I recently helped one of my friends renovate a house that he bought. We removed an old bathroom vanity, knocked out some walls, and completely gutted the kitchen. I was almost instinctively drawn to the hardware super stores to buy my supplies. My friend, who was helping me, was the same way. While at one of these mega stores, we received more help from a store attendant than we ever thought possible; we were complaining about the lack of quality, regarding the kitchen cabinets, and more importantly, the outrageous price. The discovery we made has changed my outlook on buying home renovation supplies and has inspired me to look into buying a rehab project.



The hardwood super store attendant told us in simple terms, ?go onto the internet to buy kitchen cabinets and bathroom vanities?. He demonstrated his theory while at the store. He was telling us how he couldn't even buy cabinets with his discount for the prices he found them for on-line. Ready to assemble or RTA products are everywhere. You may not realize it, he explained, but you have probably put together dozens of these products. Anything that needs to be assembled is pretty much an RTA product. So why not your kitchen cabinets or bathroom vanities; it was starting to make sense, but I needed more information before I committed to this radical idea. (I was under the impression that you go to a store, pick out kitchen cabinets and a walk out with an assembled product.)

I asked, why RTA kitchen cabinets or RTA bathroom vanities? Two answers: First these products are almost half the cost of assembled kitchen cabinets. If you're into saving money (and who is not) then this type of cabinet is what you need. Why are the cabinets so cheap? There must be a catch? The catch is that you, the consumer are taking on the responsibility of assembling the product, so therefore, it is cutting your cost. You are getting an unassembled product, but you're saving money. Ok, so then I asked how difficult are they to assemble? The answer was short and simple. These RTA products have been designed to assemble quickly and easy. Usually a flat head screw driver (slot screw driver to some people) is the only tool needed. Finally my questions were answered, the product is easy to assemble and the cost is far better than an assembled kitchen cabinet.

Finally, I said to the store attendant, I will buy RTA kitchen cabinets and probably the bathroom vanities too. Where are they? This is when I was surprised once again with his answer. He said, don't buy retail. He knew he should not be telling me this but he gave the facts. Large hardware stores have a large amount of inventory and huge advertising budgets, therefore their kitchen cabinets are over priced. People don't realize this and think they are getting a good deal, but shopping online is a much better way to buy kitchen cabinets.

The trip to the super hardware store paid off, I went home found RTA kitchen cabinets online, compared prices and really saw the savings. I suggest you try it out and see how much you can save.