What counts as architectural millwork on a Toronto job
On a typical commercial set, the millwork scope shows up across the architectural drawings: base and upper cabinets in staff rooms and kitchens, reception and transaction counters, wall paneling and feature walls in lobbies, closet and storage fit-outs, washroom vanities, and specialty items like display niches and bench seating. Each line on the elevation has to be found, measured, and priced — usually from a 20 to 90 page drawing set where the millwork is scattered across plans, elevations, and detail sheets.
How shops price it
Most GTA shops build the estimate the same way: cabinets by the linear foot at a shop rate that reflects the construction (melamine, veneer, or laminate), sheet goods and solid surface by the sheet or square foot, hardware per piece, and installation by the hour. The rate card is the shop's own — what differs between shops is overhead, shop rate, and how aggressively they mark up. What doesn't differ is the work of reading the drawings: that's the bottleneck, and it's measured in hours or days per bid.
- Casework — linear-foot pricing by construction type and finish
- Paneling and feature walls — square-foot pricing plus substrate and trim
- Countertops — stone, quartz, and solid surface as separate supply lines
- Hardware — hinges, slides, pulls, and specialty hardware per piece
- Installation — crew hours by scope, separate from shop labour
Where estimates go wrong
The two classic failure modes are missed scope and double-counted scope. A cabinet run that appears on the plan, the elevation, and a detail sheet gets counted twice — or a room on page 40 never gets read at all. On a school or clinic with dozens of similar rooms, both happen at once. Consistency matters as much as speed: the same drawing should produce the same takeoff every time, which is why disciplined shops work from a fixed rate card and a fixed counting method instead of re-judging every line.
Doing it in minutes instead of days
CASEWRX PRO reads the architectural drawing set directly: upload the PDF, and it isolates the millwork pages, lists every cabinet and counter it finds, and prices each line from your own rate card — your linear-foot rates, your hardware prices, your install hours. Lines that look like duplicates are flagged instead of silently double-counted, and anything the scan isn't sure about is marked for review rather than guessed. You review the takeoff, adjust quantities, and export a quote — the same job that used to take a day of manual takeoff.
Every new shop starts with 3 free quotes to use within 14 days — no card required.