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CGI Construction in San Francisco, CA | Millwright Builders
We’re Millwright Builders, and we provide independent CGI cabinet and vanity service across San Francisco. The short answer: if you need CGI kitchen cabinets or bath vanities installed, refaced, repaired, or replaced, we handle the full scope under one license. What makes our CGI work different in San Francisco is that we understand how seismic retrofits, fog-belt moisture, and pre-1950s framing affect every cabinet we touch. Call (866) 925-0334 for a free estimate.
Why San Francisco Residents Choose Us for CGI Service
CGI cabinets are honest products. The Shaker lines are built clean, the Premier Series holds up to daily use, and the all-wood bath vanities are a smart choice for a city where cheap particleboard swells within two fog seasons. We’ve worked with CGI sales & service products long enough to know which models handle moisture well and which ones need extra ventilation planning in a Sunset District bathroom with no operable window.
Noel Castañeda, our owner, grew up in Sunshine Gardens in South San Francisco and trained at Skyline College in San Bruno. He spent close to two decades doing residential work across the Peninsula before founding Millwright Builders. That background matters because San Francisco kitchens rarely sit on flat, square, dry walls. They sit in Edwardian rowhouses that have settled, in hillside homes that shift, and in apartments where a soft-story retrofit is either done, overdue, or being planned. We install CGI cabinets with those realities in mind, not around them.
We’re an independent CGI service provider. We’re not manufacturer-affiliated or authorized by CGI. What that means for you is simple: we recommend the right product for your home, not the product a corporate program tells us to push. When a repair will extend the life of your existing cabinets, we say so. When replacement is the better call, we show you the numbers and let you decide.
Styles & brands we work with
Common CGI Construction Problems We Solve in San Francisco
- Cabinet box delamination in under-ventilated kitchens. San Francisco’s fog and cool, wet winters keep indoor humidity higher than most people realize, especially in older homes without range hoods that actually vent outside. We regularly see CGI cabinet boxes peeling at the seams in Noe Valley and Glen Park kitchens where cooking steam has nowhere to go. The fix isn’t just swapping boxes, it’s addressing the ventilation so the replacement doesn’t fail the same way.
- Drawer glide failure in pre-1950s retrofits. Many Edwardian and Victorian kitchens in San Francisco had cabinets retrofitted decades ago, often with undermount glides that were never rated for what homeowners actually store. Overloaded pots, pans, and small appliances wear out the glides, and the drawers start binding or dropping. We replace them with full-extension glides and adjust the face frames so everything opens smooth.
- Door hinge sagging from seismic movement and settling. Small ground movements add up. Houses on San Francisco’s hillsides settle unevenly, and even minor earthquake activity loosens hinge screws and throws door alignment off over time. We see CGI cabinet doors that stick or rub because the frame has shifted by a sixteenth of an inch. The repair is straightforward, but ignoring it leads to stripped screw holes and cracked hinge plates.
- Finish peeling on bath vanities in coastal neighborhoods. The Sunset, the Richmond, the Marina, anywhere salt air and persistent damp get into a bathroom, a lower-grade finish will fail. We’ve refinished and replaced CGI bath vanities where the factory finish looked fine for two years and then started lifting at the base. Prep work and sealing matter more than the color you pick.
- Improper seismic anchoring on newly installed cabinets. This is the one we see most after another contractor’s work. Cabinets in San Francisco should be anchored to wall framing, not just drywall, and tall pantry units need positive connections at top and bottom. We’ve walked into kitchens where a full upper cabinet run was held up by drywall anchors alone. That’s not a cosmetic issue, it’s a safety problem waiting for the next shaker.
CGI Service in San Francisco: What Local Conditions Mean for Your Equipment
Here’s what makes San Francisco genuinely different from Oakland or Daly City for CGI work. The city’s Soft Story Ordinance mandates seismic retrofits for thousands of wood-frame apartment buildings, most of them the classic three-story structures with parking at ground level. These retrofits typically require reinforcing the garage-level walls with plywood shear panels, steel moment frames, or both. That structural work often runs directly through or alongside kitchens and baths on upper floors. We’ve worked on buildings in the Richmond and Sunset where retrofit crews opened walls behind CGI kitchen cabinets and found rotted studs, or where cabinet runs had to come out entirely so shear walls could be installed. The result is a niche demand in San Francisco that doesn’t exist in Millbrae or Brisbane: cabinet refacing and reinstallation coordinated with seismic strengthening. You can’t just pop cabinets off the wall and put them back. The wall behind them changes, the attachment points move, and the cabinetry has to be re-anchored to the new framing. That’s the work we do. It requires knowing both the cabinet product and the structural logic behind the retrofit, and it’s why a cabinet-only specialist often calls in a general contractor halfway through the job.
CGI Models & Products We Service in San Francisco
We install and service the full CGI line we encounter in San Francisco homes: the CGI Ready-to-Assemble (RTA) Shaker cabinets, the CGI All-Wood Bath Vanity Collection, the CGI Premier Series Kitchen Cabinets, and the CGI Semi-Custom Cabinet Line. RTA Shaker shows up in a lot of Presidio Heights and Miraloma Park rental refreshes, Premier Series in single-family remodels, and the all-wood vanities in bath projects where moisture resistance matters most.
When a part fails, we source genuine CGI replacement components when they’re available. That keeps the fit and finish consistent. When a line has been discontinued or a part is backordered, we use aftermarket components that meet or exceed the OEM spec. We don’t guess at hardware. We measure, match, and test before we call the job done. For faster turnaround in San Francisco, we keep standard CGI hinge plates, glides, and cabinet-to-wall anchoring hardware on hand so a common repair doesn’t wait on a freight shipment.
See the difference
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AfterCGI Service Pricing in San Francisco
Pricing depends on cabinet count, door and drawer hardware, finish work, and whether we’re dealing with level floors and square walls or a 1912 row house that’s shifted three-quarters of an inch over a century. Here’s what we quote in the South San Francisco market, including San Francisco proper:
| Service | Price Range |
|---|---|
| Cabinet Installation | $4,720 – $15,340 |
| Vanity Installation | $945 – $3,540 |
| Kitchen Remodel | $16,520 – $53,100 |
Every estimate is line-itemed and free. We walk the space, check the framing behind the walls where we can, measure moisture levels in bathrooms and coastal-facing rooms, and give you a written number. Call (866) 925-0334 to schedule yours.
Serving San Francisco, CA — Our Local Coverage Area
We’re based in the San Francisco area and know this community well. Use the map below to see our service coverage — if you’re nearby, we can almost certainly help.
FAQs – CGI Construction in San Francisco
In most cases, cabinet and vanity installation alone does not require a permit in San Francisco, but structural changes behind the cabinets, electrical or plumbing relocation, or work tied to a soft-story retrofit often does. We’ll tell you exactly what your project triggers before we start. Call (866) 925-0334 and we’ll walk the scope with you.
Start with the right vanity line, the all-wood bath collection holds up better than composite in high-moisture bathrooms. Then make sure your bathroom has working ventilation, either a properly vented exhaust fan or a dehumidifier for windowless spaces. We also seal the vanity base and toe kick during installation, which most crews skip. Want us to assess your bathroom? The estimate is free.
A standard kitchen cabinet installation takes three to five working days once materials are on site. If we’re refacing existing boxes, add a day for prep and finish work. If the job involves seismic retrofit coordination or moving plumbing and electrical, the timeline extends based on the structural scope, not the cabinet work itself. Call (866) 925-0334 for a project-specific schedule.
CGI cabinets are not engineered as structural elements, so they don’t carry a seismic rating on their own. What matters is how they’re anchored. We install to shear-wall and anchoring standards that comply with San Francisco building code, including positive connections to framing and earthquake-resistant latches where homeowners want them. The product is fine; the installation is what keeps it on the wall.
Yes, if the line is still in production we can order matching doors and cabinet boxes through CGI sales & service channels we’ve used for years. If the line has been discontinued, we’ll match the door profile and finish as closely as the aftermarket allows and tell you honestly where the match won’t be perfect. Call (866) 925-0334 and we’ll identify what you have.
Service Areas Near San Francisco
We serve all of San Francisco and the surrounding Peninsula. That includes South San Francisco, San Bruno, Brisbane, Colma, Millbrae, and Visitacion Valley. We also handle CGI work in Highlands-Baywood Park and Montara for homeowners along the coast.
Book Your CGI Service in San Francisco Today
We work across San Francisco’s ZIP codes, 94127, 94128, 94129, 94130, and the rest of the city. If you’re planning a kitchen refresh, a vanity install, or need CGI cabinets tied into a seismic retrofit, call (866) 925-0334. Estimates are free, and we’ll tell you straight whether repair or replacement is the better spend.
Written by Noel Castañeda, Owner at Millwright Builders, serving San Francisco and the Peninsula.