Home Improvement for the New Year: Kitchen Renovation

The start of 2008 is a chance to finish old projects or begin new ones. A good project to focus on is the kitchen or more specifically kitchen cabinets. New kitchen cabinets will cost anywhere from $4,000 to $9,000 for any type of regular cabinets that you would buy in a retail store. Higher end cabinets will of course cost even more, but even the lower end cabinets (places like IKEA) can still cost you a couple thousand dollars. While a good rule of thumb is that you are getting what you pay for, even some of the higher end kitchen cabinets are not made of the best materials.

So the way I found to get a great kitchen and not have to pay the high retail prices is through the Internet. My kitchen cost me $2457. I priced this same kitchen at Lowes for a similar style cabinet and it would have cost me $5806. While it was the same kitchen cabinet style, it was made of a lower grade material. I then priced the same kitchen at a local building supply store. The most similar cabinet would have cost $5240 for the full kitchen. Also, I noted that the cabinets at these two stores did not have solid wood sides, only solid wood faces. Comparatively the kitchen cabinets I found online were made of solid wood faces, with ¾ inch plywood sides instead of fiberboard.

Most kitchen cabinets these days, unless custom built, are really RTA cabinets. This simply means ready to assemble. Whether you are buying these cabinets at a store or online, 90% of the manufacturers are mass-producing the parts and eventually have to be assembled. At a store, they (the store) will assemble the cabinets for you and charge you a high mark up or the manufacturer assembles them before shipping. Either way you are incurring the added expense of the labor required for the assembly, and the additional shipping costs of having them shipped assembled. However, buying the cabinets online allows you to avoid a retail mark up and enables you to build the cabinets yourself. Yes it is a little more work, but it is rather simple to put these cabinets together. And in the end if you’re cutting your cabinet costs in half, then it is a simple choice to choose RTA cabinets online.

Regardless of which type of cabinets you choose, new cabinets will help increase the value of your home and make it more appealing to potential buyers. Why not maximize the return on your investment by installing a great looking cabinet that is more durable and cost half the price?