Just like fashion and interior design, different cabinet styles travel in and out of style throughout the years. A popular style or finish might be in for five to ten years and then be out of style for the next decade. Just like the bathroom or living room, the kitchen has its own feel and attitude. You want your kitchen to be warm and inviting, but at the same time you want it to convey a sense of modern appeal. Much of this ?attitude adjustment? can be accomplished with new kitchen cabinets.

While most older homes desperately need a change, rising costs and decreased budgets have been making a kitchen remodel unaffordable.... until now. With recent developments in the cabinet industry, ready to assemble (RTA) cabinets have become affordable and very stylish. Now you can convert your old, out of date kitchen into the modern kitchen seen in home improvement magazines. And along with the help of ready to assemble (RTA) kitchen cabinets, this new look will also be affordable.

We compared prices of assembled kitchen cabinets and RTA kitchen cabinets. On the lower end of the price spectrum, there was atleast a 20% difference in cost between RTA and name brand cabinets (with most of the name brand cabinets actually being significantly higher. Then we went a step further and compared online RTA kitchen cabinets with retail RTA kitchen cabinets. The online prices were about thirty percent less than retail! Next we compared quality. Most retail stores were selling kitchen cabinets that were constructed of particle board. These cabinets looked great, but are made of inferior material that will eventually fall apart or warp from normal usage. In comparison the better RTA kitchen cabinet websites were selling sturdy solid wood faced cabinets with paneled wood sides. Remember the better RTA websites will advertise that they do not sell particle board and it should be easy to spot. Finally we looked at the variety. It was about equal when comparing the two types of cabinets. We found about seven to ten different shades of cabinets. These styles ranged from a light -- off white color to a dark chestnut color. Both assembled and RTA kitchen cabinets had a good enough variety of colors, but because of the savings with the RTA style of cabinets, we choose to assemble the cabinets ourselves and literally save thousands of dollars.

With the savings we found, we decided to jump right into our project. A lighter shade of cabinet was our choice ? because we had a smaller kitchen. We figured that a lighter shade would reflect light and give the feel of a larger kitchen. We found several RTA kitchen cabinet websites and thoroughly went through each site to compare prices. After doing enough research and choosing the cabinets, we ordered online and the cabinets arrived about two weeks later.

Assembling of the kitchen cabinets went easy (once we figured out the first one) and after that it was just a matter of installation. We had a friend (who is a contractor) help us install the cabinets and then we were onto the counter tops. After that the new kitchen had a light feel, a cozy attitude and a new modern look. We saved enough money to move onto another project; the bathroom. And to our surprise we found that there are now RTA bathroom vanities!