Brian,
You and your friend sound like great guys, my advice to your friend is just hire someone to build and install a kitchen. After that is done or while it is being done, have your friend build and tackle some cabinets for the basement, a storage area or the garage, this way he can putz away at it and learn, maybe acquire some tools and have fun.
I truly believe that without the equipment, and a place to finish these cabinets that he probably won’t have a 51 anniversary and he for sure won’t have a 52. His poor wife will be long gone when she has no kitchen.
Please don’t get me wrong, I am not trying to be critical, it will just be a struggle and very slow when you don’t have a shop. Kitchen cabinets are very easy to build, when you can send the design to the Cnc, or even cut on a panel or sliding table saw, then run them through the edgebander. Take them to the case clamp and bang them together, or even take them to a bench and manually slap them together. Buy some rough lumber, run it through the jointer, then stick it in the planer, run it through the shaper, build some doors, run them through the wide belt, do some hand sanding to finish them off, stick them on a cart and roll them over to the finish room to stain them and then spray them in a proper spray area so that when the are dry they don’t look like a chicken sat on them.
Now you have to do the whole process over with your drawer boxes, then you have to buy and figure out how to install all the hardware, fancy pullouts for the pantry, corner cabinet pull outs, self closing drawer slides and hinges, under cabinet or in cabinet lighting and whatever else the Mrs, wants.
You have it all built, now comes the fun part, you have to install it all and make it look amazing, you have to fit the crown mouldings to crooked ceilings, scribe the fillers to non-plumb walls. Most places when you do a renovation want you to bring up everything in that area to code, now you have to work and coordinate with the plumbers and electricians to make everything current, then you have to get some one to template and install your countertops, tile your backsplash, it seems like it just never ends.
Like I said at the beginning you and your friend seem like great guys, and I just wanted to give you a little idea of what he is getting himself into. My advice would be to go fishing, hire out the kitchen, have a happy wife and enjoy life. Cheers.