RTA Cabinets: Buying, Building, and Installing your own RTA Kitchen Cabinets

With all of the design tools and resources on the internet, buying, and installing your own kitchen cabinets is now a realistic DIY project. With the wide selection of RTA Cabinets (Ready-To-Assemble) on the market, high quality, easy to assemble cabinets are now a viable option. RTA Cabinets are available just about everywhere that you look. The big box stores have even started carrying their own version of these kitchen and bathroom cabinets, but the best deals are still found on-line. While you won't get the advantage of talking to a personal designer, the monetary savings will be well worth it. By buying your kitchen cabinets direct from the manufacturer, the savings can be as high as 30-40%. Most websites are now offering design tools and templates to help make the cabinet buying process an easy transaction. If you are still unsure about buying RTA Kitchen Cabinets, let's address the most common question people ask.... what makes them different? The rta cabinets that are on the market today are in most cases, made of better materials than the higher priced name brand cabinets that are on the market today. That being said, not all rta cabinets are made the same. When you are shopping for them, make sure you look for the following features: 1) Solid wood face frames, stiles and doors 2) 1/2 or 5/8 inch plywood sides (stay away from particle board or fiberboard) 3) cam lock assembly, versus screws or dowels 4) Solid wood backs or atleast solid wood strips for attaching them to the studs 5) Solid wood drawer boxes, preferrably with dovetailing 6) European hinges and self-closing or epoxy drawer slides. The nice thing about most of the rta cabinet sites out there is that they will deliver the cabinets directly to your house.

Now that you have your new cabinets, let's talk about assembly. RTA cabinets are about as easy to assemble as it gets. The basic box is held together by cam locks, which create a nice tight box (much stronger than staples or dowels). All that is required for assembly is a flathead screwdriver. For the drawer base cabinets, you may want to have a drill handy to help tighten the screws that are needed to hold the drawer slides and even the drawer faces together. Most of the cabinets can be assembled in less than 5 minutes. All of the kitchen and bathroom cabinets will come with step-by-step instructions on how to assemble them.

Once you have your cabinets assembled, it is time to start prepping for installation. The preparation work is the most important part of the process, since in most cases, the floor is not going to be perfectly level and the walls are not going to be perfectly straight... that is just the way it is. By finding the high spots on the floor and the bumps in the walls, you can take steps before installation to ensure that your kitchen cabinets are flush and level. If you are looking for step-by-step installation instructions, check out Kitchen Cabinets: How to Install Them Yourself. While RTA cabinets will involve more labor on your part, the savings versus custom cabinets, plus the savings from installing them yourself, will make this a rewarding DIY, both personally and monetarily.