Homestead’s lead time is now 12 weeks. That’s meaningful progress, and it’s the direct result of work our team has been putting in for months.
How we got here
In our last update we talked about hiring and training. That effort is paying off. As new team members have come through training and moved into production, we’ve been able to add capacity — and capacity is what brings lead times down.
Increasing production this quickly, while holding the quality and consistency we expect of ourselves, takes real coordination across the entire company. Our team has stepped up, and we’re grateful for them and for the culture they’ve built here.
What hasn’t changed
Every Homestead cabinet is still built to order. We don’t work from preset sizes — each piece is made to the specifications of the project it’s going into, in the European frameless style known here as full-access, full-overlay.
Shorter lead times don’t come from cutting corners on any of that. They come from having more trained hands in the shop.
How long do custom cabinets take?
It depends a great deal on what “custom” means for a given manufacturer. Stock cabinetry ships from existing inventory. Semi-custom is assembled from a fixed catalog of sizes and finishes. Fully custom cabinetry — where every box, door and finish is built to a specific project’s drawings — takes longer, because nothing gets made until the project is final.
At Homestead, fully custom cabinetry currently runs 11 weeks.
What this means for planning
For designers and builders, lead time is a scheduling input more than a number. An 11-week window changes what you can commit to a client and how early you need final drawings in hand. If you’ve been building schedules around a longer lead time, the projects you’re specifying right now are worth a second look.
Your Homestead dealer can confirm current timing for a specific project.
There’s still work to do
We’re not finished. We’re continuing to push lead times down, and we’ll keep sharing progress as we make it.
