Kitchen Cabinet Shopping- Start Your Search Online

By Author: Jason Delmar
Total Articles: 335
Comment this article

Buying kitchen cabinets has become easier then ever. You can now go online, pick your cabinet style, pick your color, and see what you're getting. The better kitchen cabinet sites will even offer to send you samples. There are always pitfalls to buying online, but this article will guide you through that and make your online experience memorable and money saving at the same time.

When shopping online you are really going to find four different styles of cabinets- custom, semi-custom cabinets, stock cabinets, and RTA Cabinets. What I would like to focus on are the RTA Cabinets, which is where you are going to save the most money and still get a higher quality product. What does RTA mean and why is it so important? RTA stands for Ready-To-Assemble The reason it is so important is because you can buy RTA kitchen cabinets or bathroom vanities and save 30% to 40% from buying retail. Yes, that is a fact. Buying cabinets and assembling them yourself will save you a good amount of money. Don't worry the cabinet are easy to assemble. Well, I should say some styles of RTA are easy to assemble, but I will get to this ...
... later, just remember that if you get the correct RTA kitchen cabinets, you will have very little trouble with putting them together.

Buying online can be confusing, since there are hundreds of sites selling the same style of cabinets at a wide range of prices. Go to a few RTA sites and make sure you have compared prices. The good RTA sites will not offer gimmicks like free shipping. There is no such thing; these sites will make up for it with higher pricing. Also look for the straight forward, no frills sites. These sites usually offer the best pricing, and should be warehousing the cabinets, not using a 3rd party to ship their product. In the event there is a problem with the cabinets, it will be that much more difficult to resolve the problems if there is a 3rd party involved.

If you go to a retail store, like IKEA or home depot, you will see their version of RTA cabinets. Unfortunately these stores carry an inferior product, but lead you to believe that they are giving you quality at a good price. When actually it is a lower grade product and more expensive. Typically what you will find is that the actual cabinet box on their cabinets is made of fiberboard or particleboard.

As I prompted before, I promised to explain why some RTA kitchen cabinets are better than others. When shopping around, make sure the RTA bathroom vanity or RTA kitchen cabinets feature solid wood face frames and doors, and paneled wood sides. Particleboard or fiberboard can be affected by moisture.

So in the end, shop around at a few different websites, make sure that you are comparing the same products. Example - apples to apples. Make sure you are buying a cabinet that is solid wood and has paneled wood sides. Nothing else is good enough for your kitchen. Finally make sure the site is a reliable site, call them or look through the site. Look for testimonials or other proof of reliability. By keeping these things in check and making sure the web site follows through with samples or answers to your questions, will not only make your experience easier, but it will also make it worthwhile. Good luck and start shopping for your new RTA kitchen.