The Pannello process: from consultation to installation in 3 to 5 weeks

The most common thing DC clients tell us when a project finishes is that they wish they had known what the process looked like before it started. Not because the process is complicated — it is not — but because knowing the sequence reduces the number of decisions that feel like surprises.

This is what the Pannello process looks like from the first conversation to the last installed panel.

The consultation

The first conversation is in our Georgetown showroom on Wisconsin Avenue. It is 90 minutes. We do not issue a quote at this meeting.

What happens at a consultation: you walk the showroom with one of our designers and describe the room — its dimensions, its constraints, what is currently there, and what you want to accomplish. We show you finish samples, hardware in motion, counter material slabs, and door profiles. You handle the physical materials rather than selecting from a PDF.

The designer asks questions about how you use the space. In a kitchen consultation, the questions are about cooking habits, appliance preferences, whether you want panel-ready integration, how many people use the kitchen simultaneously, and what the adjacent rooms look like. In a closet consultation, the questions are about wardrobe volume, hanging vs. folded proportion, whether a center island is needed, and what the lighting situation is.

At the end of the consultation, we know whether the project is within the Pannello scope and whether we are a good fit. We schedule a field measure.

The field measure

The field measure is a site visit by the same designer who ran the consultation, accompanied by a measurer. In a Georgetown rowhouse kitchen, this visit takes 90 minutes to two hours. In a McLean master closet, it takes 45 minutes.

We document every dimension — not the nominal room size, but the actual dimensions: the wall-to-wall measurement at floor, mid-height, and ceiling (because walls are not always plumb), the window and door reveal dimensions, the plumbing rough-in locations, the electrical outlet positions, the ceiling height at multiple points, and any structural protrusions or irregularities that affect cabinet sizing.

In older DC properties, the field measure typically reveals things the owner did not know were there — a chimney chase inside a wall, a beam that drops 4 inches at one end of the kitchen, a plumbing stack that runs where the pantry column needs to go. All of these are resolved in the design phase. None of them are surprises at installation.

Design and shop drawings

After the field measure, the designer produces elevation drawings — wall-by-wall drawings of the room as it will look finished, drawn to the actual measured dimensions. These are not rendered perspectives; they are technical drawings that show every cabinet, every reveal, every dimension, and every material call.

You review the elevations with the designer in a second meeting, either in the showroom or remotely. Changes at this stage — moving a cabinet, adjusting an island dimension, adding a pull-out section, changing a finish — cost nothing and take a day. Changes after the shop drawings are issued to the fabrication team require a change order.

Shop drawings are the fabrication documents. They are more detailed than the elevation drawings and include every panel dimension, every hinge location, every hardware specification, and every edge profile. The shop drawings are what the fabrication team builds from, and they are checked against the field measure notes before fabrication begins.

Fabrication

Fabrication takes 3 to 5 weeks from the point at which shop drawings are approved and materials are confirmed in stock. This is the Pannello lead time — and it is the number that distinguishes Pannello from both import cabinetry (where 12–16 weeks is standard for container-shipped product) and big-box custom programs (where 8–12 weeks is common even for a partial kitchen).

The fabrication is done locally. The 18mm carcass material is cut, edged, and assembled in our shop. The finish panels — lacquer, veneer, laminate — are fabricated to the approved drawings. Hardware (Blum, Salice, Hawa depending on the application) is installed in the shop, not on site. Every door is hung and adjusted before the cabinets leave the shop.

The local fabrication schedule is why field conditions discovered during installation are resolvable without a 6-week delay. If a dimension is off, a panel can be recut in 24–48 hours. That is not possible with imported cabinetry.

Installation

Installation is done by Pannello’s in-house crew — the same people who understand the shop drawings, not a subcontracted install team reading documents they did not produce.

A typical Georgetown rowhouse kitchen installs in 4–6 days. A McLean great-room kitchen with a butler pantry installs in 6–8 days. A master walk-in closet installs in 2–3 days.

Day one of installation is the base cabinet run. Day two is the upper cabinets and pantry columns. Day three is hardware adjustment, door alignment, and punch list items. Counter installation is coordinated separately — the stone fabricator templates after the base cabinets are set, cuts the counter, and installs it within a few days of cabinet installation.

The designer walks the finished installation with the client before the project is closed. Punch list items — a drawer slide that needs a half-turn adjustment, a door that needs 2mm of clearance correction — are handled at this walkthrough.

The total timeline

From consultation to finished installation, a typical Pannello kitchen project runs 8–10 weeks: consultation and field measure in week one, design review and shop drawing approval in weeks two and three, fabrication in weeks four through seven, installation in week eight or nine, counter installation and punch list in week ten.

For clients who need to plan around a DC renovation schedule — coordinating cabinetry with plumbing rough-in, flooring, and painting — the 3 to 5 week fabrication window is the constraint to plan around. Everything before and after it is shorter. The fabrication window is fixed; everything else can move around it. To see our custom cabinet work in the Georgetown showroom and get answers to common scheduling questions before your first meeting, visit the FAQ or book a design consultation.