The kitchen cabinetry arrived at a Coral Gables townhouse in early June 2024, and I was on site when the panels came off the truck. Custom millwork at this level — 19 linear feet of floor-to-ceiling walnut veneer with integrated pulls — runs between $40,000 and $70,000 for a kitchen of this size in the Miami market. It also travels 1,200 miles from shop to install in a refrigerated truck during the hottest part of the year, and it arrives in an environment where humidity swings 30 percent between a conditioned interior and an outdoor loading dock. The documentation job started the moment the wrapping came off.
Why millwork documentation starts at delivery
Veneer panels move. They expand and contract with humidity, can telegraph delamination within 72 hours of arrival in a new climate, and any damage not photographed at delivery becomes a dispute about whether it happened in transit, during installation, or afterward. In Miami’s humidity that dispute is especially complicated because the climate itself can cause warping that looks identical to transit damage.
My delivery documentation covers four stages: panels on the truck, on the loading dock before entering conditioned space, inside after acclimatization, after installation. Each stage gets the same shots: wide establishing frame of all pieces, individual panels front and back at 50mm with a color reference card and panel number, close-up edges and corners. Edge condition is where transit damage shows first: crushed veneer corners, lifted banding, dings from straps.
Camera settings for veneer surfaces
Veneer photography is lighting-sensitive. Raking light — a single source at a low angle to the surface — reveals texture: dings, ridges, delamination bubbles, finish inconsistencies. Flat light from in front produces even color and sheen but misses defects.
I shot each panel twice: a flat pass with a diffusion panel for color accuracy, and a raking pass with a bare LED at about 15 degrees for defect detection. The flat pass goes in the delivery confirmation photos; the raking pass is what gets examined frame by frame if a defect claim arises. On this kitchen, the raking pass on the refrigerator enclosure showed a 3-inch delamination on the inside edge that the flat pass did not render at all.
Camera: 50mm at f/8, ISO 400, manual exposure, white balance fixed at 5,500 K for indoor stages; 6,500 K at the outdoor dock to match the overcast sky typical of a Coral Gables June morning.
Documenting the installation sequence
Installation documentation answers different questions from delivery documentation. The delivery set establishes what arrived and in what condition. The installation set establishes whether it was installed correctly and flags anything visible before the client signs off.
During installation I document: scribe condition at wall or soffit joints, reveal alignment across face frame joints, drawer and door gaps measured with a feeler gauge at each opening, and shimming visible before filler strips cover it. Once filler strips go in, nobody knows what is behind them. A photograph of the shim pattern before cover installation answers any future question about whether a cabinet was level when hung. Post-installation, I sweep finished surfaces with a raking LED wand. Veneer that looked perfect at delivery can show a finish defect after installation stress — catching it while the installer is still on site is far easier than a callback.
The humidity problem and how to document it
Miami’s exterior humidity in summer runs 80 to 90 percent. A conditioned interior typically runs 50 to 55 percent. That 30-point differential is what walnut veneer panels travel through between the truck and the kitchen, and it is what can cause visible dimensional change if acclimatization is rushed. The panels in this install were given 48 hours in the conditioned space before installation began. I documented the stack at 24 hours and at 48 hours with a tape measure across the widest panel in the set: no measurable change at either reading, which went into the file as confirmation that acclimatization was adequate.
If the client had called me to document damage claims later, those two measurements would be the baseline against which any warping argument would be assessed. The cabinet shop that fabricated this work is a Miami custom millwork shop with experience in South Florida humidity management for high-end veneer work, and they required the 48-hour acclimatization as a condition of their warranty — which is the right call in this climate.
Frequently asked questions
What should delivery documentation for custom cabinets include? Photographs of each panel front and back before it enters the building, with a panel number card in frame, raking and flat lighting passes to catch surface defects, close-ups of all corners and edges, and a timestamp for each stage. The delivery set is the baseline document if any transit or installation damage is claimed later.
How do I photograph veneer surfaces to show defects that are hard to see? Use a raking light source at 10 to 15 degrees to the surface — a single LED panel works well — and shoot at f/8 or smaller for full depth across the panel face. Delamination bubbles, surface dings, and finish inconsistencies that are invisible under flat lighting become obvious under raking light. Always shoot both a flat-light and a raking-light pass on the same surface.
How long should custom millwork documentation be kept? Keep it for the duration of the warranty period and at least one year beyond. Most custom millwork warranties run one to two years for finish and five years for structural integrity. Any dispute about whether damage occurred during transit, installation, or normal use will be resolved against the documentation baseline, so keeping the full file accessible matters.