the AI cannot do for you.
Delivery and fitting: days of labour, checked against units per day
Fitting is where percentage rules of thumb fail, because a plain run of base units and a wall with a tall larder, a window and two appliance gaps are very different days. Price it in days and let the AI do the arithmetic from numbers you supply.
From the last jobs in your diary, suppose a two-person team sets about seven units a day on a plain run, and a worktop with cut-outs, handles and final adjustments takes another day. Fourteen units is two days, plus the worktop day, so three days at $720 for the pair: $2,160. Removing the old kitchen is a separate $240 line. Delivery is one trip at $160, and it needs three facts the AI cannot see: the distance, whether there is a lift or only stairs, and whether the worktop arrives separately.
The check is units per day across the whole job. Fourteen units over three days is 4.7. If your history says a team fits five or six a day all in, the draft is sound; if it says eight, the draft is too generous. Take that history from real diary entries rather than memory, as the tutorial on pricing carpentry against job history describes. When fitting is the main part of the job, the kitchen installation quote template goes deeper on scope and exclusions.
The finished quote: fourteen units, line by line
Put the pieces together and the draft the client receives looks like this. Rates are selling rates, with your mark-up already in them, and every amount is quantity times rate.
| Block | Line | Qty | Rate | Amount |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carcasses | Base carcass, 600 mm | 5 | $105.00 | $525.00 |
| Carcasses | Base carcass, 800 mm | 2 | $128.00 | $256.00 |
| Carcasses | Sink base carcass, 1,000 mm | 1 | $146.00 | $146.00 |
| Carcasses | Wall carcass, 800 mm | 3 | $92.00 | $276.00 |
| Carcasses | Wall carcass, 400 mm | 2 | $58.00 | $116.00 |
| Carcasses | Tall larder carcass | 1 | $312.00 | $312.00 |
| Panels | End panels, finished to match doors | 3 | $48.00 | $144.00 |
| Panels | Filler strips | 3 | $22.00 | $66.00 |
| Panels | Plinth, per metre | 6.2 | $14.00 | $86.80 |
| Doors | Standard doors, painted, up to 720 mm | 17 | $96.00 | $1,632.00 |
| Doors | Larder doors, painted | 2 | $150.00 | $300.00 |
| Doors | Drawer fronts, painted | 6 | $88.00 | $528.00 |
| Hardware | Soft-close hinges | 39 | $5.40 | $210.60 |
| Hardware | Drawer box sets | 6 | $62.00 | $372.00 |
| Hardware | Handles (allowance) | 25 | $7.50 | $187.50 |
| Hardware | Fixings and fittings allowance | 1 | $95.00 | $95.00 |
| Worktops | Laminate, 38 mm, per metre (provisional) | 5.8 | $124.00 | $719.20 |
| Worktops | Sink and hob cut-outs | 2 | $48.00 | $96.00 |
| Worktops | Mitred joint | 1 | $65.00 | $65.00 |
| Worktops | Templating visit | 1 | $85.00 | $85.00 |
| Delivery | One delivery to site | 1 | $160.00 | $160.00 |
| Fitting | Two fitters, per day | 3 | $720.00 | $2,160.00 |
| Fitting | Remove and dispose of existing kitchen | 1 | $240.00 | $240.00 |
The block totals are carcasses $1,631.00, panels $296.80, doors $2,460.00, hardware $865.10, worktops $965.20, delivery $160.00 and fitting $2,400.00, which gives $8,778.10 before any tax. A sensible payment schedule on that figure is 30% on order ($2,633.43), 40% on delivery ($3,511.24) and 30% on completion ($2,633.43).
Now the sanity check. Carcasses, panels, doors and hardware come to $5,252.90, or about $375 a unit across fourteen units. If your last five kitchens ran $340 to $410 a unit on a similar specification, this draft is in range. If the AI had produced $290 or $520, you would hunt for the line that explains the gap before anything was sent.
Exclusions written so a client cannot misread them
The exclusions block is where a quote protects you most, and where AI helps most with wording. Give it your rough notes and ask for plain sentences. A filled-in version for the worked job might read:
- Appliances are supplied by the client. We fit the housings and fascias; connecting water, gas and electrics is by others.
- Making good to walls and floors, tiling, decoration and flooring are not included.
- Walls are assumed to be within 5 mm of true over 2 m. Scribing of up to 15 mm is included, and anything beyond that is quoted as an extra once we have agreed it with you on site.
- Removal of the existing kitchen is included in the fitting block; disconnecting its services is not.
- The worktop is provisional until templating, as shown on its lines.
- Prices are held for 30 days. Lead time is six to seven weeks from a signed order and deposit, and a delivery date is confirmed once the door colour is approved in writing.
A second prompt helps here: ask the AI to read the exclusions as an unhappy client and list every misunderstanding it can find. It will usually catch two or three, such as "others" meaning nobody in particular, or "making good" with no boundary. That is a drafting aid, not legal cover. Deposits, cancellation, price changes and what happens to a made-to-order kitchen if the client withdraws are legal questions, so have your standard terms checked once by a solicitor and reuse them.
Five checks before the quote leaves your inbox
- Reconcile the counts. Doors, drawer fronts, hinges and handles must tally with the schedule: hinges from the chart, handles equal to doors plus drawer fronts.
- Re-add the quote yourself. Paste the lines into a spreadsheet and sum them. Language models slip on arithmetic even when the layout looks perfect, and a transposed digit costs real money.
- Clear every NO RATE. Each becomes a priced line, an allowance labelled as one, or an exclusion.
- Compare price per unit with your last five jobs. Do it for the cabinet blocks and for fitting days separately, so one cannot hide the other.
- Read the exclusions as the client. Mark every assumption the client has not yet seen in writing, and raise the contentious ones as questions before they sign.
None of those checks needs AI, which is the point. The draft gets you to a complete first version quickly, and the checks make it yours.
The same blocks on a wardrobe run quoted from a phone sketch
A homeowner sends a photo of a pencil sketch: a wall-to-wall wardrobe, 3.6 m wide, floor to ceiling, with sliding doors. The blocks still apply, but two change shape. Worktops disappear and an internals block replaces them, covering hanging rails, shelves, drawers and a shoe rack, each with a count. Fitting leans on scribing to the ceiling and side walls, which is why the site measure has to come first.
Ask the AI to turn the sketch into questions rather than a price: ceiling height at both ends and the middle, whether the floor is level, where sockets and radiator pipes sit, which track the sliding doors need, what happens at the skirting. Quote once those are answered, using the bay as the unit (three bays of 1.2 m) and the same exclusions, with scribing capped at a limit you state. For bespoke items and finishes beyond a standard run, the joinery quotation template covers the extra lines.
A Project that remembers your rates, plus a template to start from
Set up one Project and keep five text files in it: the rate sheet as a CSV with a code, description, unit and rate on every row; your hinge chart; your construction standard (board thickness, rail depth, shelf rules); your standard exclusions and terms; and a blank copy of the quote template below. OpenAI's limit is five project files on Free, 25 for Go or Plus and 40 for Pro or Business, so five fits every ChatGPT plan, and Claude's Free plan allows up to five projects.
Open each job as a new chat in the Project, attach the drawing in the chat, and run the two prompts above in order. If your cabinet design software already exports a unit list, feed the AI that instead of the drawing; the tutorial on cabinet design software and what AI adds covers what to expect. The template the last step fills in looks like this:
QUOTE [number] - [client first name] - [site address line]
Date: [date] Valid until: [date, 30 days]
Specification: [carcass board and finish], [door style and colour], [handle], [worktop]
1. CARCASSES, PANELS lines with qty, rate, amount, block total
2. DOORS AND DRAWER FRONTS
3. HARDWARE
4. WORKTOPS mark provisional lines
5. DELIVERY
6. FITTING days x crew
7. EXCLUSIONS AND ASSUMPTIONS list
TOTAL before any tax
STAGES: [30%] on order, [40%] on delivery, [30%] on completion
LEAD TIME: [weeks] from signed order, deposit and approved door colour
ACCEPTANCE: reply "accepted" or sign belowKeep the template and the prompts in the Project for a month, then look at which lines you keep correcting by hand. Each repeated correction belongs in the rate sheet or the rules file, and after a few jobs the AI step needs far less supervision than the first one.
Questions cabinet makers ask about AI-drafted quotes
Should hardware be itemised or folded into the unit price?
Itemise it when the job is bespoke or the client may change handles, drawer systems or lighting, because those choices move the price. Fold it into the unit rate on repeat ranges where you quote the same specification every time. Whichever you choose, keep the counts in your own working so you can explain a change in minutes.
Can AI price a kitchen without my rate sheet?
It can produce a number, but not one you should send. Without your rates it falls back on averages of whatever it has read, which know nothing about your supplier discounts, overheads or margin. Give it the rate sheet and a rule that any item without a code is flagged NO RATE instead of guessed.
How long should a cabinet quote stay valid?
Match it to how long your supplier holds list prices, because board, hardware and worktop costs can move between lists. Thirty days is common, but the right number is whatever protects your margin. Print the expiry date on the quote, say what happens after it, and ask a solicitor to check your standard terms on deposits and price changes.
What if the client only sends a phone photo of a sketch?
Use it to start the conversation, not to price. Ask the AI to list what it can't read and which questions to put to the client, then arrange a site measure. Quote after the measure, with the drawing attached, so every count on the quote comes from dimensions that someone has checked.
Further reads
- Best AI for Cabinet Making: Supplier Orders, Lead Times and Chasers — Once the quote is accepted, turn the schedule into supplier orders and chasers.
- Cabinet Maker AI: Answer Showroom Enquiries and Book Site Measures — Answer showroom enquiries and book the site measure that makes this quote accurate.
- How Does AI Help in Cabinet Making? Six Workshop Jobs Explained — See where quoting sits among the other workshop jobs AI can take on.
- Cabinet Shop Software: Quotes, Cut Lists and Orders, and What AI Adds — Compare shop software that already links quotes to cut lists and orders.
- Joinery AI: Build a Cutting List and Material Order From a Drawing — Take the accepted unit schedule on to a cutting list and board order.
- Renovation Quote Template: Room-by-Room Scope Written With AI — Quote the wider room when the kitchen is part of a renovation.
- Can ChatGPT Write a Builder's Quote? A Worked Example — See the same drafting method applied to a builder's whole-job quote.
- Best AI App for Carpenters: Measuring, Quoting and Invoicing Compared — One wardrobe job, run through measuring, cut-list, quoting and invoicing apps, with the right answers to check and vendor-page prices.
- Countertop Fabricator Software: Templating, Slabs and Where AI Helps — A vendor question list for templating, slab layout, quotes and cut files, with a scorecard, a yield sum and where ChatGPT helps with quote wording.
- How to Use AI in Carpentry: Cut Lists, Takeoffs and Client Quotes — A fitted wardrobe worked end to end: AI cut list with formulas, seven hand checks, wastage decision, order list and quote wording a client can hold you to.
- Can AI Draw Joinery Shop Drawings? What It Drafts and What You Check — What AI can draft for joinery shop drawings (cut lists, elevations, schedules) and which dimensions, fixings and tolerances you must check by hand.
- How Long Is a Quote Valid For? Set Expiry Rules for Trades With AI — Validity periods by job type, price-rise wording and a sample quote footer, with AI prompts to draft and chase before expiry.
- AI Tools and AI Development: The Complete 2026 Guide — the AI hub, including every tutorial in the AI-for-business series.
Sources: OpenAI help pages on file uploads and on Projects in ChatGPT, and OpenAI's image input guide; Anthropic's vision documentation and its help article on uploading files. Prices and rates in the worked quote are illustrative.