Investing Your 2008 Tax Refund: Using It To Add Equity To Your Home

By Author: Jason Delmar
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When buying kitchen cabinets or bathroom vanities, a phrase you should be familiar with is RTA kitchen cabinets. Or if you're looking for bathroom vanities you should know RTA bathroom vanities. You can buy fully assembled cabinets, but if you want to save thousands of dollars, then you should look at the RTA cabinets.

Most kitchen cabinets you find online are labeled as RTA cabinets. This simply means ready to assemble. Whether your buying these cabinets at a store or online, all cabinets have to be assembled. At a store, they (the store) will assemble the cabinets for you and charge you a high mark up. 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.

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. These cabinets are easy to buy and easy to assemble, but by adding a simple step, you can save a good amount of money. Higher end cabinets will of course cost even more and lower end cabinets (places like IKEA) will be less money. But remember you pay for what you get and if you go low end, you will be getting a very weak cabinet.

So the way I found to get a great kitchen and not have to pay retail prices is through the internet. My kitchen cost me $1850. I priced this same kitchen at Lowes and it cost $5110. It was the same kitchen cabinets and all the same material. I then priced the same kitchen at a local building supply store. The most similar kitchen cost over $6000. I noted that the cabinets at these two stores did not have solid wood sides, only wood faces. Comparatively the kitchen cabinets I found online were made of solid wood faces and paneled wood sides. This was clearly a better product.

So as with any major purchase, the secret to finding a good buy is to shop around. Go out and look in any retail store. Finding a better buy for a comparable cabinet will be hard to find, if not impossible. The retail super stores have too many other expenses and cannot offer the same price that a direct RTA kitchen cabinet importer can offer. At the same time, searching online is a better way to save, but you have to be careful of what you're buying and what they are offering.

If you keep these things in mind, you will have unlocked a big secret to saving money on kitchen cabinets. RTA cabinets are not only made for the contractor, but can be used by any person. You don't even have to be handy; all you need is some patience and the directions in the box.