Shop Around for New Cabinets

So, you’ve decided to renovate the kitchen and you’re looking for new cabinets. Prices can’t be that different, so you might as well just head to your local big box store and place your order, right? Wrong. When you are looking at the pricing for kitchen cabinets, the quality of the materials and the volume of cabinets the company orders from different manufacturers on a regular basis can really affect the bottom line.

Photo: Robin Utracik/SXC

For example, cabinets for a standard size kitchen were hundreds of dollars cheaper through our local builder’s surplus center than through the big box home improvement stores and around $3000 cheaper than the nearby kitchen center, simply because he keeps his overhead low and does a high volume of business with the manufacturer he uses. All cabinets had similar details, so we didn’t lose any of the quality we were looking for. Real wood? Check. Dovetail joins on the drawers? Check. The upgraded automatically closing doors? Check. Long term warranty from the manufacturer? Check.

I don’t know about you, but I can always find a use for several hundred dollars, especially if I am in the middle of a big remodeling project!