There are many variations on bathroom and kitchen cabinets. Prior to getting involved in renovation projects, I thought the obvious choice would be to go to a super store like the local Lowes or Home Depot. They advertise low prices on name brand cabinets, but I thought maybe I should do some research before I invest thousands into my new kitchen. I was getting a new floor, appliances, paint for the walls, counter tops, and the big ticket item would be the kitchen cabinets. I started getting involved in renovation projects, so I thought I could do most of it myself, but my first step was to make a budget and go from there.
Everything was in line with what I expected except for the kitchen cabinets. I found that shopping online and comparing prices on kitchen cabinet websites showed much better pricing than retail stores. I was a bit confused.
I associated Big Box retail stores with savings and good pricing. But here were kitchen cabinets online and the prices were thirty to forty percent lower. I figured the higher priced cabinets they were selling had to be a better quality, but I was surprised to find that that wasn't the case. The biggest surprise came from RTA Cabinets. They were not all what I remembered knockdown furniture to be, and they had higher quality materials than most of the name brand cabinet lines.
The cabinets online were actually made of plywood sides and solid wood fronts. In comparison, the cabinets from the big box retail stores were mostly made of particle board sides, cheaper materials, and low grade wood fronts. I had to price compare the mega stores "top of the line" products to find the paneled wood sides, while the cabinet websites came with plywood side's as a standard feature.
By now I was starting to develop an interest in RTA kitchen cabinets and hopefully if you're reading this, you are too! I decided to go with these cabinets and I am so glad I did. I purchased the RTA cabinets online; it only took two and a half weeks to get them. They were delivered right to my door. You might say over two weeks is a long time, but actually in the cabinet business, this is a very short time to order and have cabinets delivered. I checked a few sites and most websites ship cabinets in three to four weeks.
If you were to buy similar cabinets in the retail stores, you are actually looking at a 4 to 6 week time frame until delivery. When buying online, just make sure you have a good RTA site and they will ship in a much shorter time frame. When I priced cabinets at Home Depot, the estimated time for my cabinets was six weeks! So again, no comparison, everything about buying RTA kitchen cabinets online worked out for me. I also compared buying cabinets assembled versus the RTA cabinets.
As long as your buying from a quality RTA site, you will receive cabinets that are easy to assemble and very durable at the same time. The cabinets come with directions and usually take about ten to fifteen minutes per cabinet to assemble. So to sum it up, it basically comes down to marketing and the way we perceive buying products. The big box stores and name brand manufacturers have done a very good job of conditioning buyer behaviors to think they are providing a bargain even when they are not, but after doing some research I found that there are better ways to buy kitchen cabinets.
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