We are planning one big project for the New Year. Every year right after the holidays, we coordinate some sort of new addition, design, or layout for our house. This year we decided to clear out the old kitchen cabinets. We already had new appliances (from a very nice Christmas gift, last year) so we thought we would spruce up the ?other furnishings? in the kitchen.

I refer to kitchen cabinets as furnishing because in part that is what they are. A good kitchen cabinet can be a piece of furniture. The right kitchen cabinets in the right setting with nice countertops and other accents will make a kitchen look like a show piece. We wanted this for our kitchen, but did not want to pay a hefty price. And that is where the best part of this renovation project was found.

After spending countless hours in big box hardware stores and lumber super centers, I decided there had to be another way to find a good deal. First of all I was very disappointed in the lack of effort these stores were showing me, second, the prices were outright terrible, and third, the quality of the kitchen cabinets I found was very poor. (Unless you wanted to spend twenty thousand dollars - $20,000- then you got the very best.)

Instead we were on a budget. We had four thousand dollars and wanted good cabinets. No particle board (like IKEA) and no painted wood or fake wood. (By the way ? IKEA had some great looking cabinets, but the quality was very weak. All of their products are made of inferior materials that will (and have been proven to) break down in a few short years.

Where we found the cabinets of choice were online. What type of cabinets we found that best fit our budget were RTA kitchen cabinets. RTA is not a brand name; instead it is an acronym for ?Ready To Assemble?. And that is what these cabinets were; easy to put together, quick to assemble, and most of all ? quality at a great price. The online price was almost thirty five percent lower than a retail RTA kitchen cabinet and the quality was actually a much better.

I thought it was too good to be true, so I did some research and here is what I found: RTA kitchen cabinets that are sold online, have less mark up because these online stores have less over head. Thus passing the savings on to the consumer and saving you money. Second, the better RTA kitchen cabinet websites will actually be the direct importer of the cabinets and this will save you money because of no ?middle men?. (Do a Google search, the best RTA sites will rise to the top of the ?organic search? not the paid searches at the very top of a search engine, instead it's the websites right below).

So with a little searching, we found a great deal on RTA kitchen cabinets, we saved money and had our ?new year's project? done in just over a month. Remember, shop online, compare a few websites, and go with RTA kitchen cabinets if you want to save money and still have a great looking, quality kitchen.