Can Homeowners Build Kitchen and Home RTA Cabinets?

There is no doubt about it, replacing kitchen cabinets can transform your home. Most of us spend a lot of time in our kitchens, so it isn’t surprising that kitchen remodels are among the most popular home renovation projects. However, kitchen remodeling isn’t cheap. If you are considering a remodel and have checked out cabinets at Home Depot, Lowes or another hardware store, you know that.

One alternative to consider is RTA cabinets. These are shipped to you flat packed. You save money on shipping and also on assembly because you put them together yourself. Are RTA cabinets for you? Here are some things to consider:

• RTA Cabinets Offer Better Quality at a Lower Price

In spite of being up to 50% cheaper than cabinets ordered through Home Depot or Lowes, RTA cabinets are actually a much higher quality of cabinet than anything but the most luxurious cabinet line at those stores. Instead of particle board construction and laminate shelves, RTA cabinets are usually made of solid wood throughout. There are many websites which talk about this difference and I have found it to be true in my own remodeling. In fact, it was the poor quality of the bathroom cabinets we purchased at Home Depot that led me to look for an alternative. The RTA cabinets we eventually purchased from RTA Unlimited are far superior in quality, construction and beauty.

So RTA cabinets sound like a great deal, but can the average homeowner really build them? Most RTA companies do not have consumer-friendly return policies, so this is a very important point to consider.

• With RTA Cabinets, You Know What You Are Paying For

When I got cabinets from Home Depot for my bathrooms, the salesperson asked the dimensions of the room and then told me the cost of the whole project. When I asked about alternative cabinets and whether I could know the cost of the individual cabinet pieces, they were very vague. Perhaps that was just my experience, but I found the clear pricing at RTA cabinet dealers to be one of the best selling points. Each cabinet in a line had a price and I could easily compare the prices of 18 inch drawer base cabinets with 18 inch door and shelf units. That helped me to choose a design I liked which also fit my budget.

• With RTA Cabinets, You are Responsible for Measuring and Buying Accurately

Most RTA cabinet firms don’t allow returns or have a stiff return fee. So you have to make sure that you have measured everything correctly and ordered the right pieces or you may end up with a mess rather than remodel. Some RTA cabinet firms will do the planning for you if you send them the dimensions of your kitchen, but you still must be sure the measurements are correctly done. If you are unsure of how to do the measurements, then you may want to hire someone to do this for you. If you do it yourself (like I did) then be sure you check and recheck your measurements before you order.

• With RTA Cabinets, You won’t be able to go into a Model Kitchen

Frankly, it was rather frightening to order thousands of dollars of cabinets based on a few internet pictures. However, we did order sample cabinet doors before we made our purchase. Many companies offer this option and being able to look at the wood and compare this to other designs available locally actually helped us to make our decision. Another thing that eased our fears was talking to the sales people at the company. Even before we made our purchase, we were assigned a salesperson who walked us through our decisions. That person answered my emails promptly and always returned phone calls. Choosing an RTA company which has good customer service is important.

• With RTA Cabinets, You May Have Limited Choices

Although there are many RTA cabinet companies, many of them do tend to offer the same oak and maple cabinets. In addition, within each cabinet line, there are often a limited number of types of cabinets and only a few choices of molding. Some extras like wine cabinets or pantries are only available in certain lines. We did not want oak or maple cabinets, so that eliminated a lot of companies. We finally two lines we liked at RTA cabinets Unlimited. One was a cherry and the other was a walnut. While we had to look a long time to find something we liked, in the end we found cabinets which we liked much better than anything available at Home Depot.

• With RTA Cabinets, You have to Build it Yourself

After ordering thousands of dollars of cabinets, I was terrified by the fact that I may not be able to put them together! Most of the websites of RTA cabinet companies will tell you it is easy to put their cabinets together. However, I was a 49 year old housewife with very little previous carpentry experience. So I was careful to choose a company which gave instructions for putting cabinets together on their website. I viewed the videos provided several times before I made my first attempt. How you put the RTA cabinets together varies greatly, so be sure to find out through website research or talking to company representatives exactly what is involved in putting together the cabinets you are interested in purchasing.

• Ordinary Homeowners Can Build RTA Cabinets

If a middle-aged (ok, maybe more than middle-aged) housewife can built RTA cabinets, you probably can too. In fact, I not only put together cabinets for my kitchen, but also for three other rooms in my house. All together, I assembled 31 cabinets, including 14 large pantries. My husband only helped me to move the pieces into the house after I finished building them in the garage. In all, I spent about 2 weeks building the cabinets, mostly in the evening after my kids had gone to bed. About half of our cabinets were cam and lock; the others were grooved and required finishing nails and clamps to hold them together while the glue dried. The only tools I needed were a screwdriver, hammer and clamps. In addition, I used good wood glue and nails. If you’d like to save money and have some beautiful cabinets, you may want to go for RTA.

Can you do it?

Different sorts of RTA cabinets are constructed differently and require different assembly. We bought all of our cabinets from the same company, but there were two different types of assembly processes. One of the cabinets used a Cam-Lock, and the other one was glued and nailed. I was rather frightened by the idea of not being able to put them together properly, but I really didn't need to worry. Wth a only a couple of minor mishaps, they went together veryou easily. Look at the videos at the left to see an example of how some cabinets are put together. I would definitely recommend going with a company which has a video posted online, or which offers you video instructions. You will probably get written instructions with each piece also, but the video overview was important.

• Questions to Ask

Because this is an important investment, it really pays to ask plenty of questions from the dealer you are buying the cabinets from, such as:

• What is the return/exchange policy?
• What type of cabinet assembly is required?
• Can you get a sample door before purchasing?
• Will the company design the kitchen for you?
• How do you take measurements?
• What sort of products do they have available for finishing ends of cabinets?
• Do you have a company representative who is assigned to help you through the project?
• Do they have names of previous customers you can contact?

Installation and Moving the Cabinets

You probably will want to consider whether you are going to install your cabinets yourself or have someone do it for you. For us, the installation was not very expensive because we already had a carpender working on some other projects in the house. I think we probably could have done it ourselves, but because the cabinets are heavy, and we are both in our late forties, we didn't want to risk hurting our backs. Once our cabinets were installed, they looked completely professional.

Before you begin the project, you probably will want to consider where you will be building. Most of the work of building I did in our garage or living room. Although the garage did keep the mess out of the house, it made it more difficult to move the cabinets once they were done. So I ended up moving half-way through the project into our living room. I used the boxes the cabinets were delivered in as a surface to build on. That kept the glue off my floors and made sure the cabinet fronts were not scratched during construction. The only tool we needed to move the cabinets around was a wheeled dolly.

I'd love to hear comments from you if you have used RTA cabinets in your home. Let me know about your own building experiences!