When it comes to renovation, choosing brand whole-home customization or having a carpenter build on-site, this is definitely a choice many homeowners face. The editor will provide a detailed introduction from the following aspects for your reference:

1, From the perspective of effort

With standard whole-home customization, you simply collaborate with professional designers for measurements and design, then wait for installation. However, cabinets built by carpenters lack both design and construction drawings. Cabinet doors, countertops, and other components require homeowners to independently go to local small factories recommended by the carpenter (you can interpret what "recommended" means for yourself) for processing. Quality is generally poor with no environmental protection assurance. Most are made with "toxic cardboard" density board. Furthermore, during the carpenter's construction process, homeowners must personally purchase various specifications of hardware, screws, nails, adhesive, foam adhesive, structural adhesive, glass adhesive, keel, baseboard, gypsum board, wooden strips, hinges, door locks, handles, and other various miscellaneous items, requiring substantial time and effort to compare and purchase. Since everything is purchased locally, it's difficult to obtain brand-name hardware and eco-friendly adhesives. This not only wastes time and effort but also plants many environmental hazards. Moreover, it's not like you buy everything once and it's done. The carpenter will constantly ask you to buy additional items, and after the project is completed, you still need to return various surplus materials. Smaller ones are manageable, but for large items like wood panels, gypsum boards, and wooden strips, you need to hire people and vehicles. The homeowner becomes the carpenter's laborer in minutes, being told where to go. As for supervision, since carpenters are guerrilla teams, don't expect any warranty or after-sales service. If there are issues requiring after-sales service, if they come to provide free on-site service even once without needing a dinner invitation, you should consider yourself lucky. To reduce quality issues, you still have to supervise daily. One moment of inattention and key steps are skipped or extra nail holes appear on the cabinet—all too common occurrences. After all, it's manual craftsmanship, mishaps happen regularly. To reduce defects, you also have to consider the carpenter's mood, at which point you can only give a fawning smile and say "please pay attention next time, master." Whole-home customization doesn't involve so many "social niceties." After measuring, a full-house rendering is created on computer, allowing real-time modifications to colors, shapes, and design. The adhesives, materials, and hardware used are all imported first-tier brands. After leaving the factory, professional craftsmen install the furniture following standard procedures, giving homeowners peace of mind and comfort.

2, From the perspective of price

Some say hiring a carpenter for on-site construction is cheaper? Then you're mistaken. The cost of a carpenter-built cabinet includes: labor fees, wardrobe board costs, wardrobe hardware, custom-made door panels, adhesives, screw nails, countertops, countertop installation fees, various material delivery fees upstairs, transportation costs, cigarettes, alcohol, tea and water expenses, opening ceremony meals, completion ceremony meals, and so on. When you finish renovating, you discover the materials used are nothing special, yet the money spent is much higher than whole-home customization. Even spending a hundred or eighty yuan daily, you can't calculate the total. Adding the time and effort spent supervising, the personal time cost is extremely high. Choosing whole-home customization is all-inclusive at one price, with materials and hardware from legitimate big brands, and it's definitely cheaper than carpenter construction under the same renovation effect.

3, From the perspective of materials

    Are carpenter-built wardrobes better in materials than customized ones? Some say carpenter-built wardrobes allow you to see the quality firsthand. The "eco-board" commonly used by carpenters is made by gluing softwoods like Chinese fir and poplar. Actually, poplar and Chinese fir are the lowest-end wood materials, and many branded custom wardrobe companies don't use them because the board performance itself is poor and would affect the brand image. The so-called eco-board is actually the old joinery board or large-core board, just with a layer of melamine paper added to rebrand it as an eco-board. Using poplar and Chinese fir as core materials (market price 240-400/sheet) is still considered acceptable. In more third and fourth-tier cities, people can only buy eco-boards made from mixed wood and recycled waste wood (market price 180-210/sheet). Since these are made from wooden strips assembled together, they require large amounts of adhesive to fill gaps, knots, and insect holes in the wood. Due to processing limitations, they can only use urea-formaldehyde adhesive (made from urea and formaldehyde) for bonding and production, resulting in seriously excessive formaldehyde. This is the culprit behind childhood leukemia, adult pharyngitis, rhinitis, and allergic urticaria. ALLVS whole-home customization uses particle board from internationally first-tier brands as material, with environmental protection reaching ENF level, produced using MDI non-formaldehyde medical adhesive plus European pine, ensuring environmental health. The entire production line investment scale is over 100 million yuan. Eco-board production lines can start operating with just over 200,000 yuan investment, so particle board on the market only has a few major brands, while eco-boards have dozens of regional brands in each area, which cannot be found online and are basically produced by local small workshops with no guarantee of quality or environmental protection.

4, From the perspective of craftsmanship

    Well-skilled carpenters do make good products, but this is limited to manual craftsmanship only. Don't expect them to have any aesthetic sense in design. They cannot compare with professional designers trained by higher education institutions. Training a designer to undergraduate graduation requires 15 years of study, mastering multi-disciplinary expertise and cultivating excellent design aesthetics. Only professional designers can perform interior design according to the homeowner's needs and living habits. A tailor skilled with scissors cannot become a barber, a painter skilled with brushes cannot become an artist, a calligrapher skilled at writing cannot become an author. If you're preparing to hand your house over to a carpenter, then don't have too high expectations for renovation aesthetics.    

5, From the perspective of environmental protection

    Whether board materials are environmentally friendly depends on testing. Many eco-boards are produced by small workshops and are completely untraceable online. The processing uses large amounts of urea-formaldehyde adhesive. To reduce odor, illegal additions of chemical ingredients like formaldehyde trapping agents are used to temporarily hide formaldehyde. With advertising slogans like "eco-friendly, non-formaldehyde, children's special," they ship out truckload after truckload. A large-core board costing dozens of yuan transforms into what carpenters call "solid wood eco-friendly board," with the price multiplied more than ten times. Through mutual flattery and hype, the homeowner's money mysteriously ends up in the pockets of dealers and carpenters. This isn't alarmist rhetoric. You can search online for "eco-board scam" and see how many children suffer from leukemia or even die because of the so-called eco-boards, how many families are destroyed. Carpenters don't have professional testing instruments, making it difficult to determine environmental friendliness. ALLVS uses the most environmentally friendly materials and is equipped with imported INTEASCAN 4160 professional formaldehyde testing instruments from the USA, performing secondary testing on each homeowner's furniture before it leaves the factory.

6, From the perspective of service

    Custom wardrobes have professional staff following up from sizing to installation, with formal contracts signed. Consumable hardware like hinges all have lifetime warranties, and any problems during homeowner's use have professional after-sales service. Furniture made by carpenter guerrilla teams has materials purchased piecemeal, without formal contracts, and when quality problems arise there's no recourse, only accepting bad luck.

7, From the perspective of safety

    Hiring carpenters for construction involves significant employment risks. If workers have accidents during construction, regardless of cause, the homeowner must bear 80% of the legal responsibility, compensating for medical expenses, lost wages, nutrition costs, and various other expenses.